Felled by the Flu

I have been felled by the flu.  I have spent the last two days in bed taking strenuous naps and accomplishing precisely nothing useful.  Today I felt human enough to stand up but still far from functional.  I tried to read (I’m a grad student, reading is my day job) but retained absolutely no information from what I read.  I tried to knit but, horror of horrors, knitting was too hard.  My next thought was cleaning (when I’m sick I always get twitchy and want to clean things) but walking around leaves me wheezy and sweaty right now, so that’s out too.  I stumbled upon a happy medium.  I would organize the stash.

Now I really only knit socks or the occasional sockish sort of thing made from sockish sorts of yarn (mitts, booties, and the like).  That means I generally only buy yarn in sock quantities, making storage fairly easy in theory.  Somehow the theory hadn’t quite worked out and the yarn was infiltrating the rest of the house.  So I dragged out all the sock yarn (including the stuff in that drawer over there, and that one little bag in the closet, and maybe basket under the table, and a few other places) and dumped it on my chair.  I arranged it in a loose rainbow (cold medicine made that especially fun) and stuffed my card catalog full of it.  (I got mine from my university archivist, if you want one I can only suggest haunting old libraries and stalking craigslist.)

I have decreed that all my sock yarn (except the stuff currently on the needles) must fit in the card catalog.  It holds enough yarn for about 45 pairs of socks, which is more than I can knit in a year.  That should be plenty to have on hand at any given time, right?  Especially if you count the oh…um…7 partial pairs I have on the needles at the moment?  It also seems somehow pleasantly tidy and organized.  Perhaps most importantly, I feel as though I’ve accomplished something and have therefore earned another nap, which I will be taking now.