my livingroom. When I was a web designer, I loved white space–it just makes things on the page look pretty–if a page is too cluttered, with things filling every nook and cranny, it’s harder to see what you’re looking for. It’s harder to get the point of what you’re looking at.

Yesterday, I decided my house needed major editing. I’ve started with the living room because its most satisfying to have the public spaces look nice, but the real work lies in closets and cupboards, and of course, the basement. Feng Shui practitioners say that if your closets are messy your qi can get blocked even if your public spaces look nice. I believe it. You know we all like to look inside a hand-knit garment and see how much care was taken in putting it together, I think it’s kind of the same thing.

I finished the living room last night, and it looks much better. It’s like the furniture can finally breathe. I seem to have yarn creep. When I’m swatching, I may leave my single ball with a hook stuck in it, in a bowl or basket in the living room. One such little ball may be innocuous, but when every possible vessel in the house is filled with yarn, it’s not cute anymore, it’s just another thing to collect dust.

We have a neighborhood garage sale coming up on Saturday, perhaps that will be good inspiration to continue with this project. Oh, that and the fact that my parents are coming to visit. My Sitto–my maternal grandmother–used to say “a place for everything, and everything in its place.” She believed it. But it’s from Sitto that I also inherited my hoarding instinct, “siege mentality,” my mom calls it. The other day, Selma asked me, “mom, is there really a place for everything?” “Yes,” I answered decidedly, more likely to reassure myself than anything else. Of course, sometimes that place should be the Craigslist, The Goodwill, or Freecycle.

I’v been editing…