Why Destashing Is Stressful!

I’ve figured out why I don’t like to de-stash. For one thing, it involves using yarns that have outlived their “O.M.G I Need To Knit With This Right Now”-full ness.

But, I think mainly, it’s like using up an emergency cache of batteries, or the last Q-tip, your last dollar in your checking accout, or even the last piece of chocolate. What if you need it later. What if you find the perfect pattern and you know you have the perfect yarn and just can’t find it, because you’ve already used it, but it was already eliminated from your memory banks because it was stashed? What if??

“As if” is more like it. I can remember stuff that isn’t life threatening. It’s stuff that I need to use everyday (like the fact that I rode my motorcycle to the grocery store, and am wandering around in the parking lot with a cart full of groceries looking for my truck, ask me about “creative bungie-ing”) that I can’t seem to keep track of. I remember full well that I have 397 different colors of green in my stash (I went through a really weird “green” phase), but I can’t remember that the really cool new knitting clutch that I want to try out is green. “Where are my keys”? That one’s not even in the ballpark.

So, back to stashing. Stashing is kind of like a life force all it’s own. You save it up for a rainy day, and then when the rainy day hits, you’re all good. De-stashing is like spending. I suppose some might find it gratifying to finally find a use for all of those greens, I stress over it. Yeah, it saves me money, but what if, in the end, I end up spending more because I’ve already used the stuff I spent money on the first place to save money?

It’s very stressful!

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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