Sorting, packing, knitting

The imminent house move dictates a massive attack on the detritus of 25 years. When we first moved here we had 3 small children. Even though they all left home some time ago their presence here over the years is still evident. Fourteen years between them at university generated an awful lot of ring binders - all of which came home in holidays and somehow never left. "Cute" collections lined shelves in childhood and remnants hid themselves away at the bottom of drawers, wardrobes, desks, beds. Birthday cards, postcards from friends on gap years, boarding passes from their own travels, all such items secreted themselves in little opened cupboards, only to be discovered in the light of The Imminent House Move (TIHM)!

Tackling this major sort out has necessitated a major action plan. Spreadsheets identified rooms and within rooms items of furniture and within these items smaller target areas - drawer 1, cupboard 2, shelf 3 etc. Names were allocated to each task - more in hope than expectation, but, broken down, the task seemed daunting but not insurmountable.

The only issue that I had not planned for was knitting.

I did recognise, very early on, that my knitting paraphernalia was going to produce a large a number of packing boxes but I had not really given serious thought to what my thoughts would be when coming across long hidden items of furniture.

From the loft came my son's old drum kit. It was all there apart from the drumsticks and the foot pedal for the bass drum. Drumsticks were retrieved from a bookcase - of course and I had vague recollections of the whereabouts of the bass pedal. Many years ago my mother had given me a Lloyd Loom linen basket. This was a tiny basket, not a lot of use for linen but useful to pop things into to hide them out of the way. Its contents:

Lego Technic - 3 boxes

Silk scarves - 4

Microscope in box

Drum Bass pedal.

Once empty I gave this linen box some thought. It had originally been a dusky pink colour but my mother had sprayed it some 30 odd years ago. I have no recollection of the original lid covering but as of last week it was bare wood and that is all I remember it ever being. I had been knitting a throw for my daughter in beautiful greys and pinks - a great 100% merino wool blnd too. Unfortunately, my mind probably more on TIHM than knitting, I had miscalculated the amount of yarn needed and so the throw became more of a chair cover - the chair being a Lloyd Loom nursing chair that my godmother had given to me many years ago - see where this is all going now. This chair had also been sprayed by my mother and was in serious need of a new covering for the seat. The daughter's throw became the seat cover and the yarn remaining was used in an improvised pattern sort of way to make a lid cover for the linen box. Of course, these had to be finished before I could proceed with the spreadsheet. Quite pleased with the results but now I feel I should pack away all knitting whilst continuing with sorting as time is limited - this is the most difficult aspect of the task in hand.