I Love My Heap

Like Jaala, I am getting together a bunch of things to donate to S's preschool for a silent auction that they have for their big annual fundraiser. I've been in Clean-Out-the-Materials-So-I-Don't-Feel-Guilty-About-Unfinished-Projects mode and used this auction as a means to attack The Heap.

I actually love The Heap, it's the only bit of real estate in my house that I can truly call my own, but it gets totally out of control (Out of my mind YO!) on a regular basis. The Heap exists because my house doesn't have much in the way of storage space. We only have 5 modest closests in the whole place and this makes it tricky to deal with all my crafting and art supplies. There is just no place to put them. Didn't people in the 1920's have piles of Krap that they needed to store too? I guess not, 'cause they had no closets.

And that is why I have The Heap.

I pile my yarn, books, WIPs, and knitting supplies on a little table next to the couch. Under the table I've got a tupperware bin with my yarn stash, a few baskets and bags with more WIPs, and felting supplies. The Heap is way cool to look at, and you can get inspired by all the stuff, but man, it has a life of it's own and it can get uuuuugggglly.


Even though I talk bad about it, like I said before, I do love my Heap. It's made up of all my prettiest and most interesting things and most of the time, it makes me very happy.

So anyhow, I have been really productive, thinning out the contents of The Heap, and contributing to my kid's school fundraiser. YEAH.

I am contributing:
1) A felted handbag made entirely of stash yarn.
2) A rose pin made from a felted resale sweater: It's pretty but it's too big and too 3D for me.
3) Soaps with felted roving covers.
4) A necklace I made for a craft fair a couple years ago.
5) 2 subscriptions to our Zine.
6) 2 packets of back issues of the Zine.
7) A crazy planter I made a while back.

Don't they look so pretty all arranged and labelled?


The felted handbag has taken me a year to finish. I knit it out of my stash leftovers: Cascade 220, Nashua Handknits Creative Focus chunky, Lamb's Pride Bulky, and a fancy mohair. The pattern I used was for a tote bag but when I felted the thing, it came out like a lumpy, overgrown clutch. The combination of yarns felted almost completely in the vertical, and not the horizontal. In addition, the little button flap was really wierdly deformed. I think the mohair strands must have done a crazy dance in the washer in order to glop it all together.

I valiantly tried, over and over, to fix this bad boy and never could get it right. Finally, I got a vintage button from the button tin at Gayfeather, and trimmed up the button loop to make it smooth and simple. It is looking much better now and I'm getting it out of the house while I have the opportunity. Please let me be finished with this thing. Please?

Hopefully I will have some time to knit tonight. I'd like to do a few rows on something.

Focus, focus, focus.

--Erika