Cataloguing My Stash

Well, here it is, the nineteenth instance of January, and I still haven't knit a stitch. Bad knitter! No doughnut new yarn! What I've been doing, instead, is cataloguing my yarn collection. I have over 25 bins of yarn, and have always been daunted by how much cataloguing that would take. But I need to do it, because I have absolutely no idea what I have in my stash. So I created a spread sheet, and I got to it with avengeance yesterday. I've catalogued three bins so far, with a plan to do a bin a day! My spread sheet headings are as follows:
Brand. . .Colourway. . .Actual Colour. . .Fibre. . .Weight. . .Skeins. . .Yards. . .Notes

I included Actual Colour because some of the Madeline Tosh colour designations, while creative, bear no relation to what they actually are. Witness Optic (white with black spots), Manor (green), Moorland (mossy green). The Neighborhood Fiber colour designations, named after neighbourhoods in the DC area are also unrevealing: Fells Point (emerald green), Georgetown (cobalt blue), or Truxten Circle (deep purple). While I love the Neighborhood yarns, I think these designations are even worse, because at least some of the Tosh designations give you an idea (Betty Draper's Blues, or Fluoro Pink). This means that I have to catalogue in a room where there is a good source of natural light, which is not easy to find in our house. Shotgun houses have windows on only one side because there is another domicile against your windowless wall. Of course, the houses are so close together that we keep the blinds closed all the time, so really, the only place where I have good natural light is the kitchen, where the internet doesn't reach, or the living room. I'm sure I'll manage.

I have long thought about cataloguing my collection, but was always put off by its shear size. It's only gotten larger since that first inkling that perhaps I needed to get my act together. So I've taken my own advice from my tutoring days: A thesis is a collection of related papers, each chapter representing a paper. If you can write a ten page paper, then you can write a five chapter thesis. So, my thinking goes, instead of looking at 15+ bins of yarn and thinking, "ONOES! I can't do this! It's too much yarn!" I am instead thinking, while I'm unemployed, I can do at least one bin a day, perhaps two. So I did three the first day, and when I get home from the library this afternoon, I'll do another one or two (because there are other chores like laundry that need to be done). So far, in the first three bins, I have a total of 193 skeins of yarn. I think the extent of my stash is going to surprise me.