When It’s Gone, It’s Gone (An excerpt from A Stash of One’s Own by Clara Parkes)
Whenever something of sentimental value breaks, my partner, Clare, likes to say, “I’ll buy you a new one.” She honestly believes anything can be replaced, and she also says it to provoke a very specific response in me. Without a beat, she knows I’ll launch into a panicked lament about how that old lightbulb or pair of socks or cracked plastic planter can never, ever be replaced. It’s gone, and as we know, once it’s gone . . . it’s gone. Eventually I hear myself and realize I’ve slipped into my old pattern, and I try to let it go.
I used to have a normal, enthusiastic-bordering-on-the-excessive stash, like most knitters. Then I began reviewing yarn professionally. Every week over the course of sixteen years, I would receive boxes and pouches and bags of yarn from manufacturers hoping for coverage, along with skeins I had purchased from other small providers. My stash quickly became two stashes: yarns for my private knitting, and yarns to be reviewed.
One fed the other. I’d discover a new yarn, test it out, fall in love with it, and write its story in Knitter’s Review. (Which happened more or less on a weekly basis.) I’d panic that once the review came out, the yarn would be gone, and so I’d purchase more, sometimes a sweater’s worth, as protection.
My “work” stash was more complicated. Everything came in single skeins, and how many fingerless mitts does one person really need? Not that I would’ve used those skeins for pleasure, because they’d been intended for work. The bad karma from stealing from that stash would make those mitts rise up and strangle me in my sleep.
By year four of Knitter’s Review, things were seriously out of control. Luckily (or perhaps because of this), a tradition of a “stash lounge” began at the annual Knitter’s Review Retreat I hosted every November. It started as a table, then became several tables, and eventually occupied a whole room.
People deposited yarn they no longer loved or needed or could reasonably use in their lifetime. It was a good crowd, and you knew your yarn would be appreciated. This made it so much easier to let go of the really nice stuff, along with all those impulse purchases, unflattering colors, and skeins with bad memories.
I’d bring giant bags of yarn from both of my stashes, the countless single skeins and a multitude of sweater quantities that never found their way into a sweater. Skeins that carried the heavy baggage of unfulfilled hopes and dreams miraculously shape-shifted into something fresh and inspiring when they entered the stash lounge. It was like a giant karmic washing machine.
Some “work“ yarns I’ve kept even though they were never reviewed and have since been discontinued. Part of my review stash serves as a physical archive of significant moments and trends over the past sixteen years. Unfortunately for my storage space, there have been many moments and trends. Every few years I’ll sweep through the archives and deaccession any skeins whose historical significance didn’t end up being all that significant. Because if I kept it all, I’d soon need another place to live.
Yarn holds energy (literally, twist), but it also holds energy in the form of memories— like the skeins of Luisa Gelenter’s yarn that remind me of the time I spent with her, or the little blue ball of fingering-weight I found in my grandma’s sewing basket. Every knitter will be able to pick up a skein from her stash—any skein—and tell you a complete and compelling story about it.
But there’s a very important way in which skeins of yarn differ from that old house key my brother carried around his neck. Yarn isn’t just an object that holds memories of the past. It is, at its very core, a tool waiting to be used—all the parts for a sweater, some assembly required. Comedian George Carlin liked to describe a house as “a pile of stuff with a cover on it,” but a yarn stash is a pile of stuff waiting to be turned into something beautiful. I have to remind myself of this distinction every time my yarn starts to pile up.
From New York Times bestselling knitting writer Clara Parkes, comes a new collection of essays and stories drawn from the yarn-loving, stash-collecting, close-knit community of knitters.
This addictive-to-read anthology celebrates yarn—specifically, the knitter’s reputation for acquiring it in large quantities and storing it away in what’s lovingly referred to as a “stash.” Consider contributions from knitting and teaching luminaries, including:
Debbie Stoller, cofounder of BUST magazine and the author of the Stitch 'n Bitch series of knitting and crochet books
Meg Swansen, daughter of master knitter Elizabeth Zimmermann
Knitting blogger and author Susan B. Anderson
alongside offerings from knitting greats Amy Herzog, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, and Franklin Habit—plus, stories from a romance novelist, an illustrator, a PhD-wielding feminist publisher, a globetrotting textile artist, a licensed clinical social worker, and the people behind the world’s largest collective online stash, Ravelry.com. The pieces range from comical to earnest, lighthearted to deeply philosophical as each seeks to answer the question of how the stash a knitter has accumulated over the years reflects his or her place in universe.
The stories in A Stash of One’s Own represent and provide validation for knitters’ wildly varying perspectives on yarn, from holding zero stash, to stash-busting, to stockpiling masses of it—and even including it in estate plans. These tales are for all fiber artists, spinners, dyers, crafters, crocheters, sheep farmers, shop owners, beginning knitters to yarn experts, and everyone who has ever loved a skein too hard to let it go.
For more information, click here.
