Spending a Month at the Beach (Mentally)

2025 did not get off to a great start for us; I had to right away contend with some family drama in my own home, and then our brother-in-law fell gravely ill, was moved to hospice and passed away in Tampa. Other issues did not contribute anything positive.

Stress causes my arthritis to flare up, as does having to travel long distances, and my hands quickly bore the brunt of that. Since crochet is the one fiber art I can do even when my hands hurt, I looked for and found a free pattern online and decided to make a throw for myself.

I have tons of thrifted yarn, of course, so I didn't buy any new for the project, but instead shopped my stash for the colors I wanted. I imagined a throw like sitting on beach sand and watching the tide come in.

The pattern seems challenging but is actually pretty simple, and soon I was able to work on the throw without having to think about it.

Every night I spent a couple of hours working on it, which helped me deal with the stress and find my calm again.

The colorblock palette may seem a bit weird, but it is how I see the beach when I'm sitting on the sand. I loved every minute I spent on this project.

The end result. Couldn't be happier with it, and by making it I saved fourteen skeins of thrifted yarn from the landfills and helped myself deal with a couple of very unhappy weeks.

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Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Valerean

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