[Fleecewife]

Being inspired to start spring cleaning, I am looking despondently at my stash.  This consists of dozens of fleeces, some dating back to when my husband had a major illness 7 years ago and all I could do was hang the fleeces in bags in the barn (those of you who have been here probably banged your heads on them  ).  I also have loads of washed fleeces which just need to be worked on and a fair amount of carded fleece, ditto.  I have dyed yarn from the days I spent experimenting with different dyeing methods (mostly in single 100gm balls), I have knitted items which were intended for sale but have probably gone out of fashion, I have large cones of yarn from New Lanark Mill which I got for dyeing practice, and I have similar cones which I had spun up for me by Halifax Mill last year - well 2011.  Some of the Halifax yarn is for warp (Hebridean), some is for knitting (first shear Hebridean plus 15% alpaca - all my best fleeces from that year went into that spin run).  There's a 3' cube sized box of Halifax yarn; I am working my way through the knitting yarn, but very slowly.....   I also have hanks of yarn I've spun over the years but it hasn't been enough to make anything - I always intend to knit squares then sew them together for a granny knee rug  .  There are also some knitting projects which didn't get off the ground but are still on needles.
 
We live in a small cottage and my OH is beginning to find my stash is really getting him down - it's getting me down a bit too.   So where on earth do I start with sorting it?  It's too cold and damp at the moment to sort the fleeces in the barn, but I could make a start indoors.  I need a dry stretch for the barn fleeces as I think many of them will go on the bonfire - this is anathema to me but I am trying to be realistic.  It's only 5 months til shearing time 
 
Does anyone else have too big a stash?  How do you decide what you will be able to use and what is just wishful thinking?

[jaykay]

There is acronym on Ravelry 'SABLE' - Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy', ie you've got more fleece and yarn than one person could ever hope to work through. Sounds like you might have a case 

Yeh, any sort of clutter gets me down in the end (not that you'd know it, seeing my place  ), even valuable wool clutter.

You could certainly sell some of the dyed and handspun yarn - folk fetch reasonable money having an Etsy shop and drawing attention to it on Ravelry UK Classified.

You could also offer the fleeces, but I think you're probably right that some of them will need to become compost/basket filling/strawberry mulch....maybe you could offer them on Freecycle for such uses. Burning them just takes so long! If not, I'd be inclined to bag them up and take them to your nearest tip - again, because burning takes ages and relies on a dry day, so doesn't get things moving.

If you can think of it as making way for this year's fresh new fleeces maybe it won't feel as bad 

Gotta get that loom going again, it seems to me weaving is an excellent stashbuster 

[Lesley Silvester]

That's what inspired me to take it up again.  I was given boxes of coned wool by the widower of a woman who was heavily into machine knittine.  She had a room lined with shelves on three walls.  The long wall and one short wall each had three shelves of cones.  I took all the four ply and thicker but I'm never going to knit it all.

[Fleecewife]

STASH ACCUMULATION BEYOND LIFE EXPECTANCY - that is exactly it jaykay    I love it      I'm also delighted it's a known diagnosis 
 
I suppose I should start selling stuff - we need the money now so wastage is..well...wasteful and I am of the age where nothing was wasted.  I do struggle with the values of today's throwaway society.
 
The fleeces are not really suitable for sale.  I do sell fleece, but only straight after shearing when it's new and delicious.  I keep the best fleeces for me and to sell, so what is stored is mainly intended for floor rugs.  I have decided to convert our granny flat into a workroom, so I can set up at least the 4 shaft loom, although I would like to bring the Dryad floor standing rug loom in there too.  This is the trouble though - these things will happen, but even if all the fleece I have was woven into rugs, it will take slow old me forever to do it.
 
MGM - I want to avoid that too - my DiLs having to go through the stash and decide what to do with it.  Knowing them they would just burn it anyway or send even the good stuff to the tip, so I want to get it sorted first ie before I'm dead.  We are going through other stuff too, labelling what is important or valuable so they don't just chuck the lot.
 
Clearly I must get the looms working     Although - I knew one person who had one of those huge looms which take up half a room (and her room was a specially built extension).  She spent most of her time working on it, but the rest of the room was full of beautifully made rugs, scarves and so on, just sitting on shelves, so her weaving was ultimately pointless. The moral of that tale is that I must get into selling.  My OH has started selling loads of stuff from his workshop, which is his version of jaykay's SABLE, so we are hopefully developing a climate of 'if we can't use it, sell it' 

[jaykay]

I think William Morris's "Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful" is a good thing to aim for, useful in this instance being qualified by 'in this lifetime' 

I shall keep aiming for it!

[Ina]

useful in this instance being qualified by 'in this lifetime' 

Yeah - but who knows how long my lifetime is going to be? 

[jaykay]

Ok, we're allowed to work on 120, to give a good margin for error 

[Lesley Silvester]

If you are selling any of it, let us know.  I don't often go on market place so a note on this thread would be useful as well.

[HappyHippy]

If you do decide to sell any of it Fleecewife, could you keep some carded fleece aside for me please ?  I'm looking espeically for some white/cream/light coloured stuff, but all will be usefull 
Says she who has a whole fleece waiting to be washed and worked on  ............sometime 

[SmallTimeSmallholder]

FW, I have been given some raw fleeces, such as you describe, by a very kind lady to help me get up and running and start spinning. They're not the best, top quality fleeces ever (which might be why I'm not afraid to wash them in the washing machine) but they are loved, by me as they are my very first attempts.
Surely if you can find someone who will appreciate them then they won't be wasted?! 

[goosepimple]

I love throwing things out, some of which I have regretted in my time, but then I forget about them again.
 
If you are going to bonfire them, isn't it worth using as insulation for something (chicken house etc?) or keeping plants in pots cosy through the winter?  Or is that just shifting stuff from one place to another and not really clearing them out.

[Brucklay]

Long ago I used to sew fleece hats before fleece material was common place here - as a ski coach I worked abroad a lot and would always buy fleece material to bring home - I still have a very large trunk full which I can't bare to part with as I still remember how exited I was when I bought it!!


Guess. I'm sorted if a goat needs a coat!!

[Lesley Silvester]

Or if you need one.

[Dans]

You could probably make some good money selling rugs from the fleeces that are no good for spinning.

My stash is not so bad but I have put myself on a buying ban until I work through more of it!

Good luck!

Dans

[Fleecewife]

I've been on a buying ban for years    - well, almost as I did buy some BFL tops.   But the sheep keep on growing their fleeces    and I can't keep up.
 
I'm beginning to feel well enough to start some weaving once I get the looms set up, so probably I will start with some made from unspun fleece, a bit like a pegloom would produce.  Warping up will be a laugh as I haven't done it for a few years, so Utube will have to be consulted.  Whatever did we do before Utube?
I think that once I start on going through the fleece stash I will have a better idea of the scale of the problem.   I will start in the barn first so OH gets some space and because those fleeces are most likely to be damp and useless.
 
I do use some fleece around the place, for hanging baskets, keeping the compost heap cosy, holding the stones in place in potholes and so on, but mostly we want to have a spring cleaning blitz.
 
Happy Hippy - I think I will be hanging on to anything I have already invested time and effort in, so carded fleece will be either spun or used in the floor rugs.  Also, my sheep are black so I don't have much paler coloured stuff.  Sorry     What are you going to be making?