From the Stash #3: Salvaging

  As I continue to pick up the pieces of life after Irma, I'm also trying to organize my yarn stash into something that takes up less room at Dad's. Buried in the bottoms of bins and hidden from sight in bags, I'm starting to find some long-neglected projects...

  What we have here are the pieces of what was supposed to be a scarf... You can catch a glimpse of its potential in this post from 2015. After the out-of-control cat sabotaged the project, I continued my efforts to finish it. Shortly after that I published another progress post where you can tell I'm about to lose my mind... And that's around the time the project was abandoned.

  Today this UFO (unfinished object) was rediscovered in a bag at the bottom of a bin, and my first thought was to throw it all in the trash. There is so much work that we still have to do with moving what can be salvaged from the house, and I just don't have the energy to put this mess together.

 But a different thought hit me just then... We've lost so much to Irma! Do I really have to throw this project away? My idea would replace one of the little things I've lost, if only it would work... So then I found myself straightening out these rings.

  Once I squeezed them all onto my hand, I ran a piece of yarn through the middle of the loops. I wouldn't say it was easy to do, but it only took me a minute. A little help from another hand would have made the process go even faster.

  And then I tied that yarn into a big ugly knot, again wishing I had another hand. I didn't succeed in getting the knot as tight as I hoped. I think it will still work, anyway.

  It only took a minute to crochet a chain with the yarn still attached to the knot. A quick slip stitch to create a loop, and then I quickly wove the end towards the knot. That's where I tied it into another big ugly knot... Usually I would be against tying knots in my work, but it doesn't matter this time.

  Those pieces of a scarf that was never completed have now become a new bath pouf. It looks weird, but it feels so soft and... Pouf-y. It's much softer than the pile of store-bought mesh that was left behind in my moldy house. But how long will the acrylic yarn last? Hmm. I say if it holds up for a week, then I'm glad I got some use out of it before it goes in the trash. The pieces were about to go there anyway, right?

  I'm really happy to have a new pouf, silly as that might seem. Though we grabbed our valuables before the storm, so many "little" things got left behind and are now contaminated with deadly spores. It's things like this that I keep adding up in my head every time I find myself needing an item. It isn't worth getting sick trying to save a $2 ball of plastic mesh that's full of mold, but maybe it is worth trying to save less than $2 of yarn from the trash.

Happy Crocheting!