Stash gym III - Australia's biggest (wool) loser

Once again, the stash has defeated me.

I have been planning to take some photos of my new garments for the past four weeks and put them up on Ravelry. Unfortunately (?), I've now got a backlog of stuff to photograph and I don't know where to start. I could get photos of the poncho, the melange shawl and the shrug, but the shrug is currently on the mannequin and the poncho and shawl are stuffed into the drawer so tightly I can barely get them out (something to do with the drawer being full of other knitted garments...). I could photograph the cardigan, but it's not finished - I am hoping to get some more Ribbon Twist from the US to finish off the trim or (failing that!), I need to scrounge two balls of grey or white Big Wool. I have the fronts of two jumpers, but have not been able to get the wool I need to do the backs and the sleeves (still on order). I have a shrug that is slightly too long and needs to be modified, not sure how. The vest is accessible - I am wearing it at present - but it is a timely reminder that a large woman should not wear garments that draw attention to her chest. It looks like I am trying to smuggle two footballs into the shop... or maybe that should be two footballers...

My solution has been to knit or crochet more garments (singlet top, another LONGER knitted vest, a crochet vest which will probably be another disaster and a jumper for the Significant Other). This won't get the UFOs over the line, but at least it will keep the stash on its steady downward path. The other day (drumroll, please!), I hopped up onto the end of my bed, reached up and touched... THE SHELF!! That's right, I have cleared enough of my stash that the shelf has become visible. Maybe instead of photographing the finished objects, I should take a photo of the shelf!! Finished objects are ten a penny around here at present, but a shrinking stash has rarity value!

Stash-gym - the weigh-in

I figured that a picture is worth 1,000 words...

Before

**This is a representation only. I have a wide angle lens, but it was not quite wide enough to manage The Stash.***

After

Stash-gym!

Most knitters are familiar with the term stash-diet. This is what die-hard knitters do when they can no longer close their cupboard door (or maybe their front door!) because of the size of their stash. Stash-dieters either reduce the amount of wool that they purchase yearly or cold-turkey and refuse to buy any more wool until their stash reaches manageable proportions again.

Last year, I reluctantly joined the ranks of the stash dieters - the stash weighed nearly as much as I did (if not more!) and it was becoming a safety issue - there was a real risk that the floor of my flat would collapse under the weight, killing the elderly lady downstairs and diminishing property values in the block significantly. *This was before I moved into the shop - now the only person at risk from my stash is myself!

If you've read my posts, you'll know that the stash diet was not a success. In fact, while on the stash diet, my stash increased by nearly 10kg!

Luckily over Christmas, I had some time to think about stashes (and weight and health issues generally!), and it occurred to me that I'd never actually dieted in my life. However, one thing I can do quite successfully is exercise. At my best, I was putting in about 15 hours of high impact activity each week and looked pretty darned good. (I couldn't walk properly because my knees were a mess with tendonitis, but that was beside the point. Vanity over ability to walk any day!). And thus the term stash-gym was born.

A stash-gym is very simple. You line up your projects and work out a strategy for knitting or crocheting as many projects in the shortest time possible. The idea is that intensive activity leads to (stash) weight loss. And it works!! Since I started my stash-gym, I have lost 50g of hand-dyed bamboo (now three pretty crocheted chokers), 150g of Big Wool Tuft (two jumper fronts, decorative cuffs and collar for a Big Wool shrug), 40g of leftover Big Wool (shrug) and about 100g of leftover Jo Sharp tweeds and mohairs (now being converted into the Textured Garter Stitch Scarf from Eclectic for my Mother's birthday surprise - she is certainly going to be surprised, she thinks she is getting a book!). I have also shed 10 balls of black Inca (in the process of becoming a vest for my stepmum's sister) and at least 10 balls of Jo Sharp Aran Cotton (now a pretty striped singlet from Knit Issue 2 and a matching striped lacy headscarf from Saturday).

When the vest and scarf leave the building, I have another two Jo Sharp singlet tops and a Rowan Cotton Rope poncho warming up in the foyer, ready to spring into action. Completing those three projects should reduce the stash to a mere 12 garments worth plus miscellaneous leftovers. Plus there is an additional benefit to all this activity - after an intensive knitting session, I can't move my right arm or shoulder properly. This prevents me from using the internet or my credit card to purchase additional stash - a win-win situation!

Project creep

Once upon a time, when I first started working in IT&T, I discovered a wonderful phenomenon called 'scope creep'. To explain this using everyday terms, let's pretend that scope creep happens in a hardware shop.

A customer comes in to a hardware shop and asks the shop assistant for a packet of nails. The shop assistant talks to the customer about what they want, shows them a few different packets of nails and helps the customer to make a decision. The shop assistant takes the nails to the till - just as they are about to put the purchase through the till, the customer shouts "Wait!! I'd like to get bigger nails and I also want a hammer please".

No worries! The shop assistant gets the new bag of nails and the hammer... "Wait! I don't actually want any of that - do you have a three piece bathroom setting?".

Scope creep is probably the reason for the myki blowout and for every other IT&T-related disaster in the history of disasters. One of the highlights of my new role as Retail Manager (I thought) was the end of scope creep. Never again, I told myself, would I sign a contract to write a procedures manual and end up being asked to produce three manuals, training materials and a website for the same price. Never again would I start documenting a simple planning spreadsheet that would evolve (as I worked) into a full-featured monster complete with project plans, budgeting tools and a coffee futures calculator.

That was when I discovered project creep. As a humble hobby knitter, I already knew about projects. After all, I had enough yarn for at least 12 projects in my stash at any one time. I carried a list of yarns on my Palm Pilot, just in case I came across a yarn sale and could pick up the materials for yet another project at a discount. If I'd dared to add up the value of the yarn stashed in my wardrobe, it would probably have been worth more than all my clothing combined.

As a wool shop owner, though, project creep took on a whole new dimension. Now I had access to a wool stash (also known as my stock!) that was not only worth more than my limited wardrobe, it was probably worth more than my car. I also had customers who wanted to know what this yarn and that wool knitted up like - how did it look crocheted - how would this pattern work, there's no photo of the back! On top of that, customers were enquiring about classes - what will we end up with at the end of the class? Do you have a sample? What would it look like in green?

From having 12 projects, all in my colours and my size, I was suddenly confronted with the possibility of an infinite number of projects in every colour and size that my customers might ever conceivably ask about. I was also under a lot more pressure to actually complete some of my projects, so that I could wear my very own hand-knitted creations in the shop. After all, how much cred does a wool shop owner have when she's wearing a cheap acrylic top that she picked up on sale at Best and Less?

I think I rose to the challenge well. On my first day of trading, I brought four bags of wool into the shop. Each bag contained wool for half a dozen projects mixed up together but not enough of anything to do more than about 20cm of knitting. This was fine, because I'd left the patterns and needles in my flat so I couldn't knit anyway. On the second day of trading, I started one of the class projects, a spiderweb wool scarf, and also a vest for myself. On the seventh day of trading, my family came to visit. I finished the scarf, started to crochet a scarf as an example for the beginner crochet class and also promised to knit my father a hat for Father's Day. In my third week of trading, I made an arrangement with a local artist to sell her lovely hand-dyed, hand-spun wools. Of course, the obvious way to promote this new addition to our product range was to buy the two loveliest skeins to knit myself some sort of amazing garment that would bring yarn aficionados into the shop in droves. I thought about entering my projects in Ravelry so that I could keep track of them, but the enormity of the task overwhelmed me before I even began - besides, time spent on Ravelry would be time taken away from knitting up my projects!

For the last month, I've juggled the crochet project (finished this week, now proudly hanging from Dixie the mannequin's left arm), the vest (done the back and part of the left front) and the hat (two rows long so far - happy Father's Day, Dad!!). I've hidden Dad's partly completed birthday jumper (which became the Father's Day jumper, which will now be the Christmas jumper) in my wardrobe so that I don't have to worry about it. I've gone through my stash working out what to knit for summer, and shown The Skeins around at a local knitting group, seeking inspiration for amazing garments.

In fact the only thing that I haven't done is add up the value of my stash: if my stash is worth more than my stock, I really don't want to know!

The grand opening...

When I first started as a fiction writer, I was advised to start my stories at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop. Later on, I grew up and became a technical writer - I started writing online help and websites, and the advice became "start somewhere that is likely to be relevant and give the reader lots of options to find other relevant things if they need to. They can stop whenever they damned well feel like it. Use lots of hyperlinks and good luck".

On 8/8/08, I opened CCCK, a wool shop in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. If I start the story of the wool shop at the beginning, I'd start with my mother teaching me how to knit when I was about four. Like most kids, as soon as I started school, I caught every cold, flu, gastric bug and miscellaneous ailment going - plus all the primary school standbys of mumps, measles, chicken pox etc etc. I stayed home and was bored, sick and stroppy. Mum (bless her!) decided that she would teach me how to knit and do simple tapestry work. Looking back, it amazes me that she didn't decide to throttle me instead, because I must have been a major pain in the backside. But she didn't, and so (indirectly) CCCK was born...

I enjoyed knitting. I kept going, even when I stopped being sick. I graduated from printed canvas kits to counted cross stitch embroidery and moved from garter stitch scarves and beanies to more complex designs. On the train to uni, I knitted. People looked at me oddly, but that may have been because I was going through a Goth phase and there weren't that many people around with pink hair and long, black skirts. I got a job and commuted to work, still knitting. People still looked at me oddly. (Eventually, I found my dream job as a technical writer and people looked at me even more oddly, but that's another story).

Finally, almost thirty years after the first fumbling efforts to knit Barbie a stole, I discovered quality yarns. I found a Jo Sharp pattern book and some yarn in a gift shop in Olinda. Love at first sight! I bought the book and I bought the yarn. I ordered more and paid for it to be posted to my office. I started looking for good wool on the internet.

The next couple of years were the stash years. I bought up wool for projects at every sale, I made regular trips across town to visit the high-end wool shops. And finally, I had a thought - why hadn't I found this amazing stuff earlier? The answer was, because I lived in Melbourne's northern suburbs. Traditionally, this was a less affluent area and so no-one had thought to open a flash wool shop there.


From there, it was only a short step to realise that now Melbourne's inner northern suburbs are doing very nicely thank you - maybe well enough to support a high end wool shop, if one should chance to open... About six months after I worked this out, I signed a rental contract for 234 High St and sank most of my savings into stock. And, in the best tradition of online help, we end up back at the beginning - with me opening my doors for the first time on 8/8/08...