I felt inspired to organize. Maybe it was a post I saw on social media of neatly organized rooms. Nonetheless, I was motivated. We lifted an old shelf originally housed in our living room up to our Office/Record Room. My plan was to gather every ball of yarn I own and organize them on the display shelf. This was quite the job seeing that I had yarn tucked under my bed, hidden in closets, totes, and baskets all over my house. If you’re wondering, along with blogging, crocheting is also a passion of mine. It’s a skill I picked up from my Grandma, and over the past few years I have expanded my collection from simple doll scarves to winter hats, dog sweaters and various clothing that I love to wear.
As I started my hunt for yarn I knew that the first part of organizing would be a breeze. For every ball of yarn I uncovered, I placed it on the display shelf according to fibre and texture. Each time I added a ball of yarn I felt a sense of pride. I found myself standing back to admire my progress after each placement. Once the large balls of yarn had found a home on the shelf I began placing the small ‘odds-and-ends’ in a rounded basket, just like the one my Grandma had kept her yarn in. The basket filled quickly and the tiny yarn balls topped the basket like an ice cream sundae making my organizing even more appealing.
For the final and most tedious part of organizing…the pile of tangled yarn. Cotton wrapped around acrylic, Merino twisted with Peruvian Highland wool, and blends webbed into the mix. I stretched the mass of string wide like dough trying to uncover a starting pathway. I strategically chose a shorter string of yarn and began untangling. Freeing the first tangled yarn and winding it into a tidy ball was motivation to keep going. The task was time-consuming but very therapeutic. The untangling reminded me of my Grandpa, untangling knotted necklaces as he sat in the tv room by the sliding glass doors that faced their vegetable garden. You see, he had the patience for a task like this. Anytime one of us got a knot in a necklace (no matter the necklace’s value – gold or costume) Grandpa would sit in the tv room and calmly work on the knotted necklace until it was ready to be worn. He didn’t get assigned this job because his hands were small. In fact, he used his hands for factory and construction work most of his life. I believe he graciously took on this job because he enjoyed the tranquillity that came from being single-minded on a task, the enriching feeling of success when the knot finally unravelled and the joy that came from handing an unknotted necklace back to a loved one.
The untangling of yarn didn’t take an afternoon but was a task that I came back to each day for a week. I sat on the carpet next to my organized yarn shelf in silence, slowly pulling, weaving and freeing each individual yarn. Like my Grandpa, I felt the calm that came from being single-minded on a task, the enriching feeling of success when the tangled yarn was rolled snug into a ball and the satisfaction of giving it a home on my shelf.
Tedious tasks are like meditation – requiring intention, focus, patience and endurance, and once they are completed offer a feeling of satisfaction.
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