Confessions of a yarnaholic

A couple of weeks ago I had an email from a magazine saying I had won some yarn from Rico. Lovely I thought, not really remembering entering a competition (I often just enter all the competitions in a magazine as winning stuff is always nice). When I got home I looked the competition up and found that I had won a one-sixth share of 4 miles of yarn (I did some maths, that's about 500g of DK), in one of the six colours shown. The yarn arrived last week, and while Rico's merino is divine (and hard wearing - I have used it a few times for baby things), the yarn was a smoky rose colour, which I was never going to use. I put the yarn in the cupboard, and it promptly fell out again.

The straw that broke the camel's back! Beautiful yarn, but not my colour

I own a lot of yarn. There is yarn in almost every room in the house (the bathroom and downstairs toilet are safe). I have sweater quantities, and boxes of odd skeins, acrylic and wool. About 2 years ago I went through all the yarn and stopped tallying up the mass when I got to 5 kg. Since then the yarn pile has not gone down, and is quite a lot bigger. I get a lot of yarn for magazine commissions, and I always end up over-buying when I am designing something, and there are always more projects in mind than time on the needles.

This morning something snapped and I decided that today was the day: some yarn has to leave the house. As I want the space quickly (before I lose the impetus) I have gone down the eBay route, and over ten lots I have listed just shy of 4 kg of yarn. 4 kg! And that was just the stuff that I didn't have to sort through or make big decisions about, just the stuff that was taking up space. There's plenty more that needs to go.

Over the next few weeks months I am going to be a bit more considered before buying more yarn (I don't need more sock yarn), and will hunt right to the back of the cupboards and see what is really there. eBay might be busy with yarn for a bit... it really is time to liberate the yarn.