Doing the Twist.

That handpainted merino and mohair Clapotis-ish scarf has gone to the frog pond. The yarn has a really tight twist, and as the scarf got longer it behaved more and more like a woolly burrito. Each dropped stitch caused the stockinette section next to it to twist inward in a really tight curl. The kind of curl that is built into the twist of the yarn, and the kind no amount of blocking will ever overcome. I know when to cut my losses - I frogged it. It's a lovely yarn, but it needs to be used for something where its firmness and tight twist won't work against the pattern.

Then I revisited the stash, and remembered my other MDS&W purchase - the bargain of the trip, two enormous 880 yard hanks of hand-dyed merino from Roz Housenecht. (She doesn't have a website.) I paid a big $48 for 1760 yards of this stuff, for no reason other than it was sooo soft and sooo beautiful. I had no idea what I'd do with it - it's a bit too bright and bold and variegated for a sweater, as least for moi. It's all reds and violets and lusciously soft, not Lion and Lamb soft maybe, but darn close. It doesn't have that tight twist/curl issue like the mohair-merino blend. It will make a bold, soft Clapotis, and it also makes a big dent in the stash - a bonus, and an important one.

I've got to concentrate on using the stash. I still want to go to Chez Casuelle for a hank of something laceweight, and I may do that soon, but right now chipping away at the stash gives me great satisfaction. I still look around this house and feel very, very tired at how much Stuff I have - why do I have so much trouble just throwing or giving it away? I have too many purses, because I'm fixated on finding the Perfect Bag, and over the years I've developed quite a collection. Nothing overly expensive, only one Coach bag in the lot and it's well over 10 years old. I need to approach my closet from a business perspective: if I paid $50 for a bag 7 years ago, it has now depreciated to the point where I should just put it in a box for Goodwill, or if it looks too ratty, the trash. I got my money's worth out of it!

But I have a real resistance to doing this and I need to overcome it. I was raised by kids of the Depression and they can't throw anything away either. I loathe garage sales and don't want to have one. Nothing in my closet is really worthy of a consignment shop - I don't buy designer clothes, and a lot of the stuff in the back corners is just old and out of style, doesn't fit or otherwise doesn't fit my life. (Face it Catherine, if you went out tomorrow and got a job that required dressing up, you'd have to buy a new wardrobe for it. The stuff in the closet is from 15 years ago!)

And I've been doing a lot of thinking about what works for me, with my schedule. Right now, morning exercise is out of the question, I have too much to do in the mornings before work. (This entry was written over two days.) Evening is somewhat better, but just the process of getting myself together to go to the gym and come back somehow feels too much like work, there are animals to feed and a pond that needs attention and I do actually like to eat dinner before 8 p.m., so I don't go often enough. Back in the day, when I was thin, I had room in the bedroom for a good exercise bike and I used it regularly. I am not one of those people who buys something and uses it as a clothing rack in the corner of the bedroom - I was on that bike every damn day and I loved it, but then we moved to this house, didn't have as much space, joined a gym, that gym closed, joined another, that closed, gave up and walked and exercised at home until a new gym opened, then my husband got sick and my bedroom was turned into a hospital room, and on and on.

Since then I've walked, I've had my gym membership, I've done various things, but nothing was as convenient as having a good piece of home exercise equipment. Last night I was walking Murphy and thinking about how I could fit a good elliptical trainer into my bedroom if I rearranged the space a bit. So tonight I am going to start rearranging the space to make it so. I could get on the elliptical trainer at home while the animals are eating or while the dogs are chasing bugs in the yard, while dinner is cooking, and combined with walking and yoga, would help enormously with this menopausal weight gain monster.

Although I loathe real garage sales I'm going to try to put together another round of the Bossy Doghouse Garage Sale online - I have a lot of knitting books and magazines to review as I clean up my space, and many will be going to the virtual garage sale. I was on a kick of buying knitting magazines a few years ago, I have never really gone back and made anything from many of them. I need to give them a hard look, see if there are any patterns I really, truly, honestly in the cold light of day would get around to making. I suspect there are only a few. The rest need to go.

I don't want my house to be a cluttered museum of my stuff. I want to pare it down to just what I really need, use and love. This will benefit me while I live here and also when I do make the move to put the place on the market. Time to get started on that this evening, in the guise of Spring Cleaning.