The ever growing list and the yarn trap

I have a lot of yarn. A whole lot of yarn. According to my stash on Ravelry I have 84719 meters lying around the house. That’s about 33 kilos. Oh dear, that’s really a lot!
And still, still I never have what I need. You’re probably familiar with this issue?

I have the obnoxious habbit of using free hours by browsing through patterns. On Raverly or Pinterest or just through Google, whatever strikes my fancy. And more often of not I come across a pattern that immediately speaks to me. And then I head to my stash on Ravelry, looking if I have the yarn to make that appealing pattern. And then I discover, of course, that I do not have the yarn needed or I do have the yarn, but not enough. Because another obnoxious habbit of mine is to buy single skeins of yarn on impulse, just because it struck me. And that’s how I end up with boxes of yarn that I can never use.

And what do I do then?
Well, sometimes I’m a good girl and I just add the appealing pattern to my favourites, where it often gets forgotten, because I’ve found new appealing patterns.
But – you can guess what comes next? – more often than not I get seduced to buy more yarn. Not that this is such a bad thing, if I then proceed in using that yarn for the project which inspired its purchase, but unfortunately that doesn’t happen enough. Oh, yes, and I also seem incapable of buying only the yarn needed. I always buy more, most of the times because it gets me free shipping costs, when buying online.

Thursday was one of those occurrences.
The weather was bad, I had the day of and no plans, so I started up the computer. Just for a moment, I told myself, then I would crochet or knit some. But the moment became a couple of hours quick. A couple of hours that set me back 86 euros. *blushblush*
I’ll tell more about what triggered it later, once the order has arrived. Now I just want to elaborate on another good intention I cooked up to keep myself in check in the future.

As I said, when I like a pattern, I make it a favourite on Raverly. During the years, the number of patterns favourite has grown huge, which makes it difficult to see the wood for the trees.
The function queue is something I haven’t much used. And it is now using this function I hope to have a better control of myself 😉

The difference between QUEUE and FAVORITES is actually quite simple. The FAVORITES is where you store all the patterns you like. The QUEUE is where you store the patterns you actually have plans for.
Together with the patterns in the queue, you can store information about for whom you want to make the pattern, which size, which needle and – this ones important – which yarn. And if you keep track of your stash on Ravelry, you can even link the stashed yarn to the pattern you’ll use it for! Exactly what I need.

So now I’m working through my stash, seeing if I can remember the reason why I bought it, to then immediately link it to the pattern. Shamefully however, the gross majority of my stash were impulse buys. But also for that yarn I’m looking for a destination. I can’t keep them in boxes forever, can I?

At the moment I already have 16 patterns in queue and this number will most probably grow still, as I make my way through my stash. I need to remain realistic, however. The goal of this exercise is not to make a long queue, but to actually make the queued projects and hopefully deter me from buying more yarn!

And you? How do you resist buying yarn on impulse?
Or how do you keep your plans for yarns bought? Or is this only an issue for me and my lack of discipline?