(Photo: about a third of them.)

There’s a big zipped storage bag that’s been moved around again and again these last four years. It had the leftover yarn from the original ocean afghan. It had the added deep royal skeins for the background of the coral reef one. It had the leftovers of any Malabrigo Rios seen coming or going since those were started.

Some of it had become a tangled mess.

Today was suddenly somehow the day to just go deal with it.

Every ball that needed it is now rewound. Every tangle is banished. Every yarn is ziplocked away squished in with its nearest peers and only then put back into that big bag. I know now what I have, I know for sure what I don’t have, I know none of them have room to run around and cause problems again inside those, and I know how to find exactly the color I want amongst the dozens of others. Greens here, blues here, purples…

And it all started with wanting a close but different shade for the next section of coral. All the times I’d gone through that bag, I stared in amazement, I had not seen that one; how could it be so.

Then a sense of determination: so what else was hiding in there?

And now they’re not.