Organizing the Stash

On Monday, I accomplished quite a bit of organizing. For a while, now, my yarn stash has been getting more and more out of hand. So, along comes a day off from work and I have time to get busy with it! I started by finishing some mending that had been taking over my ironing board. (I wanted to use the ironing board for my organizing project as it is a great, adjustable "table" for sorting small items.) I put the zipper in the sweater that I made my dh for Christmas and then fixed the hem in a pair of pants and sewed on some buttons. At that point, I felt like continuing down through the pile, and working on some sewing projects that have all been started but are in various states of being unfinished. There is a jacket that I only need to hem, add a button & button hole and sew the sleeves on. There is a pair of pants that I have sewn the front and back darts, but nothing else and a shirt that has only been cut out, as well as a piece of fabric for a dress that has only been washed.
However, I didn’t. I stuck to my original plan of organization. I pulled most of the yarn out of the closet and started to decide what to keep, sell, or give away. At the one-third of the way done point, I decided that I could no longer ignore the lovely weather and went out for a walk/jog. After arriving home, I worked on it a little more, until I needed to get ready to meet my mom and sister. After a fun day out, I came home, made dinner and then went out to get some ink for the printer and some storage bags for it all. Once home, again, I went to work. I bagged all of my cotton leftovers together and put all the wool into one pile to be sorted further. Anything that I had enough for a sweater, I put back in the Rubbermaid tote that I use for storing yarn. Any that there was not enough, I either put it in its own bag or with some other yarn that was of similar content. There were 2 different yarns that I purchased to knit a sweater and ended up having 1/3 of the yarn left over. How do I over estimate so much? Well, that’s a question for another entry…After all of this pooling, sorting and bagging, I filled a regular sized paper shopping bag with the bags of yarn that I don’t have a plan for or were ones that I don’t want to keep. I plan to take these with me on the knitting retreat in February so they can be sold in the silent auction. I still need to write up the listings, but those can be done a little at a time in the evenings until I go.