I am certain that tomorrow morning, when Punxsutawney Phil emerges from his burrow, he will not see his shadow. If Phil has allergies like mine, he might well have watering eyes and a sneezing fit, a sure sign that spring is on the way.

Another sure sign of the nearness of spring is a need to clean house.

After months of spending an increasing amount of time indoors, chores both large and small accumulate. At first it can be just a small but insistent nagging, but eventually it builds to a crescendo of sorts and the cleaning and organizing must happen.

That is where I found myself this past weekend, and at the time, I forced myself to tackle some problems with my current yarn situation.

My first priority was organizing the Lamb’s Pride bulky weight yarn I am using for the African flower hexagons that will comprise the latest iteration of my Big Rug project.

In addition to all things Big Rug related, I also took time to tie together the myriad scraps I have collected over the past six months to form a continuous (albeit it with square knots) strand of yarn.

I started out with eight small balls of yarn and a seemingly endless pile of scraps. This is how my scrap project looked when I finished working on it this past Sunday:

and here is what it looked like today after I tied the last of the trimmed ends that I was able to find:

Part of the reason that I chose to work on this project today is that as with January, I wanted to set my intentions for the month, not to establish goals, but as a guide to my crafting activity for the month.

So for February, I want to continue to work on the rug and make substantial progress, complete a second training swatch for the Crochet by Numbers technique, get caught up on my various crochet-a-longs and swaps, and, last but not least, work on a project that has been nagging at me for a few weeks now and will not wait, but will be just the thing to work on when the Pittsburgh and Green Bay meet this weekend.