Swing, brother, swing.

This is the title of a Ngaio Marsh detective mystery. It is about a swing band and the accordian player is stabbed and so on and so forth. I am a big mystery reader and I do have a soft spot for the Inspector Alleyn mysteries. However, that is not the reason for the title - which is more to do with mood swings. It hasn't quite been metronomic, but there are some definite highs and lows going on.

I'm still taking part in the LSE 'Mappiness' study which involves plotting your happiness, relaxation level and awekeness using a little app. You can click here to see how happy people taking part are right now compared to the average. There's a map too and lots of other info on the site. I have now made 147 submissions to mappiness via the app and my graph is all over the fricking place. I started doing it just after Pooch and I separated so you can imagine for yourselves what some of the lows are about.

I compared it to a friend's and his was essentially the graph of a cheeky chirpy little bugger without a care in the world, which is fairly accurate.

I have been finally getting on with my stash review. I have been very influcenced by two things. The first is a print which the V&A has in their online store and which I will very shortly have in my flat:

The second was this article on 'Slow Stashing' from Knitters Review about a year ago. The article got a lot of attention when it was published but for some reason it has taken a year to sink in. So last night I went through about half my stash ans now have 2 bin bag fulls for charity and another bin bag full on ebay. (Click here if you're interested in some bargain Rowan etc). I can really relate to keeping stuff for 'should' reasons and that is most of the charity stuff. Also things that I had bought because I loved them but were just not speaking to me were definitely part of the 'unhappy' pile. And having done this I already feel so much better. A knitter on twitter wants some for her school knit club but there is plenty to go round so if anyone does want any for charity knitting then just email me your address and it's yours. Plus of course this frees up a lot of space in the flat which is gradually starting to look less stuffed and more homely. Somewhat ironic really when you consider the situation but there you go.

One of the lines I particularly liked from the article was:

"At its core, slow stashing involves being mindful of every skein we own, and only bringing in new skeins that are truly deserving of our time, our attention, and our resources".

Being mindful of every skein that we own is something that can easily be expanded to almost any sphere of life and ties in so well with the William Morris quote on the poster. Because if something is not useful, and you don't believe it to be beautiful in at least some small way, why give it space in your life?