Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Performance report, odds and ends

Well, I wore the heel patched socks, and here's my evaluation so far: In general the concept worked. I think I'll sew down the sides, after all, as they gapped when worn. I don't know if the extra thickness would be a problem when worn with regular shoes; I only wear clogs. At first, the extra thickness under the heel was noticeable (though not unpleasant). As the day went on I stopped noticing it. I think it was a combination of just getting used to it and the garter stitch mashing down with being walked on. Overall, would I use this approach again? So far, yes I think I would.

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Sunday afternoon was spent sorting through books, magazines, patterns and stash trying to reduce and organize.

Loose paper first: things I had printed off the internet got put into the 3-ring binders. Slow but not painful. (of course the binders themselves need to be better organized, but I'm leaving that for another day.)

Magazines next: I have stacks, and many of them have exactly one article or pattern I am really interested in. So I started copying the items of interest. To even get to this point I had to flip through the magazines to find what I wanted to copy. Then back to the binders to file the copies. As you can imagine this took some time.... In the end I actually eliminated only about ten issues. Still, that's a few inches on the bookshelf. OK, get real, that's a few inches of floor space because the shelves were full to start with.

Books: Give up any knitting books? You will have to pry them from my cold dead fingers, after driving a knitting needle through my heart. I'm a serious collector. OK, even the Met de-acquisitions. I found two I was willing to part with.

Stash: It was easiest to part with old swatches. These were either unsuccessful stitch combo experiments or made from yarns I hated. I used them as dust rags before I threw them away and thus discovered that a swatch of fun fur is very effective for dusting. This one was only about 1" x 5", so not worth saving, but what if I took some of that ugly Kelly green wool and some of the gigantic eyelash stash and made a bag/mitten thing and felted it? Effective dust mitt or total waste of time? I haven't decided yet.

Odd balls and leftovers... Aargh, every one of these might come in handy sometime. It might be just the thing I need for an accent, it might make a hat, or at the very least be used to tie up a package.... And I might live to be 105, but I don't think so. Just because I can think of a use for it doesn't mean I ever will use it. Two plastic grocery bags worth out the door (or at least in the thrift store box ready to go out the door).

Sock yarn - I'm sorry, can't give it up. Same for anything wool. Sigh, this is getting overwhelming...

At the end of the day I have to admit I didn't really get rid of that much. But I did get rid of some, and that's something, I guess.

2 comments:

CatBookMom said...

Whittling is good, plus there's the really big benefit that you've re-acquainted yourself with parts of your stash that you hadn't seen in a while.

OK, I can do that. Thanks for the encouragement, lol!!

Anonymous said...

Even if you didn't get rid of much, you did organize things and probably rediscovered some other things you had forgotten. The real solution (she said blithely) is to deacquisition something before you buy it, in other words, only buy what you have a definite use for in the immediate future.

Nah, I can't do it, either.