Stash and simplicity (part one)

A friend asked me "do knitters have a stash?"  I laughed.  She is a former quilter who gave away her sewing machine and fabric stash when she was all quilted out.  Ravelry lets you browse what people have in their yarn stash.  The biggest stash on Ravelry lately was 1475 items, which is a lot of yarn.  It got me thinking.

I keep a pretty limited stash compared to that.  The whole thing is documented but not individually photographed.  It's mostly sock yarn.  I like knitting socks and I know how much yarn it takes.  I can't buy yarn without a project in mind, I did a bit of random yarn buying and destashed most of it.  There's some space in my yarn box now, and this is the yarn I have left:

A little escaped the box, like the Cascade 220 for Eris and the leftovers I'm keeping for a blanket, but this is probably 95% of the yarn in the house.  Handspun is on the far right.

I have a fibre stash too, also documented.  This lives in a smaller box in a different room and I really need an extra box, especially after that trip to the alpaca farm. I'm planning to get some more wool to spin at Maryland Sheep and Wool, but no fleeces.  If I had a fleece in the house, the cats would try to groom it.  Tangle already tries to groom our hair and it's not a pleasant experience for either party.  Apparently I have a thing for undyed fibres:

Some people call it a collection, some relate it to an artists paint, or a carpenter's wood.  I have a bead collection and some stamping equipment.  Hubby collects bits of paper with useful information on. When I went to university, my dad made me a jewellery box from rimu, a New Zealand hardwood he picked up when we lived there in the 1970s and carried around from house to house.  Everyone has the magpie instinct to some extent.  (Magpies are birds renowned for stealing shiny or sparkly things and putting them in their nests.)

Part two tomorrow, I'm still thinking.