About that stash...
Next week I'll have houseguests, so this weekend I'm cleaning and rearranging in preparation. Part of my 'stash' resides in this corner of the living room, and it's an untidy mess. One of my guests is particularly prone to tidiness and is truly unsettled among the evidence of my natural state of disorder. She's polite about it, but I've known her long enough to understand how essential neatness is to her peace of mind. So I do try to make things at bit more comfortable for her.
I really don't want to store these things in the attic or stuff them out of sight in some closet. Their presence, the accessibility to the immediate, casual touch is essential to my peace of mind. So I'm aiming for some sort of artful arrangement that allows me to keep them all out there where I can touch and pet when the whim strikes me. I'm a tactile soul, and I find that I'm also visually inspired. These cones of yarn and unspun bumps of wool change shape in my imagination frequently. They're as magical as the blank page, full of possibilities and promise. I like living with them.
Am I nuts? What do you do with your stash? Do you need it handy for smiles and inspiration? Or are you more comfortable with tidiness and order?
LauraP
posted by LauraP at 5:22 PM
7 Comments:
Laura, your spinning wheel is so beautiful that it would be a terrible shame to hide it away. And I'm awed that you spin your own yarn; that is so far out of my realm of abilities.
I have to admit that I'm with your friend as far as clutter goes; in my own house, it drives me insane. However, I don't mind it in other people's homes. I figure it's their problem, not mine, so I tune it out.
Right now I don't have enough of a stash to need real storage. In fact, the odds and ends left over from each project are stored in the individual shopping bags they came in, all of which are sitting on top of a carton of my books. One of these days I guess I'll have to come up with a better arrangement but that's less pressing than the four years of photos I haven't put in albums yet. :-)
What Nancy said - I'm neat but live by the old "to each her own" rule. Since I've started making purses and lining them, I have accumulated more of a stash than usual. Fortunately, I've got an extra room (beyond the guest room and my office) so everything goes there in its own bag until I can get to it.
I think you are more thoughtful host than I might be :) I think your current arrangement looks beautiful and I love your floors. I use wire bins to organize my stash. Pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wavybrains/sets/72157594149264862/
I like this method because I can visit and pet my yarn at any time :) And it makes me happy. Your guest, however, would probably go insane from all that yarn in the (organized) open.
Wavybrains - wirebins, yes! I'd be perfectly happy with yarn store decor. Bet the cats would be too!
Fran - your own stash room - nice. I should be so organized.
Nancy - I'm not one for knick-knack type clutter, but work-in-progress clutter doesn't bother me at all. There's a fine line between that and chaos, though, and everyone's line seems to be drawn differently. I also recognize two separate types of work-in-progress clutter -- a)the supplies and tools of the work itself, and b)the accumulation of things left undone while one's attention is focused on the WIP. When the book's done, I clean house, physically and mentally.
The wheel in the photo is a handmade Lehigh Valley Italian reproduction. A birthday gift from my husband. The man truly knows the way to my heart.
My DH is a neat freak, so to keep the marital well-being going, I have my stash, well, stashed. I have two under the bed bins (big ones) for the projects I want close at hand, and an Ikea cabinet downstairs that holds the overflow. Not the best method, grant you, but when I rifle through it all it does give you those "aha" moments when you find some treasured skein you'd forgotten all about. :)
I've only been knitting (this time around) for three years and I still don't have a clue how to handle stash. Admittedly I'm a proponent of random chaos when it comes to my favorite things and could live happily in one room surrounded by books, pets, hobbies, and my husband. I love having the things I love within reach. Definitely within my line of sight.
Right now stash is in my dining room, overflowing our big dark maple salad bowl, hidden under the bed upstairs, in the guest room closet, hermetically sealed in plastic and stowed in the basement. (Too many great sales at Smiley's. I could open a Red Heart Baby Clouds shop.) (And don't sneer at Red Heart Baby Clouds. It works up beautifully, feels wonderfully soft, and is machine washable and dryable--a new mother's dream come true.)
No snearing here. I can't imagine bothering with hand washables for baby stuff, not when we have such wonderful choices.
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