Mossy Cottage Knits

Creative Stash Management 101

Seven easy steps for destashing while on vacation:

Step 1: At Home
Decide at the very last minute what yarn you want to take with you and grab your all-time favorite sock yarn—the knitter’s equivalent of a wine that’s been saved for a special occasion—a beeyootiful, plump, variegated merino yarn of rich kelly green and royal blue. Realize that it’s in an unwound 650-yard skein but tell yourself you’ll have plenty of time to deal with that, what with airports, and a week-long cruise, and all.

Step 2: Waiting for the Flight from Seattle to Dallas
Fart around at the airport until you have just enough time to start the winding process and then have to cram the whole thing—now converted into one small, 50-yard ball and a 600-yard, hellaciously knotted mess—into a small bag, compounding the problem.

Step 3: On the flight from Seattle to Dallas
Ignore the nightmare that is lurking in your knapsack.

Step 4: On the flight from Dallas to Fort Lauderdale
Start the winding process again. Make good progress. Do, however, at one point, let the ball escape from you and roll across the aisle under the legs of the man across from you, who decides that the way to retrieve the ball is to grab the yarn and start pulling which means that the ball unrolls and unrolls under his legs as he pulls and pulls. You explain to him, your face glowing with embarrassment in the half-light of the cabin, that that won’t work and that yes, indeed, he’s going to have move his beverage, his food, his cell phone, his laptop, and his work documents from his tray to the tray next to him, fold the tray up, retrieve the ball, and then do everything in reverse. He was a mite ungracious. Fun times.

Step 5: Cruise
Ignore yarn for the full seven days of the cruise.

Step 6: Fort Lauderdale airport
Spend the four hours you have waiting for your flight undoing the Gordian knot and creating a huge ball of yarn.

Step 7: Flight from Fort Lauderdale to Dallas
Pull out the bag of yarn in preparation for starting your most favorite socks evar but, instead, spend the whole three hours talking to the two women sitting next to you who were also on the cruise. At the end of the flight, walk off the flight, forgetting the yarn. Get on your flight to Seattle, and fly away.

Ta-da! De-stashing the easy way!