Blog Tracker
14-05-2020, 06:45
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (https://boakandbailey.com/2020/05/on-stash-busting-beer/)
For the past few years I’ve made a serious effort to put a dent in my stash. My stash of yarn.I’m a keen knitter, an occasional crocheter and a spinning dilettante and like a lot of crafters, I went through an initial stage of buying a lot of yarn.*
#While I never quite hit SABLE (Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy) at one point I definitely had enough to see me through five years, and I was still buying more.
We don’t really hoard beer, and we do it even less since moving to Bristol. This is partly because we drank all of our stash prior to the move from Cornwall, and also because in Bristol, until lockdown began, we had access to an enormous range of beer in pubs and just didn’t feel the need to carry high stocks at home.*
However, we have had special bottles that feel too precious to drink, or for which it never felt like the right time.
So there are some parallels with the approach to yarn – specifically that sense of not wanting to knit/drink what you have, because it’s either not exactly what you want, or because it’s too precious to use up.
Yarn, like beer, might be a limited edition – you may never be able to get that exact same colour/recipe again.
Of course, in some ways stash-busting yarn and beer are very different.
Once you’ve drunk a beer, it’s gone, whereas the yarn lives on in what you knit from it.
And some beers might improve with age (we’ve written more about that here (https://boakandbailey.com/2016/04/questions-answers-how-long-do-vintage-beers-keep/)) whereas yarn will not.*
I joined a couple of groups on Ravelry, the social website for knitters, that are specifically focused on helping people use up their yarn stash. It works by setting challenges which you opt in to depending on which approaches suit you best.
The hardcore go for ‘cold sheeping’, which is all about measuring the amount of time since your last yarn purchase. More successful in my case have been challenges focused on using up a certain yardage in a certain time, or setting yourself a three-out, one-in limit* – play with the toys you’ve got before you buy a new one.
My favourite is a challenge where you designate some specific items of stash that need to be used by the end of the year or you have to give them away. This also works really well for books – you know, the ones you’re definitely going to get round to reading some day, but which just clutter the house for decades on end.
And this can definitely also apply to beer, given that most of it doesn’t age especially well.*
Some of the mantras apply to both, too. “Shop the stash!”; “You can always buy more when you’ve used what you’ve got!”; “You can’t take it with you!”
Next time: why indie dyers are like small craft beer producers.
On stash-busting in beer, yarn and books (https://boakandbailey.com/2020/05/on-stash-busting-beer/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2020/05/on-stash-busting-beer/)
For the past few years I’ve made a serious effort to put a dent in my stash. My stash of yarn.I’m a keen knitter, an occasional crocheter and a spinning dilettante and like a lot of crafters, I went through an initial stage of buying a lot of yarn.*
#While I never quite hit SABLE (Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy) at one point I definitely had enough to see me through five years, and I was still buying more.
We don’t really hoard beer, and we do it even less since moving to Bristol. This is partly because we drank all of our stash prior to the move from Cornwall, and also because in Bristol, until lockdown began, we had access to an enormous range of beer in pubs and just didn’t feel the need to carry high stocks at home.*
However, we have had special bottles that feel too precious to drink, or for which it never felt like the right time.
So there are some parallels with the approach to yarn – specifically that sense of not wanting to knit/drink what you have, because it’s either not exactly what you want, or because it’s too precious to use up.
Yarn, like beer, might be a limited edition – you may never be able to get that exact same colour/recipe again.
Of course, in some ways stash-busting yarn and beer are very different.
Once you’ve drunk a beer, it’s gone, whereas the yarn lives on in what you knit from it.
And some beers might improve with age (we’ve written more about that here (https://boakandbailey.com/2016/04/questions-answers-how-long-do-vintage-beers-keep/)) whereas yarn will not.*
I joined a couple of groups on Ravelry, the social website for knitters, that are specifically focused on helping people use up their yarn stash. It works by setting challenges which you opt in to depending on which approaches suit you best.
The hardcore go for ‘cold sheeping’, which is all about measuring the amount of time since your last yarn purchase. More successful in my case have been challenges focused on using up a certain yardage in a certain time, or setting yourself a three-out, one-in limit* – play with the toys you’ve got before you buy a new one.
My favourite is a challenge where you designate some specific items of stash that need to be used by the end of the year or you have to give them away. This also works really well for books – you know, the ones you’re definitely going to get round to reading some day, but which just clutter the house for decades on end.
And this can definitely also apply to beer, given that most of it doesn’t age especially well.*
Some of the mantras apply to both, too. “Shop the stash!”; “You can always buy more when you’ve used what you’ve got!”; “You can’t take it with you!”
Next time: why indie dyers are like small craft beer producers.
On stash-busting in beer, yarn and books (https://boakandbailey.com/2020/05/on-stash-busting-beer/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)
More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2020/05/on-stash-busting-beer/)