Buy yarn with a plan, or think it over first?

Dear users, dear designers,
When you buy yarn, do you already have a lovely project in mind? Or do you like to buy yarn even if you don’t yet know what you want to make with it? Or maybe both? Tell me about it. 

I go shopping when I need yarn for a specific project. Then I usually buy a lot more and end up with a stash at home.

But I actually already have ideas for what goes into my shopping cart. It’s just that new ideas keep popping up, and then I have to go shopping again because I’m sure I have the wrong color or type of yarn in my stash.

As I wrote above, it’s a vicious cycle 

When I have a specific project in mind, I shop specifically for it.

Most of the time, though, yarn ends up in my cart that I hadn’t planned on buying. Sometimes I then run into the problem of finding the right project for it, or I’m missing the right colors.
Then I have to go shopping again and...

But we all love giving yarn a new home, don’t we?

Sometimes I shop with a specific project in mind because the idea came before the yarn 😂
But most of the time, it’s the other way around. I see a yarn and an idea pops into my head.
And it often happens that I buy yarn simply because it catches my eye. Eventually, the right project for that yarn will come along.
😉
And after all, yarn is about wanting, not needing 😁

For me, it usually goes like this: I have an idea. Then I think about what yarn I’ll need for it—or what colors I’d like—and that’s what I buy.
Since my creative process almost always works this way, the color challenge was a bit of a challenge for me, since here the colors came first and then I had to come up with an idea to go with them.  
Very rarely do I see a specific type of yarn and then come up with an idea to go with it.
But I never buy yarn “just because” or “because it’s so pretty.” I have enough leftover yarn; I don’t need a yarn shop at home, especially since you can get almost anything online these days.  Back in the day, when you had to rely on the little local yarn shop, things were perhaps a little different. You couldn’t be sure whether they’d still have that “beautiful” yarn in a few months.

These days, I only buy yarn for specific projects. Sure, every now and then a skein ends up in my shopping cart on a whim. If it feels especially nice and has great colors, sometimes you just have to have it! But mostly, I’m still trying to work through my stash. I’ve donated some of it to charity (felting yarn for children’s slippers and sock yarn for projects for premature babies). 

I definitely buy yarn for specific projects, because you basically never have the right one on hand.
The green is a little too dark, and I might run out of the blue…

But that doesn’t stop me from buying a bunch of yarn on a whim, just because it’s pretty :D

Most of the yarn I’ve bought without a plan, though, I usually pass on after a few years because I just don’t know what to do with it... And because it’s too bad to have it lying around unused. 
Either my grandma gets it—she knits for a charity project—or it gets donated to those in need. (Usually along with crochet hooks, because I can never walk past them in the store either...)