Bemused

I don't know if I'm thrilled or horribly embarrassed.

You may remember that, off and on, I've been sorting through my life, thinly disguised as the closets and pantry and storage bin projects. I can now add, and my stash. It's my stash that's got me conflicted.

Before I learned that purling was knitting, I had a fiber art. I crocheted, but sporadically. I only ever bought yarn when I had a pattern, a project and a deadline. I'm sure this was in part because of the way crochet eats yarn. It takes an average of three times as much yarn to make a comparable crochet project than it takes for the knitted version. A crochet afghan represents Big Bucks. So I have really only embraced my inner acquisitiveness over the past two years. No. I lie. Let me rephrase that. I've always been acquisitive, otherwise my closets and pantry and storage bin would never have reached the state they were in and clearing them out wouldn't require an Environmental Impact Statement. Yarn just wasn't one of those things I thought about acquiring. I was, therefore, particularly disconcerted when those boxes from Jo Ann weren't big enough, or much less, enough enough. So disconcerted I was compelled to hide my head in the sand about the whole project.

I de-ostriched myself for brief intervals. There was the trip to the Container Store to acquire the stuff to organize the de-aquisition of my life. That purchase of the XXXXXXL Ziploc bags to hold the rejects from the stash. Some desultory sorting when I thought about it.

Then I got that email from String Theory. The one that said they would sell my stash for me. They would track what was sold and I would get a store credit for the amount. Not only that, what didn't sell, they would donate to charity. Are you hearing this? Anything I brought out to them, I would never need to see again. It would be as if it had never been. And I would have a yarn fund. At String Theory. Home of Dream in Color Classy and Shibui sock yarn.

Well, while all the life that has kept from the blog has been happening, I got another email from String Theory. I sold the most yarn of anyone. I now have a huge, gigantic, humongous, really really Big store credit waiting for me. So big I'm embarrassed and will not divulge the amount. It will never expire and I can spend it any way I want.

This all sounds wonderful, yes? Why, then, am I bemused? Well. Think about it. Do you really think I sold the most because all the mistakes I made over the past two years were so good, so desirable to other knitters?

Or do you think it's because I managed, in only two years, to accumulate so much yarn that I simply had more inventory to sell than anyone else in Northern Illinois?