Dread...
I used to have a super tidy loom room and a very clean house. After I quit my full time office job in 2000, I was cleaning my house throughly twice a week, and wondering why I hadn't enough time to weave. Wise Mama said, "You can clean, or you can weave," so I chose weaving, but even then the inside of the house was pretty clean.
When I went home in 2005 I helped Mom reorganize her stash. Shall I just say, she grew up in a big family during and after the war, so she tends to buy "a few extra", just in case? As usual she wanted to give away a lot, and there was a good deal of silk and her hand-spun/hand-dyed wool, so I inherited these. It didn't seem much in her three big stash/design/studio spaces.
Since I came home that January, I've had our flat screen TV box full of silks in the corner of my stash (ex-loom) room, and a substantially larger box of someone else's flat screen TV in the middle of the floor. And because I stick to weaving yarns I know well, I kept buying 110/2 merino and possum/merino/silk mix cones, which have sat/sit on top of the boxes and the dresser and sometimes on the floor. More recently, I've accumulated cottons and cashmeres, which can't possibly fit in my stash room, so they've lived on one of the loom benches and in drawers in the basement, meaning, I don't have to step into my messy stash room to weave with these babies.
Prior to taking up weaving, I had a nice stash of embroidery and sewing projects. I also inherited some of my step-grandmother's kimonos, which have sat in drawers in the stash room. I used to take them to the local Polytech to show them to Costume Design students, but they haven't seen the light of day until about a month ago, when Claudia the Fashion Designer wanted to see them. Everything on the floor got pushed to one side so I could get to the drawers. Then, Heather the Steiner Teacher wanted to take up weaving, so I lent her my rigid heddle and we went through the chunkier wools to see if there were yarns she can have. Then, Nancy went through my sliver and fabric stash a week to see if she could unload some. I keep pulling books off the bookshelves thinking I need them "today" and I haven't returned them to the proper shelves. And then there are the signs and bags and posters I made for exhibitions and the Expo and the market. I'm also accumulating a bit of drawing material.
I did a good job pretending I'm tidy in 2006. Lately I wonder if I need the kind of tidy-uppers Oprah and Dr Phil provide. I keep telling Beloved I'm not a hoarder, but I'd like to keep all my weaving options open. Ha! Though if you live in a small place like Nelson, that's not entirely a fib.
I said this last year, but I'm saying it again: I won't buy any more yarns in the foreseeable future, (*special projects exempted) and this summer (Christmas) I hope to tidy and reorganize my stash room to make it a descent design space.
At least that's the plan.
My precious 20/2 cottons (Their beautiful cousins, 60/2s, are upstairs.)
My precious cashmeresOh, you really didn't think I'd show you my unholy mess, did you?
4 comments:
So every project is going to become a special project.....????!!!!!
Oh, ha ha ha, Peg! You're right, essentially. Hadn't looked at it that way!
If I get my passport settled, I'll come down there and help you fix your space, then again we may never make it passed the loom room, LOL. But really Meg if you start in one area at a time and break it down job by job then you get pretty organized quickly, then you can sit and admire all your stash.
Deep End, well, while I totally agree with you, a) there's an emotional unwillingness on my part to part with any yarn or book at this point, b) the physical impossibility of fitting the amount of yarn I have into the room I store them in, and really, c) I can't get into the stash room just now because of the amount of stuff on the floor!
Besides, it's too cold today, so I'll wait until summer. See how many excuses I can come up with? But, no, you won't get through the looms, I know.
Post a Comment