Finally!

I had no intentions of letting this blog go blank for over three months. For the most part I blame Christmas. I spent the better part of those three months making Christmas ornaments for my very large family and "famdamily," none of which I could show. It was great fun, but it meant I worked on nothing else, and I didn't even remember to take pictures so I could show them later. I may have to make another set just so I can show you what I did. 

Anyway, Christmas is now over, and I've mostly settled into the winter routine. Most of the debris of the holidays has been put away, the dining room table is empty - at least at the moment - and I've gotten back into the rhythm of sewing every morning. I have a new list of knitting and crocheting UFO's. And the bed in the yarn room is piled with yarn that has to somehow fit into a drawer or bin because I need that surface to do some blocking. 

Crafters like to find ways to keep track of the things they make. Some take pictures, some make lists - I save ball bands. Not forever because that would be crazy. Just for a year. My dad's old lunchbox sits in the corner, and one day I started putting ball bands in it. At the end of the year I dumped them out and had a good time looking at them and remembering the projects. So now it's a thing. Every January I dump out the lunch box and look at the ball bands, then throw them out and start over. It's just this side of crazy - but far enough this side that I'm happy. 

Yesterday was the day. I got the dining room table cleared off and dumped the lunch box. 

Most of it was inexpensive yarn. At least it seemed that way. I think there is an inverse correlation between the price of the yarn and the size of the ball band. Red Heart has large ones that cover almost the whole skein. Alpaca has a very small one so you can pet the yarn more easily. 

I'm always both amazed and appalled when I look at the pile. It seems huge when it's in the lunch box; the box would hardly close by December. Then I dump it out on the table and it seems like nothing at all. 

Hardly took up the middle of the table. And even though I remind myself that not all the yarn I work with even comes with a ball band, so this represents maybe 2/3 of the yarn I actually used, I also am aware of how much yarn is still piled on the bed in the yarn room. 

So I slog forward, one stitch at a time. My friend and I play a game with each other every morning. We each have a list of UFO's. Not the list of all our UFO's - that would be too scary to contemplate in the middle of the day, let alone before coffee in the morning - but the list of projects we want to chip away at. We each choose a random number to give the other, and that becomes the project we work on that day. My list is mostly stuff that I want to finish some day but have no particular goal in mind. Today I will be working on a scarf made from some very old donated yarn that will probably go in the bin to give away next winter. Yesterday it was a blanket made from leftover sock yarn. The game keeps the process interesting and forces us to work on some things that otherwise might get forgotten for a year or ten. 

I hope the holidays were good for all of you and that you are now settling in to some wonderful crafting through the long cold days of winter (a winter that has been mercifully mild here so far). Next time I'll show you some sewing progress.