what’s behind door #3?

let me start by saying that my husband understands me. no, i mean, he really gets me; he loves that i love what i love.
in our new york city apartment, my stash was was actually stashes, and they lived all over the place. some were packed in boxes in a closet while others were secreted in an old dresser. but that wasn’t all—bags of yarn were stuffed into hidey holes throughout the apartment and were likely to pop out of any odd crevice at any time.
he never said a word about it. he never questions the bags i bring home from the yarn store or the fiber fairs. he understands that, after 42 years, my fiber stash is not going anywhere. he embraces my stash, even.

a few years back, we got this idea to move away from new york to pursue a more sane existence. david had always dreamed of renovating a house, and refurbishing our apartment has just not been satisfying enough. so we bought this:

it’s approximately 3 times larger than our apartment was, and we call it the money pit mr. blandings dream house F$^&&**%# er, let’s just say we call it our “previously unloved” home. david tried to sell me on it by saying, “you can put a lot of yarn in a house like that.” yeah. well, i wasn’t sure the house was good enough for my yarn collection, but i bit.

when we moved into this extremely neglected home (for starters, did you notice that the front-facing windows don’t even match?? and don’t even get me started on those porch doors.), one of the first things we did (after fixing up one room in which we could sleep) was to get the knitting stuff organized. we know our priorities; i’d been kvetching for weeks about not being able to find some knitting needles.
of course, it could partly have been david’s plan to keep me busy and happy with knitting in order to distract me from just HOW MUCH needed to be fixed around here. yeah, come to think of it, that could definitely be the case.

(this is our third-floor bathroom at the moment . . . in fact, the whole third floor looks like this right now.)

anyway, so we proceeded to fix up a workroom for me in one of second floor rooms. this room has four windows, a fireplace, and a nice closet that you can step completely into (though not really a walk-in closet). we looked at each other and simultaneously said, “yarn closet.”

and then i went away to start getting my yarn organized. i find that leaving david to his own devices works really well for this type of task. he’s quite excellent at creating storage solutions (chalk one up for apartment dwellers).

i wanted to finally be able to see all my yarn, and to have only one yarn per box if possible. i knew that if the yarn continued to be stuffed together into large bins, i would continue to forget about the ones at the bottom of the box. i went out and bought clear plastic storage boxes in two sizes: shoebox and sweater box. i came home and filled them with yarn. then i went out and bought twice as many MORE clear storage boxes. and yes, a third and fourth trip were also necessary, mainly because big lots eventually could not supply me with all i needed. i took the opportunity to sort, and get rid of, yarn i knew i would not knit. i was ruthless.

meanwhile david measured the closet carefully. he lined it completely with cedar (i told you he gets me; i had long dreamed of cedar closets . . .). he measured the boxes and put in floor-to-ceiling shelving on which the boxes fit perfectly. not an inch was wasted. when i put the boxes in, there was even space left over!

you can’t see the “space left over” now. that’s because it doesn’t exist any more.
not because i went crazy and started buying everything at the yarn store. actually, i don’t buy that much yarn; my problem is more one of longevity, and so much of my stash is . . . well . . . let’s say “vintage”.

anyway, i digress. the reason my stash continues to grow is that i started spinning (against my will, i might remind you). the yarn just multiplies exponentially, the more fascinated i become with spinning. now the closet looks like this

but, i have plans for it. BIG plans . . .
but for the meantime, and for tomorrow, i might talk about specific yarns in my closet. or, we might have an interview. stay tuned.