The Purge

You can feel the season start to change. It's cooler. The leaves on the trees are looking dull, and many that were scorched by summer's heat and drought are already on the ground. There's an urge to prepare, to clean, to focus one's energy for the next shift.

This weekend, my cleaning energies fell on my yarn room. There were books strewn about, left behind as inspiration failed, that needed to be sorted and tidied. Many needles were caught mid-way in a project, abandoned as troubles slowed me down. These I liberated, leaving the project at loose ends, and sized them up to be slotted into their proper place. But the yarn.. ah, what to do about the yarn.

Earlier I had purchased a book, Knitting Plus, in hopes of learning how better to make myself sweaters that fit. I've learned a lot from it already and I'm eager to try out the patterns. Many are very simple, making good templates, and I think I could learn a lot from working them. Others have wonderful cables or pretty lace details that appeal to me.

In looking through my yarn stash though, I realized that I don't have the yarns to make these sweaters. My stash has overflowed its containment, and yet so much of it I don't want to knit with. So I purged.  I pulled it all out, bagged it up and called a friend. She's a mom, in school and on a budget. We were recently talking and she said she couldn't go to the KW Knitter's Fair this year. So I invited her over to shop my stash. The price was right (free) so she took it all.

Gosh it felt good to purge it! I feel so much lighter and now I can buy the yarn I need to make the sweater I want with no guilt about what's already at home.

And you should see how much tidier my yarn room looks.

ETA: Re-reading this, I realize it sounds as if I gave everything away. Well I didn't. Just the yarns that were holding me back. Several sweater's worth of yarns that I bought on sale that I can't find a pattern for. Much yarn is still left in the stash, mostly sock yarn, but there's some laceweight and sport weight and beloved odd balls and of course the Rowan for which I am now searching for a pattern.