Yesterday I spent almost the entire day in the sewing room working. Vince was down helping get the ironing station set up and he said “I can’t believe you got up and came straight down here!” It reminded me of when we lived in Kentucky and all my sewing stuff was at the little house we had in town. We lived way out in the country and I would take Chad to school, then stay in town and sew or quilt all day, pick Chad up and go home but on weekends, I’d often get up just after daylight, quietly leave the house and drive to the house in town in my pajamas. I had clothes there so I’d shower and get dressed there. I’d take old Speck with me (but he wasn’t old then!). Vince and Chad knew when they got up and I was missing, they could find me in town. Of course, on Saturday, Vince was going shopping anyway so he’d come by and spend part of the day with me there.
So, getting up and going to the sewing room before stopping to check mail, eat or even grab a Dr. Pepper gives me hope I may sew again soon.
Anyway, yesterday we got the ironing board all set up, the cover is on. Vince found the 301 machines so I played around with those and picked the one I wanted him to put in the cabinet for me.
Because the ceilings are lower in the sewing room, I had to trim the design wall. Did that.
Next, I tackled the yarn. There’s a darned lot of yarn! The more time I spend with the yarn, the more I want to use what I have. There’s so much pretty yarn.
I had bought several different sizes of the vacuum bags. The first box I opened . . they’re like body bags! I almost had to crawl up in them to get the yarn all the way to the end. For those, I put yarn that’s sweater quantities – yarn that I want to keep together – like 10 skeins of this and 6 skeins of that.
![](https://patchworktimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/wp-1607909329480-600x450.jpg)
This is half of the bottom of the closet in the downstairs bedroom. I have two tubs, then four bags of yarn. I have other things on the other side of the closet but I think that’s stuff I can put under the bed so I can add two more tubs and four more big bags of yarn if I move the other stuff . I think once I get to the smaller sizes, I’ll be able to put more of the on top of these big bags.
I started putting some of the smaller bags in the tubs, filling them up and vacuuming them but I’m not sure that’s going to be a great idea because so often, when I want to make a shawl or socks and need a skein of this and a skein of that, I go digging and having to re-vacuum those bags is probably going to get old. If I put so much in there to make the bags worth the effort, they aren’t going to fit back into the tub once I let air back in so I may end up taking the smaller bags and sticking them behind the fabric on the shelves, making notes of what’s where and seeing how that works. Taming that yarn stash is proving to be difficult. The worst thing is that Vince dept saying “It isn’t all going to fit!” and I kept calculating and planning and saying it would all fit but I’m beginning to think he may have been right on this issue.
If nothing else, I hope facing this mountain of yarn convinces me to use what I have not buy more.
Linda in NE says
You are being very organized & precise with your sorting, spreadsheet and labeling. But somehow I can’t help wondering if it might have been easier if from the very start you had picked A pattern, bought everything you needed to make it and entirely finished it down to the last detail before picking another pattern and buying supplies for that. Just the way my brain works.
Judy Laquidara says
In theory, that would be nice but that isn’t the way I work. I like to have a fabric stash for my quilting; a yarn stash for my knitting and now a cloth stash for my cross stitching. When I get the urge to do something, I want to be able to grab it and get started and not have to wait for a week or more for it to arrive. Also, I look at the yarn/fabric I have and it truly is like money in the bank. The fabric is probably more than double the cost than what it was when I bought it. The yarn has gone up too so I don’t feel bad about my stash . . I just have a little too much of it right nmow.
Denise Russart says
The “body bags” as you call them 🙂 fit very nicely under my bed!
Judy Laquidara says
I stuffed them too full. I’ll have to not put quite so much in the and they will fit under the bed downstairs.
Nelle Coursey says
I have found that some of those bags get air in them after a while. I guess I am not getting them sealed good, but it sure does make them lighter when you get the air out of there!