Don't Turn
Away
Bad Stuff

It's a hard lesson to learn. I know. We've been taught since were like 36-months-old to organize our Legos, Lincoln Logs, and Crayola crayons and to throw away what we don't need or use. I'm all for being able to walk through my living room and not trip over boxes or toys or even my cat. Oh, that's right I don't have a feline anymore. Never mind. Anyhow, I've read and underlined key parts of David Allen's Getting Things Done, but if I followed his philosophy absolutely, I'd rarely get good stuff. David is all about editing and re-editing and ditching and forgoing stuff you're never going to use. If your best friend's Aunt Jeanine wanted to give all the sewing supplies she's acquired since she was 16, David might suggest saying, "Thanks, but no thanks."
But I'm not like that. If you want to give me your old Singer sewing machine, wood spools, tangled rickrack, even bad 1980s sewing patterns, I will take them. If you want to dump your old aquarium, Childcraft books, and tiny fake Christmas trees from years past, I will gladly accept those too because you just never know what gems lurk in the junk. I recently was given more knitting needles than I know what to do in this lifetime, but I found unused cable holders and a hairpin lace loom in the lot, things I might actually use at some point.
So if you have to form a conga line from your front door to the trash can besides the garage, graciously receive all donations. If you say "no" even once, that person won't give you stuff ever again. He or she will just think, "The Sewist? She turned down all those rubber stamps I tried to give her last year. She probably won't want these old hats."
So if you're wondering if I was given the hat pattern above, I wasn't. But I did get some similar freebies a few years ago, when I got to excavate a seamstress' estate before her belongings were sold in a sale.