Stash Diving

Most knitters have a stash of yarn of some size tucked away. I have yet to meet a knitter who bought yarn for one project, which they finished before venturing forth to buy more yarn. This knitter may exist out there but he or she is a rare bird.

My stash is much smaller than it once was. After a couple of divorce-fueled personal downsizing sessions, my personal stash no longer fills a walk-in closet but fits into two large plastic containers and a few smaller baskets. And I feel the deficit.

What is this insatiable yarn hunger that many of us have? It isn't as though all the sheep might disappear and we'd be left without. Nor is it likely that all of the yarn stores and internet resources will dry up. And many of us have the ability to spin our own yarn, if push came to shove. So, why the compulsion to acquire more yarn?

In culling through my stash, I see a wide range of types and motivations present in the various yarns. There is the acrylic charity knitting yarn found at Goodwill and various discount stores. Not my favorite stuff, but necessary for items to be given away and which require easy washing. Then there are the specific project yarns, generally high quality natural fibers chosen for all my own handmade clothing and for those chosen few who know how to care for them. There is also the hand-me-down yarn that someone else wanted to get rid of. Also of high quality, but it tends to sit around for awhile until I feel inspired by a project. And last, but most certainly not least, is my sock yarn, which is in a category all its own.

My love affair with knitting socks began over a decade ago and has only deepened over time. As my financial fortunes have ebbed and flowed, the constancy of sock yarn has remained. No other medium allows for such variety of colors, fibers and weights for such a relatively low cost. Silk, wool, cotton, silk & wool, washable wools; space-dyed, self-patterning, stripes; neutrals and wild colors; all singing a siren song to me to make yet another pair of socks. And I cannot turn my back on that oh so alluring ball because it may not be there the next time and I will have lost out on those socks.

While I can exercise restraint with yarn for sweaters and scarves, the sock stash continues to grow and change and, I expect, that will remain the case far into the future.

Perhaps artists are the same way about paints and brushes, or photographers about equipment. And I know as a writer that I have an extreme attraction for interesting pens and notebooks. Maybe by stashing yarn, knitters are merely loading their palettes for whatever their creative voice needs to express next. I suspect this may be the case. Or, perhaps, our gluttony just runs toward yarn.

Colors Without Names

I was making muffins (what else?) over the weekend. The recipe called for a cup of jam. When I stirred it in, the batter turned a delightful color. A color that I had never seen before. A color that I have no name for.

It was cherry jam that I added but it didn't look like "cherry" as it is generally labeled. The flour, the buttermilk and all the other ingredients contributed their own nuances to the batter, so that it wasn't pink and it wasn't beige and it certainly wasn't "cherry". There were flecks of fruit throughout giving contrast to whatever color this was.

When the muffins came out of the oven, they were a different un-nameable color; closer to what we might call "cherry" but only if we mean the color of cherrywood furniture. They were a rich, inviting color. A color for a favorite pullover or a cozy chair. Something to envelop and warm you.

I've noticed the same phenomenon in handspun yarn. The spinner plys two or three seemingly unrelated colors and the resulting yarn is a wonderful, never before seen new color; rich with depth and feeling.

All of this made me wonder about the limits of language. We are visual creatures who take in massive amounts of information through our eyes. And yet, we cannot adequately describe what we see. We cannot share with any exactness the color of a thing without resorting to an endless list of adjectives or delineating what something is not. We say something is green. But what sort of green? Leaf? Olive? Emerald? Grass? Sage? Loden? Moss? Or some shade found only in one location at one time of day when the sun hits it just right?

Our perceptions are so clear that we can take in the feeling of a color but language limps when we try to share it. So I cannot describe the muffins' color, beyond saying that it was the color of jam muffin batter after I stirred in the black cherry Polander All Fruit. And it was very pretty.