my oldest WIP

Last week I visited my parents in Massachusetts. While I was there, my mother asked me if I wanted any of my old yarn. I couldn't remember buying yarn as a kid, but apparently my stashing instincts started young.

I think back then, given my 50-cent weekly allowance, my main consideration was price. Sparkly was a bonus. That must have been during my rainbows and unicorns glitter sticker phase.

"You can toss it all," I said to my mother. "It's all acrylic and I don't really use that any more."

"What about this skein?" she asked. "I remember you couldn't decide whether to spend that much money on yarn."

I stared at it. I couldn't remember buying it, why I would have wanted that color, or what I was planning to use it for. Yet my mother remembered me agonizing over it. "It probably cost $3."

"That was probably a lot of money to you back then," she said. I thought about the $70 skein of Buffalo Gold in my current stash, which I'd thought was a bargain at $45 and bought with nary a flinch (though I did just get released from a vow of stash chastity). My, how times have changed.

But some things haven't. The bag included the beginnings of a project. Apparently at some point I decided to make a crocheted afghan. Didn't get very far, though.

Unlike some of my current WIPs that have been in progress for, oh, three or four years, I was able to instruct my mother to throw it out with the lot without a qualm. She wanted to give all of it to a local senior center, but that stuff has been sitting untouched for over 20 years and I would have hated to infest their yarn with any unwanted visitors. After having opened my clarinet case for the first time since 1988, to discover that tiny grubs had chewed away half of every reed in the case and had probably had a go at the instrument cork too, I was a little paranoid about the state of the yarn. Yech.