Franklin Habit’s Destash Diary

Writer, illustrator, and knitter Franklin Habit joins us for his monthly column featuring humor and insights into a yarncrafter’s life.

February 4. Abner was looking for the can opener today and found the sock yarn I’ve been storing in the flour canister. He asked where we keep the flour. We? When was the last time you whipped up a batch of cookies, Abner? I handed him the can opener–from the drawer it’s been kept in since the Carter administration–and told him to get out of the kitchen.

February 5. Abner was snooping again. Found the lace weight in the big roasting pan on the top shelf. So what? We only use it every fourth year when it’s our turn to host Thanksgiving. To keep the peace, relocated the lace weight to the canisters marked TEA and RICE. Wasn’t much tea or rice left anyhow.

February 6. Out all evening, volunteering at the guild’s learn-to-knit night. Terrific thank-you gift, two skeins of kid mohair/wool blend. Not sure what to do with it just yet, so it’s tucked in with the Christmas decorations in the hall closet. Abner has been nice and quiet, holed up in the den clacking away on his computer. Crisis averted? Fingers crossed.

February 7. At breakfast, Abner handed me a typed list of one hundred and thirty eight places around the house that he has found stashed yarn. He wants me to think about what I should do. I’m happy he didn’t look under the porch.

February 8. I have agreed to a strategic cull of the stash; but tonight is the cast-on party for the new knit-along at Diamondz and Purlz so I don’t have to start until tomorrow.

February 9. I won the door prize basket at the cast-on party. I told Abner since these twelve skeins came in their own container, they are self-stashing. I don’t think he’s buying it.

February 10. Off we go, as soon as I finish this sleeve.

February 11. The sleeve used up the rest of the ball of Vanna’s Choice^®. So that’s -1 ball. Good start.

February 12. Two sleeves finished, two balls de-stashed. Time for a break.

February 13. Abner just found the collection of mini-skeins in the bottom of his golf bag. Gotta go.

February 14. I would like to know exactly why a person needs a golf bag in Minnesota in February? Anyhow, he’s staying with his mother in Bemidji for a week so I can go through the stash without interruptions. Sue is coming over tomorrow to help keep me on track.

February 15. Sue agreed that the best plan is to gather the yarn together in the living room so I can see what I’ve got. We did that and now we can’t find the couch or the piano or the dog.

February 16. All the yarn is in four piles: Keep, Sell, Donate, and Not Sure.

I put the leftovers from Chrissie’s layette and Brandon’s Halloween costume into the Donate pile. Eighteen balls!

Sue wants to buy everything yellow since she looks better in it than I do, so we put all the yellow in the Sell pile. (Between you and me, I think yellow makes her look like a old Marshmallow Peep; but I hate yellow anyhow.)

Everything else is in Not Sure.

February 17. Still Not Sure.

February 18. I moved five skeins of that expensive discontinued blue merino into the Sell pile, and then Sue remembered she has five skeins of it in gray at her house. That’s enough to make a sweater for me, if I stripe it.

February 19. We’re almost finished. I am going to have the nicest, neatest, most compact and sensible stash you ever saw. Sue reminded me to check the attic tomorrow just to make sure I haven’t missed anything up there.

February 20. Called Abner to tell him we found out what he’s been hiding in the attic. Sue is putting all the yarn back where it goes.

February 21. Abner is home. He has agreed that we will never speak of this again.

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Writer, illustrator, and photographer Franklin Habit is the author of It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons (Interweave Press, 2008–now in its third printing) and proprietor of The Panopticon (the-panopticon.blogspot.com), one of the most popular knitting blogs on Internet. On an average day, upwards of 2,500 readers worldwide drop in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep. Franklin’s other publishing experience in the fiber world includes contributions to Vogue Knitting, Yarn Market News, Interweave Knits, Interweave Crochet, PieceWork, Cast On: A Podcast for Knitters, Twist Collective, and a regular column on historic knitting patterns for Knitty.com.

These days, Franklin knits and spins in Chicago, Illinois, sharing a small city apartment with an Ashford spinning wheel and colony of sock yarn that multiplies alarmingly whenever his back is turned.