Weekend Update

This weekend I was "out of town" visiting my old college friend Cece. Usually I'll visit for the day but this time we had a sleep over and I came for breakfest on Saturday and left after dessert on Sunday. It was great, and just like old times when I lived with her and her husband when I first moved to the area. The goal of the weekend was to finally get her yarn room in order and relax. Unfortunately (more for her I think), I was a bit more focused on the first task. We had done this once or twice before, but only gotten about 3/4's of the way through, which doesn't quite work. This time, we made it!! Cece posted some pictures on her blog which I've lifted. Of course, as is always the case, we forgot to do the before pictures. But just imagine a room, where one forgets the color of the carpet - bags and boxes and stuff everywhere. We've all been there (maybe not with yarn, and maybe with yarn).

Now the funny part was that Cece was strangely apologetic throughout which was strange and it got me thinking. It all boils down to two key ingredients in keeping organized. First, every place must have a home. If that hasn't been idenitified, you just have things that turn out to be transients, floating from one spot to another. The second, is that unless you don't have a life or you are OCD, you need a designated holding ground. That is, a place to dump. It's fine to keep things that you don't use, and keep projects you've given up on but aren't ready to part with. You just have to have a home for them.

Well, Cece was very patient with me and we worked through everything in the room. The fun/dangerous part for me was seeing more of her stuff (I did end up borrowing a few knitting books that might make me cast on a few too many projects). And she did an awesome job of cateloging the majority of her yarn onto Ravelry (type, brand, colorway, and quantity of each yarn). It was crazy.

And the best part? We did the closet. Everythign is sorted in there. And if you've organized with me, my favorite mantra came true - like with like. We were able to display some of her awards (see the ribbons in the closet) and other stuff that were tucked away out of sight.

Now granted, even though all the needles are separated and sorted by size, and the yarn in the cubbyholes and the books on the shelves, we still will have a follow up visit. I'd like to go through the patterns and get those organized in her great system of binders. And of course, want to spend more time with her books, to make sure they're sorted properly. And of course, I was finding that as we put the yarn away in the cubby's, I had grossly underestimated the quantity of purple, so wouldn't mind readjusting some of the skeins of yarn. But that's really just me and everything is in working order which is good.

In other news, I had forgotten to take a picture of the one knitted Christmas gift this year. Dad is hard to shop for, so I had a great pattern I wanted to try and since it didn't have any sleeves, thought it would be a quick knit. It turned out to be a bit short in the torso, so had to rip it out some in early December, which put me into the time crunch. But I finished in time, before the year was out. It's another Rowan pattern from Rowan Classic Alpaca, size Large. I knit it with some wonderful wool yarn purchased back in my Berkeley days. The pattern is called Cambridge man and dad says he likes it (which is good) and it seems to fit. All though I want to reblock teh bottom so it doesn't poof so much, but that's just me.