I ended the year by spending Dec 30, 2010 on an oral surgeon's chair for 9 hours. NINE HOURS. I was getting my hillbilly mouth all fixed up. Did EVERYTHING. All at once, rather than spread the pain throughout a series of appointments. I'd cracked quite a few teeth in the big wreck (in Jan 2010) and since we were doing so much structural work anyway, decided to go on and pretty up the rest of the smile while we were at it. It wasn't pleasant and I'm still living on soup, applesauce and hershey's chocolate syrup. (not at the same time). I did "conscious sedation" which I highly recommend for any dental phobic people like me!
Just like for any medical procedure where you are sedated, you have to sign off on paperwork saying you won't sue them if you die. (or I guess your family wouldn't sue them, since you'd be dead, huh?). Being the mildly dramatic person that I am, of course I centered in on that and decided that I had a 50% chance of dropping dead in the dental chair. I can't help it. It's who I am. It's what I do. I'm so freaking pollyanna happy sunshine 99% of my life and the other 1% is all death, darkness and decay.
I have a good setup for my financial will, plans established for my children, my soul's in pretty good shape, but then I realized. The stash. THE STASH! I had a little hand written note buried in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed with a note to Jeff to call my knitter friends for them to decide what to do with the stash (probably from the last time I was 50% sure I was going to die back when I had a non-cancerous breast lump removed a few years back.) A note's a fine start, but that's not gonna do it.
You've heard the horror stories, a Knitter dies, her family doesn't understand and somehow THOUSANDS of dollars worth of yarn are unceremonially shoved into trash bags and sold in a garage sale or estate sale for $5. Of course I never happen to FIND these deals, but I've HEARD of them. We have a local knitter in our guild that's in poor health. When she took a turn for the worse a few years ago, her husband BURNED her yarn. BURNED it. Then she GOT BETTER! Could you imagine? Literally gone up in smoke. (As we know, wool doesn't burn, it smolders. BUT if you have a big enough bonfire you can pretty much get rid of anything. I imagine he had some resentment issues against the yarn. Boggles the mind!)
I've invested WAY too much money on WAY too much yarn over the years to let it end up in a trash bag for $5. I'm working on a detailed list of contacts and instructions. Things like distributing the sockyarn to my local knitters to knit enough socks for my kids that they could wear them as they grow up, ending with pairs in adult sizes for each of them. Having a yarn sale with proceeds going to a fund for the kids' college fund. Which yarn gets donated to local retirement homes. Which yarn needs to be knit up into Picc Line Covers for CF kids. Which treasured yarn needs to be given to knitting friends locally and in blogland as rememberences of our friendship and yarny adventures we've had. What goodies to send to my cousin that now KNITS! The list goes on and on.
In creating this list, I also realized that there was no humanly way possible to distribute and organize this monster stash even if I DID drop dead on the dental chair and I DID have a nice organized Stash Will Document (SWD) saved in our fireproof safe. How would anyone know to look in the 42 different places for my yarn? How would any non-knitter know what was sockyarn and what was the treasured yarn and what was the crap yarn?
We moved into our new house in October and I've now got ROOM for STORAGE! My goal is to get the stash under control. Not only for when I drop dead, but for my own personal knitting pleasure! I'm not much of a resolution maker. Not only do I almost never follow through to complete them, I usually don't even get them MADE to later not complete. Ah well. Maybe this year will be different. In 2011 I'm going to GET THE STASH UNDER CONTROL.
* FIND the ENTIRE stash
* ORGANIZE the stash by type of yarn
* CULL the stash -- destash coming soon!
* Create & keep the SWD current and saved with the rest of our important documents
* Knit to my heart's content
What does this mean for you? A SUPER DESTASH IS COMING!!! WOO HOO!!! As I organize I need to realize that my tastes in knitting have truly changed from the beginning of my knitting days. I need to decide what I will actually knit and what won't and let that yarn go to someone else's stash to be knit instead of crammed into a ziplock bag.
A note to all of you that made not buying yarn a resolution. Were you aware that helping another knitter DESTASH DOESN'T COUNT? It's true. I promise. You ARE Knitting from the Stash. You're just knitting down another knitter's stash. See? Makes perfect sense. DESTASH DOESN'T COUNT!
Think of adding a SWD to your list of things to do in 2011.
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