NEXT SWAP: Saturday, March 22, 2025, from 1 to 4 pm

$10 – Proceeds go to the Red Door Family Shelter

It’s swap time again! Time to tidy up your yarn stash and purge the stuff you’re never going to use. That’s right, you can bring us your shame and leave your guilt in our yarn swap bins with the assurance that the yarn that didn’t work out for you will have a second (or third, or fourth) life in a new home. What do you do at a swap? Bring in the yarn and needles you don’t want and take home whatever you like from our swap bins.

Bring

• Yarn (please bring in a ziplock bag)
• Knitting Needles & Crochet Hooks
• Knitting & Crochet Notions, Accessories, Books
• NOTE: partial balls are fine, but please bag them up together in a ziplock bag.

Details

The leftovers are donated to charities, and don’t be embarrassed by the quality of the yarn you bring, whatever is left over is donated to charities like Street Knit, most of whom prefer acrylic! If you want to donate but can’t make the date please feel free to drop it by when we are open, sealed up in a plastic bag. The only yarn we can’t accept is anything that is strongly scented (cigarette smoke or perfume). We are also a drop-off point for Street Knit and Knitted Knockers of Canada. 

You can donate to the swap any time we are open, regardless of when the swap is, and you do not have to pay to donate, you can just drop off your donations at the store. You still need to bag everything in ziplocks (which you can get affordably at Dollarama and Ikea).

• Saturday, March 22, 2025, from 1 to 4 pm
• $10 to participate in the swap (proceeds go to the Red Door Family Shelter)
• Dropping off donations is always FREE and you can do it any time we are open
• Drop-in, no need to sign up
• Everyone is welcome, all skill levels
• Location: 1382 Bathurst St, Toronto ON
• All leftovers go to charity (see above)
• If possible, we request anyone attending our events to please refrain from wearing perfume

Streetknit

Catherine from Streetknit says new and clean gently used outerwear is in more demand than ever! Mitts, gloves, hats, scarves, cowls and neckwarmers are all welcome, and you can drop them off at the store any time. Shopping bags, totes and drawstring bags are also useful and apreciated.

To answer the other questions that arose last time:

The pattern for the type of knitted bear shown below is available for free from TEDDIES FOR TRAGEDIES, THE AUSTRALIAN RED CROSS, and a crochet version is available from ATTIC 24. These bears were originally popularized by The Mother Bear Project and are great for charity.

Destash/Spring Cleaning System

So here’s a scenario …. you’re sorting through your stash (or your closet, or your bookcase, or anything else) , looking to purge, but you’re having a hard time parting with things that you know you aren’t using and haven’t touched in ages. Feelings are coming up, definitely some uncertainty – usually overwhelm creeps in for me and I end up keeping too many things – it happens, the subconscious is a busy place!

This weekend I was doing a little bit of spring purging and I came up with system that seems to have improved my output and brought me more neutrality. Based on Marie Kondo’s system, I pick up every object, and ask myself a question about the object: “Does this still serve my highest good?” Alternately, you can ask “Does this serve my greatest inner peace?” 

I look for an answer of Yes, No, or some kind of equivocal/uncertain feeling:

YES: If the answer is a clear YES, then yay, keep the thing! It’s still working for you.

NO: If answer is a clear NO, then send it on its way out into the universe. Whatever that thing was in your life for, you’ve already learned those lessons, and its time to make room for fun new things to come into your life! Don’t worry about letting the NOs go, they block better things from coming in, so have faith that getting rid of them is really the best thing for you.

EQUIVOCAL/UNCERTAIN: If you feel equivocal, uncertain, overwhelmed, fuzzy, blank, avoidant, resistant, etc, then you’ve hit an opportunity to go deeper and clear out something you are already working on, something you’re getting ready to release. The object isn’t really what you’ve equivocal about, its a belief or idea that it is associated with. Here are some questions that you can ask that can help:

• What have I been learning that this is a part of?
• Am I holding on to something I can let go of? What am I holding on to?
• Do I need to hold on to it? Am I still working on it, or am I done and I just need to let go?
• Why am I holding on to it?
• Is what I’m holding even mine, or does it belong to someone else? (other people’s beliefs frequently end up in our head …. )

LET GO: if you’re inclined to try and let go, try the following:

1. Try visualizing a big rose in front of you. Drop a magnet into the centre of the rose, and tell the rose its job is to suck up everything you’ve releasing. When the rose is done its work, send the it to the edge of the universe and blow it up! 
2. Visualize a big gold sun above your head (make it at least 5 times your size) and fill it with all the good things you want for yourself right now …. (self-validation, amusement and neutrality are always suggested in addition to everything else). Poke a hole in the bottom of the sun and invite it to fill you up completely, down to the quantum level.  
3. Revisit the object – do you still feel uncertain about it? If you do that’s ok, just file it away as ‘on the way out’ or ‘working on releasing’, and put it in a “Revisit this at the next purge” box. Chances are that the next time you do a clearing you’ll be ready to let it go and the attachment to it will be gone. Or even give it a week, you might feel differently after sleeping on it.