A Sense of Accomplishment

March has been a crazy busy month which explains why this month’s post is coming in barely under the wire. I got the fun of a long delayed colonoscopy with a good outcome. This week, and for the next six, I’m playing nurse putting drops in my husband’s eyes after the first of two cataract procedures. My aim is getting pretty good. And I accomplished a feat that was twenty years in the making…

At least twenty years ago my mother-in-law gave me her stash of yarn. She was a notorious bargain shopper and had accumulated more yarn than she could ever use. (Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not judging. It happens to the best of us.) Her surplus was in three black garbage bags that had been sitting in the attic closet for a while. Much to my husband’s dismay, I hauled it home.

It was dusty smelling so I thought I’d fluff the dust out of the skeins in the dryer. Word to the wise, resist that urge! The old paper wrappers disintegrated. The skeins ran amok in the dryer and comingled into one giant ball that would barely fit through the dryer opening. Needless to say, I didn’t put them all through that ill-conceived process. I spent weeks unraveling the blob skein. Eventually, I sorted all the yarn by color into lidded plastic tubs and put them on new shelves in the basement.

Over the years I’ve raided that stash to make lapghans for shut ins, chemo caps for cancer patients and various scarves. In the past six months, I’ve made a concerted effort to use up that yarn (and some more I inherited from a grandmother’s stash via a friend). I just completed fifteen 5 x 5 foot afghans for a homeless event and with that I finally depleted most of the twenty year stash. There is about half a tub of assorted colors left from those two stashes.

I think my mother-in-law and the friend’s grandmother must be looking down and saying, “Isn’t it a good thing we bought all that yarn so she could keep so many people warm! I thought she’d never get around to it.”

For those of you who are worried about what I’ll do without that stash, fret no longer. While ten tubs of yarn have morphed into usable goods, I still have an equal number that I have no one to blame for but myself! Not to mention the tubs of fiber to spin and home spun yarn.

And in the midst of all of that fun, my sweet husband got three new buildings for his model railroad; a welding shop, a water tower, and the Jungers Jams factory. They were his birthday present.

Then last, but definitely not least, I submitted my preliminary galleys back to my editor. That means I’m one step closer to “Polly’s List ” being published. Now the book is with a proofreader for a final pass, then the final galleys and on to a publication date. Every step makes it seem a little more real!

No time to rest…I’ve got spinning and and weaving and baby things to make while I wait for the final galleys. Oh, and maybe some work on my next novel! Enjoy!