A curmudgeonly yarn

    Okay, we have cell phones with processors more powerful than the computers that put the Apollo astronauts on the moon. We can call and text each other from almost anywhere on the planet. A cell phone means that we are never without a camera. So many innovations to make our lives more convenient. Why then is it that no one seems to have figured out a good way to package yarn so that you can retrieve the correct end easily?

    I have wondered this for many years and now I’m just old and crusty enough to complain about it. I’ve recently gone back to crocheting. I did a lot of it in my early 20’s when I spent hours upon hours in the relative darkness backstage listening to string quartets. There are worse ways to spend time but I found the time passed more enjoyably if my hands were busy. I crocheted afghans and scarves mostly. Then I lost interest and gave away all the crochet hooks.

    In retirement a friend took up crocheting and I was reminded of how I really did like it so, I bought a bunch of new crochet hooks and yarn. This time I crocheted slippers, messenger bags and toques using various weights of yarn and different patterns. It was fun and I gave away a lot of what I made. Then I put the yarn and hooks in a box and stuffed them away in the cupboard until a few months ago.

    There was a call from our church for prayer shawls. I’ve made them before, both knitted and crocheted. I had the hooks and the yarn so why not. I dug the stuff out again. Much of the yarn I had I rerolled into balls instead of working it from the skeins. My method of working is pretty simple: toss the ball or skein I’m working from into a shoe box. Put the shoebox on the floor beside my chair and have at it. When the skein gets down close to the end I often roll it into a ball because it is easier to keep together that way.

    Makers of the skeins chirpily tell you that to start a project you reach inside the skein and pull on the interior end. That way your yarn will come out smoothly and it won’t flip the skein around as you’re working with it. It’s a great theory. The problem is when I reach in, all I feel is a jumble of yarn. So I try it from the opposite opening in the skein. Still nothing. I stick fingers from both sides into the skein and root around some more.

    Eventually I get frustrated, grasp what I hope will be a clump near the end and pull. The yarn comes out politely for about a foot and then gets caught. Too late to back out now so I give it a good yank. Nothing. I yank it again and out comes what I can only describe as the yarn equivalent of a hairball. Now I have two blobs of muddled up yarn: the shell of the original skein and the guts that came from the inside. Not an end in sight.

 
    I start gently picking away at the guts, tossing them lightly and trying to get my fingers into the spaces to untangle the mess. No perceptible progress and if I start passing the blob over and under strands of yarn I’ll never get it untangled. I put it down and look at the husk of the skein. As I turn it over I see an end! This is where I’ll have to start. I grab the end and start to wind it into a ball. Eventually that part of the skein has become a ball and as I change from the husk to the guts. the yarn seems to be unravelling smoothly. Keep winding!
  

 Too good to be true. There’s a clump. I tuck the ball into my armpit so it won’t go rolling across the floor as I try to deal with the clump. It’s not a very big one and after a bit of teasing apart with my fingers it droops into a single strand. I keep rolling. There are a few more clumps but nothing that tempts me to just cut it out and knot the pieces back together. That really is a last resort.

    Now after all that fuss I can finally start to crochet the project. I’d like to report that this tussle with the yarn is an anomaly, but it happens more often than not. Sometimes I think any sane person would just rewind the yarn into a ball starting from the outside but somehow, that would be giving up and as I approach each new skein of yarn I hope this will be the one that will present the magical end to my probing fingers.

    In the meantime, I put the ball into the shoe box so it won’t run all over the floor, make a loop, take up my hook and begin to crochet. Surely the actual project will be easier than trying to find the end of the yarn.

The Advantages of Being a Pack Rat

I've been watching the tiny house movement in fascination for a while now.  The spaces are so clean, so uncluttered, so well thought-out. It's an enticing vision. Just as with the fantasy of living in a wilderness cabin and being entirely self-sufficient there are huge practical drawbacks, particularly for a self-confessed pack rat like me. I like to own cool stuff and  I like to own stuff that may be useful someday. I know that's a psychological trap and I'm hoping that knowledge will keep me from stepping over the hoarding line. The videos of tiny houses have got me doing a lot of thinking about what I keep and why I keep it.

When I was in my 20's I did a lot of crocheting. I have numerous afghans around the house, some on display, some not. I was living in a small apartment at the time and didn't have a lot of room or a lot of time for other crafts.  Crocheting didn't take up much space and it was portable. Because I mainly worked with squares sewn together, I didn't have to worry about lugging a huge blanket around. I loved the colours and textures of the yarn. When I started to teach I moved on to other interests and the crochet hooks went into storage.

When my mother moved out of her house we found good homes for most of her sewing, knitting and crocheting tools. I figured I was never going to use them.  A few years ago I got interested in making prayer shawls and I replaced the crochet hooks we had given away. After a few shawls I put the crocheting away for a while until, trawling in Michaels, I saw a book about how to crochet socks. The socks were colourful and funky so I bought the book and some yarn. I bit off more than I could chew by starting with a fairly complex pattern. That sock sat unfinished for probably six years when I stalled because I simply could not make sense of the instructions. I loved the colours and tried a few times to pick it up only to give up in frustration.

A few weeks ago I was again bitten by the crochet bug after eyeing the lovely colourful yarn in a bag in the corner of my study. I dug out the hooks, the patterns and the half finished sock. I spent hours on YouTube looking at tutorials and patterns. I pulled the sock down so I could reuse the yarn and then I went a little crazy. In the last three weeks I have completed 6 hats, a scarf and a pair of slippers. I thought of giving away my crochet supplies when I realized I wouldn't finish the socks and I'm very glad I didn't. I'm thoroughly enjoying the satisfaction of making warm, wooly things and this time around,  I'm seeing  more than a series of stitches: I'm beginning to see principles behind the patterns.

Warm wooly things are not the only reasons I'm glad I've kept stuff. The slippers I finished last night are very bulky and very cozy. The ridges from the stitches are a bit hard on my bare feet so I searched for a way to make them more comfortable. I always take out the footbeds that come in runners and and replace them with stouter custom versions. I've thrown out a lot of the footbeds but I decided to take a look in a dark corner of the entry closet to see if I might have missed one or two pair. I had!

A quick tracing around my foot with a pen and my new slippers are now wonderfully comfy and squishy on the bottom. Next I'm investigating ways to make the bottom less slippery. I don't feel like I'm slipping when I wear them but I'm now technically a 'senior' and I'm aware of the warnings about falling. I suppose hardwood floors and slippery socks aren't the smartest combination. I think I'll try cutting an outer sole of the rubber mat used to line shelves. It may not stand up well but I happen to have some left over from lining the shelves in the van so it will cost me nothing to try it.

Part of why I keep things is the absolute joy I get when I discover that I already have something that is perfect for a project. I feel smart and smug and excited all at the same time. In every case I could buy something that would serve the purpose and, in most cases, it wouldn't be very expensive so it isn't about saving money.  Maybe it goes back to the fantasy of the wilderness cabin and being self sufficient. Maybe it's a childlike delight in what I've managed to do or maybe it's the excitement of receiving a gift that, at that very moment, is my heart's desire.

I struggle with what to keep and what to toss. I can't keep it all and I have learned that I tend to return to interests after long periods away.  When the bug of an old interest bites it's wonderful to be able to pull the tools out of storage and jump back in. I tend to let scrap wood in the shop accumulate until it drives me crazy and then I purge it. I do the same around the house. Sometimes I get rid of stuff I wish I had kept but sometimes I find exactly the right item and that is a highlight of my day. In this increasingly chaotic world we need every spark of delight we can get.

My next project is a shoulder bag. I already have the dimensions, the yarn and a YouTube video to follow so the yarn and the hooks won't be going back into storage for a while yet. I'm thinking of making a wooden button to close it.