It’s up there. It knows I’m here.
It’s my stash.
Heya Bub, Dante my man, hoarding -a sin? I think that’s a matter of semantics. How ‘bout we just say I’m prepared for any fiber eventuality? Like a Boy Scout, kinda.
The Pink Palace is on the market. Which means I’ve been up In The Attic visiting my stash trying to clean out, donate or trash accordingly all of the treasures untold that surround my stash. The stash is fine how it is, thank you very much. But in tidying up the house (and trying to leave it that way) for Open House visitors and potential buyers tours I’ve needed to add to the bulk, “just temporarily”, in an invisible kind of way.
I've put all of my fiber up there to make my home studio traversable (my mind clouded by cleaning products - obviously hypnotized in the frenzy from all that rhythmic picking up).
How long do you think it took me to go crawling back up there to find something to spin with ? Oh, about a week. As the days go by (or I finish up a hunk of fiber) I find myself ferrying more and more stuff back down the stairs of Lethe. Fluff up there, yarn down here - looks like consolidation to me. All in the early morning or late evening hours mind you. The Attic and my wits having both turned Saharan at this point in the summer/packing process.
The tricky balance here is that The Attic is the “wow” room. We said “wow” when we looked at the place. Infallibly “wow” is the reaction when folks see it for the first time and Space Greed takes over their reasoning. Guilty. The trick is leaving enough space for the “wow” factor to work it’s magic. Coming from NYC the idea of beaucoup on site storage is titillating. Not only is there head room up there for a tall person to walk around, but when it’s clear (as if) in the middle there’s room to lay out and baste a king size quilt with room to stand back and admire your work, if that’s the sort of thing you like to do.
It’s preternaturally big up there. The Attic has some sort of weird time/space differential. It expands to match desires. There are aspects of “Through the looking Glass” in play. For years whenever I needed some house ware or tool a quick loop under the rafters would 90% of the time turn up the desired objét. This is also a function of my in-laws moving at the same time we did and our acquiring a lot of their overflow. All packed by others - it appeared and was promptly carried Up There on moving day. So I had no idea of what was in all those boxes. The extra sofa and the piano I recognized right away. The space seems to expand to accept just one more thing. Suddenly there’s an empty corner you never noticed, guests are coming and this box of roving/bag of yarn has to go. SOMEWHERE.
When everything is moved out and the place is cleared it will shudder into a deceptively finite space and await the first offering from it’s new, and unsuspecting tenants. Maybe in the middle of the otherwise empty floor a small exotic bottle containing Barbara Eden appears. Or maybe I’ll just leave them a bottle of gin in the fridge on my way out the door.
For now my yarns, bins of fiber and boxes of fabric are close to hand, lurking in the dark. They can see me, I can’t see them. Will rubbing the bins make them fill with guanaco? At this point would that be a good thing? Somewhere is a Kaari with prepped silk hanky in progress. Shout if you can hear me Kaari!
Cooler weather (or moving day) will be here sooner or later. Out of sight, out of mind (careful) is a hazard with Rhinebeck on the horizon (River Lethe). The time/space continuum is worrisome.
The yarn for the mate to the new winter sock, the toe up socks, and the Indian Summer shawl stalled on row 8 pine away Up There in yarn purgatory, in the Dante room. Bub.
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