For whatever reason, the first thing that I feel called to do at the end of every semester is to go on a cleaning binge.  This is likely due to the fact that housekeeping is never a priority for me during the school year.  The kitchen and bathroom are cleaned regularly and are sanitary, but several generations of dust bunnies have taken up residence under my bed.  I suspect that their gestation period is about four weeks so there are at least four generations cohabitating by the end of any semester.  That translates to a full canister on a Dyson Ball Animal Upright vacuum cleaner.  Go ahead.  You can judge.  But before you do, do you know what is under your bed?  To those of you who say nothing, we cannot be friends.  My self-esteem can’t take that kind of pressure.  Just kidding.  Maybe I can learn something from you.  Or better yet, maybe you’ll volunteer to come clean under my bed every week.

Back to the moment when I did clean…and all of the dust bunnies found their forever homes…

I love being at home when everything is neat and clean.  It brings such a sense of calm.  That was especially noticeable this year when chaos seemed  to envelop the world beyond the four walls of home.  

A benefit of my super cleaning adventures is that I always  discover things that I have forgotten that I have.  The negative is that I gather up items to put away and realize that I have more stuff than I have places to put it.  Both of these circumstances are a testament to the fact that I have way more material things than I need.  I am not a hoarder; in fact, quite the opposite.  I can be ruthless when it comes to getting rid of things; I’m a firm believer in the notion that memories live on within our hearts and minds, not in holding on to tangible items.  My collections come from things that strike my fancy in the here and now – mainly books and yarn. I am constantly sucked in by the potential found in beautiful fibers or a challenging new knitting pattern so I order them.  Or, I succumb to the power of internet marketing after reading a review of what sounds like a fascinating book and, without hesitation, click “buy now.”  I justify these purchases by telling myself that I will read a little or knit a little each evening.  Deep down, I know full well that during the school year, I have neither the time nor the energy for either, and that these things will pile up waiting for summer or Christmas break.  They become the proverbial carrot at the end of the stick.

This year, I discovered that I had way more worsted weight acrylic yarn for which I had either need or storage space.   Some of the unearthed skeins of yarn were partially used, colors that I had bought to make a small project or a small portion of a larger project.  Some were full skeins that were purchased for projects that I failed to complete or forgot what I had originally intended them for.  Yes, I could have bought a second bin, but I also already have more bins than I have closet space in which to store them.  You see the problem here.  As I faced this conundrum, the perfect solution came to me.

I decided to make Carol Anderson’s Rambling Rows Afghan.  I have made several of these in the past.  It is a simple but fun pattern to knit, composed of fifty-five squares and rectangles knit only in garter stitch and picked up and attached to one another as you go so that no sewing together is required at the end.  The afghans that I have made in the past have followed the pattern exactly; it uses five different colors of yarn in a systematic layout.  I decided that this time, I would use random colors throughout.  No color pattern.  As I finished one block, I would reach in the bin and pull out the next skein and move on.  This would provide the perfect way to use up the yarn in the overflowing bin.

I love geometric constructs, which is why this pattern appeals to me.  The way the two sizes of squares and the rectangles fit together throughout the afghan makes my logical mind happy.  The color layout in Carol Anderson’s pattern makes for a beautiful mosaic image of shapes and colors.  Breaking away from that in favor of random color placement would be a bit of a challenge for my pattern-oriented brain.  My hope was that the familiarity of the interlocking simple quadrilaterals would be enough to stave off any anxiety over “breaking the rules” surrounding my color choices.

Block one of the Rambling Rows Afghan begins with the biggest block, a large square.  As I completed this first step, I realized that I had used almost an entire skein of yarn.  My first thought was that I wasn’t going to have enough yarn in my overflowing stash bin to get through the remaining fifty-four blocks.  One block in with this big project and already I was feeling that my plan was a failure.  I would have to buy yarn to finish this afghan.  Buying yarn was antithetical to my intended goal.  I had to shake off these thoughts and tell myself to keep going.  I could face a yarn shortage if and when it became a reality.  Surprisingly, I was able keep my thoughts in the present and move on to block two, not worrying about what may come days or weeks from now.

I began knitting this Rambling Rows Afghan on May 19th with the intention of knitting a block a day.  That makes the knitting completion date July 12th.  We’ll see if I make that.  Once the knitting is done, all of the yarn ends need to be secured and some kind of border added around the perimeter of the afghan.  A crocheted border would be the most stable, but I don’t crochet well at all.  Maybe this is the time to learn a new skill!  We’ll see.  It will be July before I have to worry about that!

Here’s to happy knitting and controlling the dust bunny population this summer!

Update: As of today, I am on Block #32.