Even Stevens challenge "halfway" mark

Would this have been great to post in July? It sure would have! But I’m getting to it now and that’s just as good.

Plus, it kind of works out in my favor because I happened to do a bit of destashing in September and October, so now I can include that in my overall totals and everything looks VERY nice. (Of course, the stash deficit will be obliterated once all the various holiday and countdown yarn packages start arriving…just let me enjoy this for now!) Missing a few calculations, I’m currently at a deficit of about 1600 grams.

Just to reiterate - the goal of this challenge was to at least break even at the end of the year. So even though I’m celebrating stashing down, if I had at least maintained at the same level, that would be great too! (That said, since I anticipate some incoming yarn at the end of the year, I’m only in a deficit at the moment and may not stay that way!)

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons learned so far is just being aware of my knitting output so I can slow down on input! Especially now that I’ve got a better sense of what kind of things I like to knit and wear I’m less likely to buy a bunch of random weights/amounts of yarn, but I still fall prey to the sock yarn clause. That works great when I’m knitting a lot of socks (and other fingering-weight items), but less so when I’m in a no-knitting funk!

I’m really pleased with my progress so far and I look forward to concluding the 2022 report at the end of December! If you’ve been participating in the challenge, let me know how it’s going in comments.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a link to the original post. It’s never too late to get hype about spreadsheets and data tracking!

Break even with your stash in 2022!

I’ll preface this by saying…I did not succeed at breaking even in 2021. That said, I’m keen to try again!

Here’s the overall concept: track your stash ins and outs from January 1 to December 31 and try to reach a net of zero.

I got this idea from the Knit Picks Stashdown (and more) group on Ravelry, which had a challenge in 2021 called “Even Stevens.” I didn’t think I could manage a dramatic stashdown, but at least aiming to have as much yarn going out as in appealed to me. Maybe it will appeal to you to!

What counts as “stash in”? Generally, any yarn you buy or receive as a gift would count. However, if you want to give yourself a freebie on your birthday or other special yarn-buying even, go ahead!

What counts as “stash out”? Any yarn worked into a finished object or given/sold to someone else. One thing I noticed in 2021 was that partial skeins caused some stress. For example, I bought 400g of fingering weight to knit a sweater. The finished sweater only used 360g, so even though I did good by knitting this stash, I still had a positive net of 40g. If that will frustrate you, then feel free to log finished objects as full skeins! Maybe by next year I’ll have thought up a separate challenge for scraps specifically…

Anyway, I’m planning to track my stash ins and outs again this year, and I thought you might like to try it too!

For my digital peeps, I made a spreadsheet you can save to your Google Drive. All you have to do is enter your ins as positive numbers and outs as negative numbers, and the spreadsheet will auto-calculate your progress.

For my paper planner fans, I’ve got a printable document - again you’ll track your ins as positive numbers and outs as negative numbers, but you have one extra step: calculating the running tally of stash.

Ready to start tracking your stash? Sign up for my newsletter and get both forms now! (Current subscribers - you should only get an email with the forms and not get duplicate emails of future newsletters, etc.)