Stashbusting.

There comes a time in every fibre addict`s life that she has to do a little sorting and tidying of the stash and equipment. Especially if-

(1) Fibre addict has bought two more spinning wheels in the last two months, thus bringing the total number of wheels in the house to four. (One less than the number of computers, but that`s another story.)

(2) A point has been reached where there is literally no room left in the designated stash storage areas for more stash.

(3) A major Stash Enhancement eXercise (S.E.X.) is scheduled for this weekend, at SkipNorth. Both availible space and finances need to be enhanced before this happens.

So....I`ve been tidying up. This is not a popular way for me to spend a day but it was made almost bearable by the fact that it was fibre related. I started by sorting out the yarn stash. I don`t know about anyone else but I have strata upon strata of stash yarn and right down at the bottom is the layer of odd balls, bad buys, yarn I bought because it was cheap in the sales etc etc. Yarn I know in my heart of hearts that I`ll never use. Out it all came and I sorted it into batches, took some photographs and bagged it up. I`m going to Ebay it. It`s not worth lots on a bag by bag basis but cumulatively it should yield a modest sum for the yarn fund. First though I`ve sent an email to my knitting partner and enabler Gourdongirl to see if she wants a ferret through the pile. (Come on, Shona... can`t you smell the free yarn???????)

I was actually appalled as to how much there was of this unwanted stuff. It fills two of these big blue Ikea bags.




I did gain a lot of space by doing this big a clear out though. I managed to empty a whole stash chest in the "studio" area and make a parking area for the spinning wheels.




Studio? Well, not really. I wish! I keep most of my books and equipment on shelves along one wall of my bedroom. With two kids and a floating population of their friends running around the house, it`s best to keep this sort of stuff out the way. So every morning I open my eyes to this area.




No, I haven`t tidied it up, sorry! Too much tidying up in one day is bad for you. And no, that`s not where all the stash is stored. Most of the fibre for spinning lives up in the attic apart from current use stuff and precious fibres. These live in the pull out drawer and two baskets on the left hand set of shelves. Current and precious yarns live in the two baskets and pull out drawer on the right. There is a tower of plastic lidded bins off to the left for batts, handspun and such, and a big chest of drawers out in the hall for the rest of my yarns. Books, spinning and knitting magazines and patterns live on the upper shelves above the work area, and other miscellaneous bits and pieces in boxes on the shelves above that. There is a desk area with lighting but most of the time my drum carder and scales live there. So though it all may look pretty chaotic, it`s organised chaos.

I`d really like a room of my own as a workshop. I used to have a room just for sewing when I lived in my mother`s big house and it was great. It`s not going to happen here until one of the kids leaves home though and I`m in no hurry to reach that day.