Ziplocks — or housecleaning to ignore writer’s block
So, what do you do when faced with writer’s block. Well, I don’t know about you but I clean or attempt to clean the house. It seems that if you can’t do what you should do, you ought to at least try to do something positive. Cleaning is not only a positive activity, it leaves your mind free to think of other things. So, while mulling over plot and characters and essay topics — I decided to clear up my stash.
My stash includes fiber ready for spinning, as well as yarn for various projects. Earlier in the week I avoided writing for a while, listening to a podcast of Stephanie Pearl McPhee (Yarn Harlot) from a link on her blog. I then thought, what the hey, I’ve never heard her speak so a youtube search and several talks later, my day was going on with a happier underlying note. But I remembered that in one of the talks she mentioned the beauty of Ziploc bags for yarn and fiber storage.
Since I’ve quite a bit of fiber and yarn (not a lot for a yarn store but a bit more than one person probably needs for a couple of months of knitting…okay for a year of knitting) and I’ve noticed some suspiciously moth-y type things. And while they all bit the dust fairly quickly, I’ve been meaning to go through and check everything out. So, today with Ziploc bags in hand, I started the fiber/yarn organization and checking.
Most of the fiber and yarn is in plastic bags with one of the following: cedar blocks, cedar circles, cedar sachets, or cedar balls. So, far I’ve got the yarn for two sweaters now sealed in bags by projects. I found most of the fiber was wrapped well enough so that it seemed fine but I repackaged in ziplocs with cedar whatevers and squeezed out the air. I’ve moved the fiber into boxes by type: wool in one box, bamboo fiber in another along with ingeo (corn-based fiber). The yarn is being organized so that all of the same yarn type/color is in a baggie. If there are yarns for projects, I’m labeling the bag as to what the yarn was bought for — usually socks or shawls.
The side effect of all this cleaning is that now there’s room in the living room for the tree. I found two containers of angora that had to be tossed. I guess angora is the favorite of moths and that seems to be all they ate so far and now that’s gone out of the house. I also think I might have figured out how my protagonist is supposed to get involved in the plot so, I guess tomorrow it’s back to the goal of 1,000 words a day.