More Stashes

I had a very busy morning recently getting things ready for the post office. 

At first I was frustrated by how time consuming it was becoming.   Finding the right sized brown paper from an old bag, and which box to use

and where was that other old packaging I stored away for re-use?

Then in a magic moment, I became calm.  The feel of the crisp brown paper as it folded, the sound of the blade slitting slowly and evenly, wrapping and creasing around the box to fit snug.  I tied the parcel with twine and wondered what tricks people had to put their finger on the half-knot, when there wasn’t someone there to do it.  Crossing the twine over itself, twist, neat even squares, round two directions of a box, dissected by the pattern of the string that is holding it secure.  I felt very satisfied making up a parcel the old fashioned way.  Something so lovely in the symmetry and basic materials.

There was, some time ago, an abundant harvest of kumquats

and so my mum gave me some that she had sliced up and sun-dried.
 

I liked the way they curled into the glass jars, preserved and pungent for a rainy day.

I do love my glass jars.

What rainy day?  How will it ever be consumed?  The act of non-waste, use at any cost – yes, I really did inherit it.  My parents are of that war-experienced generation and are great hoarders.  So this week I also inherited a stash of “woollens for felting”.

And silks.

 Some of it was beyond belief that anyone could hang on to something so broken.

 But those holes did have a certain intriguing pattern.

Well felting is a whole other technique I have to take on one day, so into a new stash it will go.  Stay tuned for the felting post!

Yarn

On taking up crochet, one thing in particular starts happening very quickly:  an obsession with yarn.

I’m not sure how it is for others – maybe some people start trawling patterns first, and then make a shopping list of what they need.  But I seem to be always on some driven, never-ending hunt for colours, textures, fibres.  In the early days, I crocheted some snowflakes in different colours and weights, which led to a natural conclusion of what was and wasn’t snowflakey.  I didn’t even bother blocking this one.

And this improvised shape turned out to be… a wonky swatch of sorts.

Then I had to keep finding more suitable yarns for snowflakes, some worked better than others.

Finer weights

...or wool

and alternative cold colours.

It wasn’t that I got bored with snowflakes, but the new crochet spark ignited the next phase very quickly.  I now wanted to crochet in my favourite fibres:  hemp, cotton.  Maybe try flax or ramie.

 

Of course wool presented an array of possibilities and then there were acrylics with their vibrant colours.

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Yarn could also be something I conjured myself, or re-purposed.

I love the idea of reclaimed yarn and yarn made from plastic bags – a great tutorial here.

With charity projects lining up, I got my hands on anything I could, often buying out stock in charity shops,  or finding forgotten balls of musty old yarn

And bringing home bags of frogged yarn (the old Grace Bros bag a find in itself!)

The next thing you know, you have yarn tumbling out of every crevice. 

  

The next job would be to think about storage and organisation.  So far, I am going to use old suitcases.  Here is the start of the cotton stash in a 60's beauty case.

These days I can completely relate to those who refer to ‘never having enough’ yarn.  And mind-boggled onlookers who say in disbelief “…but I thought you just bought some yarn.  Do you really need more?”  I know many of you out there know exactly what I’m talking about.