I have a lot of yarn. When I say I have a lot of yarn, I don't mean that I have more yarn than I have projects in mind. I mean I have more yarn than two people have projects in mind - about a hundred years' worth - because I inherited almost all of it from my grandmother when she died.
I don't know if she meant for me to take it all. I think it was the logical answer for the people who were cleaning out her things to bring it all to me because I do like to do yarn crafts, and because it was the easiest thing to do since I live in the same state, and I'm sure it was one big item to check off their to-do lists. I am telling myself that that is the way it was because right now, nearly five years after my grandmother's death, I know that I do not wish to use a lot of it. First, because it's not the kind of yarn that fits my taste, and second, it's tangled up with cat hair that makes me sneezy and drippy when I work with it.
I do feel some guilt about this. I have to tell myself that keeping her yarn doesn't keep her close to me. She's gone. She isn't coming back for it. I don't believe, way down deep in my heart, that keeping it safe in a drawer for the rest of my life and bequeathing it on to future generations the way she did is what she expects or wishes me to do with it. I don't believe that she expects me to knit the same kind of sweaters that she did for that reason only. At some point someone in the family has to say, "The diligent keeping of hundreds of scraps of yarn stops here." It may as well be me.
I have made multiple blankets and dozens and dozens of mittens with her yarn in an attempt to use it up. I recently came across a pattern that will use up a few more of the hundreds of "leftover" small balls of yarn that I have from her.
I have decided that when this blanket is finished I will gift it to a lonely widower in a VA nursing home. And then I will donate however much of her yarn is left to the "craft room" at the first nursing home I can find that has one.
If anyone is not happy with this, this is your official notice. If me keeping Grammy's yarn at my house keeps her close to you, I have to tell you that I've done as much as I can for you. You can come by anytime in the next three months and take all this yarn into your own home.
Donate the yarn, Honey. I got all of her silk pajamas, and kept them for quite a while, until I realized they were taking up two drawers in my chest and I seldom wore them. I came to the same conclusions--they weren't going to bring her back, and they didn't help me remember her one way or the other. I chose two I liked and donated the rest to the Goodwill. I'm sure there are some really hip old ladies somewhere rocking those PJs!
ReplyDelete