Do You Stash?

Lately, I've been thinking about my project and stash pages on Ravelry. It's so hard to take a good finished object photo on your own; I see a lot of bathroom mirror photos or, in my case, spouse-taken photos that end up being more about my face than my fabric. It's one of the reasons I've wishlisted a dress form this year for Christmas.

Although, I'll admit, the dress form won't show fit as well as modeling will. Regardless, there are still decent photos of finished objects on Ravelry, and they tend to tell a story about the process, for those who  are interested in knitting the pattern. Look at my Raphaelite photos... They (kind of) tell a story about my journey through the pattern:

But what about old mister stash?

No one loves stash yarn. It's abused, rarely used, shoved in the back of your yarn storage, and forgotten when your local yarn store has a blowout sale on Cascade Eco Alpaca (drool). It's sad. I don't even have all of my meager stash cataloged, and I totally should. It's an awesome tool. You can see what yarn you own that would work with a current pattern, or look through your inventory without exposing your wool to potential moth invasions. You can see everything with the click of one button. I love it. If you link projects to a stashed yarn, Ravelry will deduct the amount that you claim you've used, and update your total yardage available. How cool is that? Why aren't we all using this more?!

Well, for one thing, you have to take all of these photos. I sat down one weekend and sort of photographed a few on my white table, with a white background I threw together:

But you could grab a few art store supplies and make your own lightbox, which would be way quicker and easier than trying to set up a bunch of sheets and things, and then going into photoshop to try to correct a bunch of miscolored images because you're an amateur and didn't correct your white balance for the setting sun... Oops, sorry, was I still talking?

We spend so much cash on our stash (see what I did there?) that it seems like a total shame to relegate it to boxes. I love good stash photos- they help me make decisions when project planning or preparing to purchase online.

And I'm not gonna lie- there's something absolutely gratifying about being able to look through all of my precioussss... 

- YX