Swag and The Aftermath

Ah, yarn. ::gleeful bouncing about my home now ensues::

This...



And this...



And this



And much, much more all came from my friend Emily. Her mom works at Village of Progress, a vocational training center for handicapped adults. Yarn companies from all over the country send yarn samples to VOP for color-card making. And they don't want the yarn back! I've been getting lots of yarn from Emily's mom and using it mostly in my classes and in other projects. But about 2 weeks ago the VOP had a gigantic 3-day long yarn sale. One Dollar A Pound, ladies and gentlemen. And it's not just stuff that you'd expect to see in a dollar-a-pound sale, it's mohair (witness the bottom-most picture), it's wool with silk or alpaca and mohair (witness the orange-y ball in the middle-most picture), and it's all kinds. I couldn't go myself, so Emily went and returned with two enormous garbage bags full of yarny goodness for me (and for Heather, as it turns out; I gave her about a third of the total swag). (And it's extra exciting (or not, depending how you look at it) because none of the yarn has a label. I have no idea exactly what it is, or how best to care for it. The mystery makes it more thrilling.)

This caused a massive reorganization of the stash. I took all the wool and crammed it into an under-bed storage box (Tupperware, I think) using a bungee cord (finally, a practical use for that thing!); I rearranged the drawers in my yarn bureau (I know, who the heck says "bureau" anymore?); I kind of organized the baskets sitting on top of the yarn bureau, and I looked askance at the bags of projects loitering around the yarn bureau. I kind of stuffed them in between the DVD case and the bureau (now I'm just using "bureau" gratuitously. I'm trying to bring it back. I have high hopes.) and told them that they should probably think about finishing themselves if they ever wanted to see the light of day again.

And I did all this sorting and reorganizing and integrating before Nick came home from work. (Don't worry that I'm hiding my yarn addiction from my beloved. He's a neat freak very organized guy, and I want to maintain some cohabitational harmony in these first few months. After that, it's a crapshoot.)