Almost knitting content

This is my third time posting today. I am under the influence of that Coca-Cola Blak. I may have to rethink my position on that drink; it is working much better as a caffeine delivery method than my normal cup o' joe.

Anyway, this post covers knitting (which this blog was originally supposed to be about) and items from the 20th century (finally, I'm living up to this blog's title!). It is 10:15p and I am cleaning out my stashette. I have three 18-gallon Rubbermaid containers full of stuff that I've been holding onto for years. Some of it has been in my possession since 1998 but actually dates back to the 1960s. For those who don't know the story:

When I got serious about knitting eight years ago, I discovered the online knitting community. This discovery led me to the knowledge that there were other yarns than Red Heart. My yarn hunger was fierce but my budget was tight, so I bought every $20 grab bag that someone would advertise on KnitList and KnitSwap. Now that I have more knowledge and experience, I understand why these knitters were trying to get rid of these yarns. Some were difficult to knit, others were impractical for daily wear, and most of them were in quantities too small to make anything useful. I held onto these yarns thinking that I would figure out the best way to use them once I became a better knitter. Some of the yarns did get used after years of sitting in the stashette, but most of them are still here.

I can't stand looking at this yarn any more. Now that there are places like KnitPicks that sell yarns I can afford, my stashette is weighing me down. Unlike many knitters who learned to buy yarn because they like it and let it inspire them, I've always purchased supplies for projects as I needed them. I don't feel free to buy yarn for a project when I have so much yarn already in the house. Combine my spending phobia with my compulsion to do things in the proper order, and you get me trying to knit up all this yarn before I buy more. Knitting has turned into a chore instead of a hobby, and for the past few months I haven't been very interested in it at all. Only the thought of giving away two-thirds of my stashette could inspire me to pick up my needles this week.

This reclaiming of my hobby is just another step in getting myself "fit by 40". I want to be fit mentally and emotionally as well as physically. That means revisiting hobbies and pastimes that I abandoned to see where they fit in my life, if at all. I don't plan to spend the next 40 years waiting for "someday" to do what I really want, the way I did with the last 40.

(NOTE: the Blogger spell-checker tried to replace "knitters" with "janitors". I guess I am a knitting janitor today, cleaning out all the junk!)