To keep, I mean. We talk about stash taking over the world, and at least in this house, it does. But stash, to me, is mostly full skeins, or sometimes half skeins that go with other skeins—sizeable chunks of the same color and dye lot that I could conceivably use for a project with little to no trouble.
But then there are the other storage boxes—smaller than my regular stash storage boxes—that are labeled “odd balls and bits.” I started collecting the smallish bits of leftovers to store in one of those boxes, and next thing you knew there were two boxes, then three. Frankly, there are a lot of wee little balls of yarn in this house that are leftovers from finished projects. And when I set out to find them on my last ill-advised attempt at yarn containment, I found many more than I bargained for. It seemed like a good idea to get rid of some of them, but I find it physically impossible to throw yarn away. So here they sit.
Sometimes I consciously start on a stash-busting sort of project that is specifically designed to use up the partial skeins I have lying around. But often times those projects call for small amounts of yarn that are still smaller than what I have lying around so I use some odd balls but I don’t use them up. If there is anything more useless than a thirty-seven-yard ball of yarn, it is a seven-yard ball of yarn. But back in the box it goes, because I can’t throw out yarn.
I donate a lot of yarn to a local senior citizens’ center, but I don’t want to give them the ratty little balls because I think that would be at least a little bit insulting. I want them to be happy when I come in holding garbage bags full of yarn, rather than thinking I am giving them actual garbage.
In perusing a knit and crochet publication put out by the New York Herald Tribune in the late 1940s, I saw directions for a crocheted, multicolored afghan that began with the instruction, “Gather several lengths of worsted yarn such as everyone has about the house, and tie them together, winding them into a ball as you go.” (Etc., and emphasis mine.) Such as everyone has about the house … then it’s not just me, and it hasn’t been just me for quite some time! Everyone has these yarn ends about the house—too small to use but too pretty to throw away.
Sadly, my other phobia in relation to this issue is knots. I hate weaving in two trillion ends, but I hate knots in my work even more. I nearly foamed at the mouth at a recent crochet and knit conference, when the class instructor told us to change yarns randomly by tying them together with a tight overhand knot, and trimming the ends close to the knot. Knots in my work? On purpose, no less? I did it because I am a good student (who did not really want to foment revolution in the classroom) but it made me crazy. It’s making me a little bit crazy just now writing about it. So I am guessing that making my own Magic Ball, which is what many contemporary crocheters call these tied together yarns, is not the answer.
I decided that I had to have some standard—a firm mathematical concept that would guide my bits storage. If a ball of yarn has less than X yards remaining, it is no longer a ball of yarn, it is trash. I had to be able to think of something I could actually do with the yarn or it had to go. Of course it doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot of yarn to do the first round or two of a granny square, so the smallish balls didn’t really go anywhere but back in the box.
Recently I was finishing up a bunch of afghan models for a pattern book. I had left way long ends on the squares because I wasn’t sure how I was going to assemble them, so I figured the ends would make good stitching-up yarn. It turned out that I didn’t need a foot or more of yarn dangling in every color, so some colors I used to assemble and some ends I had to weave in, cutting off an eight- to twelve-inch tail when I was through. The tails started to pile up, and I had to do something with them. Had I finally reached my mathematical limit? Could I throw away a foot-long tail? I decided I could, and was heading off to the kitchen trash can when my daughter stuck her head in the doorway. “Hey, aren’t those wool?” she asked. “You know, I could needlefelt with those, you should keep them.” And then she went on her merry way.
I grabbed a ziptop plastic bag and threw them in, collecting more and more as I finished the afghan, until there were at least a hundred pieces in there. I looked, and I thought, and I pondered, and then I went to the trash can and threw them all away. Apparently I had found my limit and twelve inches was it. I was even good enough not to separate the longer tails from the shorter ones. I just threw caution to the wind and chucked the entire contents of the bag.
I am kind of hoping though that the seagulls and other nesting animals that hang out around the garbage dumps will snag these little woolen bits and take them home. Just think how soft and warm their nests would be. And then the strands would not have gone to waste. Maybe I should take up needlefelting …