Knitterly Problems

I managed to shock a dear friend the other day by showing her this picture.  Her eyes got really wide, and she looked up at me...not quite believing what she was seeing.

 

I smiled. 

 

 I told you I was a process person.  My lace is at it's most valuable to me when it's still on the needles.  When it's done I take a few pictures and then toss it into the drawer.  I've always been curiously detached from my finished pieces.

 

But all of the hours and hours of work...she was stunned that I could be so careless with things that were so beautiful and so dearly made.

 

I know.  It looks like I've just wadded them up and tossed them aside, never to give them another thought, and sadly that's not far from the truth.

 

The truth is that yes, I have a drawer full of shawls, most of which almost never are used for anything.  Periodically one of them goes off into the world to find a home elsewhere, and those that wind up staying are here because they are the most beloved.  When I pull them out, I see memories....memories of many happy days with the needles singing as the perfect pairing of pattern and yarn comes into being.  They are precious to me, but I don't take care of them as I should, and they have been neglected in that drawer for far too long.

 

The problem is that now that I'm building an honest to goodness wardrobe, I need drawer space to house my actual clothes, and those shawls have been taking up an awful lot of valuable real estate in my dresser.  This week I finally had to empty out that drawer so that I could carefully fold and put away my new clothes.

 

And so my shawls have been displaced, and one of my jobs this weekend will be to figure out how and where to store them. Hopefully whatever I come up with will be better than their jumbled state in the drawer.  Perhaps I'll figure out how to put one or two on display...that would be nice.  I might even take the time to wash and reblock a few.  Goodness knows they could use some freshening up.

What to do....what to do...

 

It's a curious problem indeed.