Fall Organizing

Everyone has heard of 'spring cleaning'. After a long winter shut up indoors, out come the cleaning supplies and everything gets a good scrubbing while the windows and doors are flung open to let in the fresh spring air. It's a ritual performed by households all over the northern part of the hemisphere, including my own and probably yours!

What I've just come to realize, though, is that for me there is a counterpart to the spring cleaning ritual - 'fall organizing'. Every year, as soon as that crispness hits the air, I begin to feel the need to get my life in order. Closets and cupboards get emptied, sorted and organized. The filing cabinet, with its myriad of paperwork, is given a once-over and reams of stuff is sent off to be shredded and recycled.

So far this year, all of my organizational zeal has been focused on my crafting stuff. With some wonderful results! I have now condensed and downsized the contents of 2 giant storage tubs into 1 giant storage tub. How, you may ask, was this miraculous feat accomplished?

To begin, I pulled out all of my scrap yarn - a rather sizeable collection of leftovers. I then channeled all my crafting energies into completeing a scrap yarn afghan that I have been working on for 5 years. It felt wonderful to finally have it done, but I still had a huge amount of scrap yarn to use up, so...

...I started working on another afghan - this one not quite as stylish, but definitely colourful! Right now I've used up about 90% of the scraps, so it's almost done.

I was also able to give away this afghan to some friends of ours who just got married this weekend. And I've made the commitment that I will not be buying any more yarn until I've used up the rest of my stash.

That being said, before I made that commitment, I had stopped by a local yarn store that's having an inventory sale for the month of August where if you pay cash, you get 10% off and they pay the tax. How could I not buy something? So I picked up a skein of Fleece Artist Sea Wool, which is going to make a lovely pair of Jaywalker socks. But not until I finish all my WIPs!