Yarny Data Tables Galore

I do love a pivot table

We’re back with another post this week dedicated to all things pivot tables.

In case you didn’t know, a pivot table is a quick table function of Excel and Google Sheets. It allows you to easily aggregate and display information. Highly recommend learning how to do this.

Anyway! Since we already looked at the overall counts and ruminated on the 2023 project I thought a more fun (fun is subjective) to look at what makes up the cabinet. Who is in there, how did they get there, etc.

Spreadsheet layout

I don’t think I’ve talked about what are the columns in my spreadsheet. Let’s review:

• Brand

• Colorway name

• Self-striping (yes/no category)

• Weight

• Fiber

• Collection and Year Purchased (e.g., Spain 2023, Mush Club 2021, Fall 2020)

• Total Yardage

• Bought (count of total skeins acquired)

• Project intention (e.g., sweater, hat, colorwork)

• Pattern (if applicable)

• UniqueID (an ID column in case everything gets sorted in a weird way)

• Year Purchased (2019, etc.)

• Knit Up (yes, destashed, blank categories)

• Color Type (e.g., tonal, variegated, self-striping categories)

• Left (total count of skeins left

Recently I added the “left” column because I realized that I was losing how much I started with by only having one amount column. I have two separate columns for project type and pattern because I wanted to be able to create a table to track what are the kinds of projects I’m intending to make vs. a specific pattern.

Yarn Sources

Similar to the beginning of this year, EKF dominates the cabinet. What can I say, I love Ali’s color vision. It aligns with mine almost all of the time.

Mystery brand, it is just that. I don’t know what it is. The label fell off.

Yarn Info

All of the little tables about the yarns.

With color type, the self-striping category is a bit deceiving because most of those are 50g skeins so it is really more than 9.5 but we have to be consistent or it will all be chaos. I think it is interesting that the total is almost exactly half tonal and half variegated. Over time, I’ve shifted more towards tonal and away from the multi-colored skeins. The split likely reflects the change in buying habits and what was already built up over time.

But wait we can make a table for that!

So as we can see there was a clear flip of tonal yarns vs. variegated yarns this year. While variegated had been the highest category we can see that tonal slowly crept up/kept pace. Until 2023. The year I started to be more intentional about purchasing.

*note the sum left won’t match the totals for the sum bought from last week since they are different data points

Yarn weight says a lot. It says that I am a sock knitter. It says that I live in a warmer climate and lived under the false pretense that I would knit a ton of fingering weight sweaters. It says that I am slowly turning towards the land of DK and worsted weight sweaters.

Project intention. Well obviously I plan to knit a lot of sweaters. If we assume that each sweater is about 4 skeins worth of yarn that would be 24 sweaters. Wowzers.

maybe I should move somewhere colder?

There are skeins that I don’t know what the intention is. Overtime this may be the place to assess if that yarn should stay in the cabinet or move on to a new home. If I can’t tell you what it is for then do I need to keep it?

Wrap Up

Again I’m left with the feeling of “someone is going to be mean to me about this.” But I think I would lose my title as “data person” if I let data scare me.

The tables give a lot of opportunity to draw inferences. Unlike when working with aggregated data at work, I can make more conclusions since I am the subject. I can see that I tend to be consistent with the dyers and yarn brands that I like and will return to them over and over again. I’m in general a consistent buyer of yarn. We can see that I’ve favored certain weights and certain project types. In a way this is a good thing because there is a lot of opportunity to use the yarn that is already there without having to add more.

Diversifying yarn brands is something I want to be more mindful of next year. I also want to spend a little less time in hand-dyed yarn land. The sweaters I have from larger mills are the ones I’m finding myself wearing over and over again. Don’t get me wrong. I still wear my other sweaters a lot too. But I love the base variety that you get from different mills/brands like Harrisville Designs, Ampersands Fibers, Hudson & West, etc.

I hope you found this interesting and maybe felt a little inspired to take a look at your collection to see what stands out to you.

This is the last post of the year but we’ll be back here again next week!