Hankering for Yarn

Tackling the Floss Mess Monster

by Noreen on April 14th, 2008

We’re in count down mode in getting ready for a big move.

So, we’re sorting and sifting, cleaning and clearing.

Whew! what a honkin’ load of work! Now, don’t get me wrong…. it’s really satisfying to get things cleaned up, but hefting all that junk good stuff around wears me right out!

Over the last couple of days, we’ve worked our chops off and cut a serious swath through the clutter in the garage- hurrah!

I’m also working on down-sizing and cleaning the studio.

Which means coming face to face with some of my history of accumulating ‘good stuff’.

Oh oh…… I don’t always deal well with boxes of old ‘good stuff’ gone bad……..

I have a bad habit of going, ‘urk’ and slamming lids shut on boxes of tangled yarns, threads, flosses and stuff of that ilk.

But….I figure that now is a good time to deal with ‘floss mess’ and ‘yarn gorm’.

The logic is that I’ll be able to see what I really have (oh oh…. that’s scary) and then decide if I want to haul it over mountains and onto ferries over to the island when we move.

So, foolishly bravely, I have decided to tackle the deadly box of doom embroidery floss that has morphed over the years into a horrible clot of cotton and mystery objects.

This is what greeted me when I opened the coffin of the Floss Mess Monster….. oh crumbs……… urk…. slam it shut and run!

I know! I’ll stuff it into a plastic salad container!

That way I can just fish out the bits I want, right?
And I’ll be able to keep an eye on the Floss Mess Monster - if it’s watched, then it won’t pad, pad, snickle snickle the floss like a brooding maternal cat, right? wrong. Sigh….

Okay… I’ll just lift out a teeeeeeeeeeny bit……

Erg! floss womitt! It all came out of the box in one interlocked lump.

I figured… okay…. how about I pull out the blues? They’re easy enough to see…..

Alright…. that went well-ish….

ACK! the Floss Mess Monster just spewed up some curiousities:

A whole bunch of little black squares that I wove for a mystery project:

and a green tatted butterfly (I can include that in a lace shawl I’m making, so that’s okay)

A N D….. urg………

a hand that was clutching a yo yo circle.

No lies.

And no second hand.

Somewhere, there is a doll in serious trouble.

Perhaps with a cup hook in place of the hand that the Floss Mess Monster slurbled into it’s box?

Anyhow, The Floss Mess Monster didn’t seem to be very attached to the blue floss so I figured, what the heck…. I’ll go for the pink. I locked my brain into obsessive behaviour pattern and started pick pick picking at the pink floss,

( I CANNOT BELIEVE how MUCH PINK embroidery floss I have! Oh, duh…. that’s because I don’t like pink much… therefore, the Floss Mess Monster gets to hoard it, cause, I’m not using it! Anybody want a bunch of pink embroidery floss?)

Then I wrestled the yellow floss out of the maw of the Floss Mess Monster and on and on and on…..

CBC Radio (Canadian Public Radio) was having a 9 hour extravaganza of Beethoven symphonies. It took me 3 Beethoven Big Blasts to whup the Floss Mess Monster!

Tahdah:

The Floss Mess Monster has been conquered!

And, stuffed into a clear plastic salad box:

The lid doesn’t quite close,

but the Floss Mess Monster needs a little bit of breathing room, right?

Whew, a teeny little job that gobbled up hours of Beethoven, and left a sense of satisfaction, and also feelings of foreboding:

The Yarn Gorm Beast still remains to be tackled! U R G!!!!

and …… oh yes……. there’s the small matter of the snubble of embroidery floss ‘leavings’ that the Floss Mess Monster had so much fun with that I couldn’t beat it into submission.

I can’t possibly THROW it away, can I? This close to Earth Day? hmmmmmmmm what to do….

Ok… I have a few ideas…. I’ll post about them in my next entry: Recycling the  Floss Mess

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POSTED IN: crafts, knitting