Oh, good heavens. I found out that I didn't publish the post below to this blog, and it's been SEVEN MONTHS since I wrote it. Sheesh. Which all goes to show how much I do on this blog. However, I will post it now, because I really have been working on this resolution. More on that later, I promise.
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As usual, I'm late with any kind of Christmasy messages, forget about Christmas letters. I had a letter started and was two-thirds of the way through, and then life intervened. Well, with the Alien Child and his lovely wife (yes, he got married this year!) off to be with her family, my husband and I decided we'd have a quiet holiday just by ourselves and my mom. Surely I'd get through the Christmas letter and send it off.
Well, you know how it is. We found out that some college friends of ours weren't going to go see their family down in California after all, and then of course there's their grown-up son who is friends-like-brothers with the Alien Child, and we thought why not invite them to our quiet evening? And then we found that my brother-in-law and his wife were going to meet up with those friends, and just to make it all convenient for everyone's schedule, we invited them, too.
So instead of a couple of turkey breast slices, salad, and stollen bread, we ended up with a whole turkey, spiral-sliced ham, pumpkin and pecan pies (good thing I had already made the pie crust and put them in the freezer for future use), the whole works. It was the Christmas that Grew.
And that is a perfectly good and happy thing to happen, but it means the intended Christmas letter (and Christmas cards) did not get done. Clearly, I need to schedule and organize these things better. In fact, I need to organize more than Christmas better.
I did decide on a New Year's resolution, however: to organize, and then reduce my yarn stash to at least 10 percent of what it is now before I buy more.
Don't laugh. This is a serious endeavor. I knew I had quite a lot of yarn (as well as spinning fiber), but not really how much, as quite a bit of it is stashed here and there in the house, somewhat in the manner of a squirrel stashing nuts in the forest. I also realized a while ago that I tend to buy yarn according to color first for a project, and then by type of fiber. So, the logical thing to do was to gather all my yarn together and sort them out and store them according to color.
Dear heaven. I seriously did not realize how much yarn I actually had. I was on the brink of turning into one of those hoarder people on reality TV. In fact, last night while I was in my computer room, I suddenly remembered I had some yarn stashed away in some drawers there, too, which I hadn’t looked at for probably years. Luckily, I always put bags of lavender throughout a container whenever I have yarn in it, so they’re fine. But for the first time last night, I had a feeling of...dread, thinking of the fact that there might be even more yarn stashed away elsewhere that I had forgotten about.
I had turned into a Yarn Squirrel. This is not good.
I was not taking out skeins to enjoy the look, feel, and texture. That would have been a useful thing to do, a way of de-stressing without having to resort to medication. I had put them away, but not to take out and make things for others or even myself, which not only would have been calming, but a happy, bountiful thing to do. No, I had turned into someone who squirrels away yarn for the sake of squirrelling away yarn.
I had a dim realization that I had a very large stash of yarn before Christmas, and needed to do something about it, and to that end I made a resolution to reduce it. To ensure committment to this goal, I knit a bunch of items for my church's Holiday Fair. I even gave out coupons to some coworkers with a list of small, quick-to-knit items on them (scarves, hats, fingerless gloves, etc.) for Christmas, thinking this would surely reduce my stash to the desired 10 percent.
After having organized for half a day and two evenings, I found that I had way more than I had thought. Way, way more. Knitting these goodies for friends and coworkers would make only a small dent in the mounds of yarn I have.
I have already given away yarn to (and made hats for) charity and to friends who knit. But I am reluctant to give away the very, very, very nice stuff that I have accumulated over the years. It's stuff that would cost a mint these days, stuff that I bought when the price was a pittance years ago. There is nothing for it but I must knit them.
Good thing my family now includes a daughter-in-law and her family. I now have a wider group of people to knit for.
So, first up: a long scarf made of Lang Colori superwash wool yarn, fingering weight, in a gradient dark taupe/beige color for my dear hubby. I bought this yarn while we were living in Germany. The design is very simple: stockinette stitch to show off the gradient color, with garter stitch edging to keep it from curling, and with fringes at each end.
Second in line, a pair of fingerless gloves in a soft merino wool, taupe, DK or worsted weight, for a coworker. This will have a lace design on the back of the hands, possibly with buttons at the wrist. I already have buttons I need to use.
I have a list of knitting projects now. I guess I'll see how far through this stash I get. Yeow.
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