I made a TARDIS

This post started off as a comment in Lara's blog about the potential of mess, but somehow started to grow into a post in itself and has been sitting in my blogger drafts file for nearly a month. Luckily, it fits my latest FO, so I'll can finally blog it up. I made a TARDIS (shhh, don't tell Auntie Beeb). Ravelled here.

For those who don't know what a TARDIS is, it's the time machine in Dr Who. It's capital letters because it is an acroynm for Time And Relative Dimension in Space. For the purposes of this post, what you really need to know is that its bigger in the inside that the out.

While I was knitting the thing, someone asked what it is for (its a glasses case, by the way, hence the photos), and flatmate-Kirsty pointed out a real TARDIS would actually be a lot more use and instructed me, in her ironically firm way, that I really should be knitting a real one. She's right; a bit of 'relative dimension in space' would be a good thing. Though, specifically, dimension in space with shelving. We so need more storage in our flat.

And this is what brings me to my response to Lara. Her point was inspired by Felix's point that much of mess is a matter of deferring the delight in the everyday. Lara celebrates this, delighting in the possibilities of her craft cupboard. But for me, the idea of such a pile of possibilities just makes my skin crawl. This is why I like to keep my stash generally so low. I hate excess stuff. Yarn, furniture, mugs, food, anything. I never realised how much I hate it until living with Kirsty, as she is entirely the opposite. This is the one area in which our flatshare resembles the odd couple. I have a hatred of hoarding: she can't live without it. I'm sure neither of us would notice this as odd except we share living space, but after nearly four years of the personality clash, I'm starting to wonder if both of us don't boarder on the obsessive.

Credit where credit is due: Kirsty's hoarding includes keeping stuff that'll be useful later, she's not just stockpiling deferred moments of consumption (a point Lara's post also notes neatly). I remember visiting a waste management center in Germany when I was 18 (don't I have all the exciting holidays?) and being delighted to hear they collect things they can't recycle yet and store them in disused mines until they've worked out a way to use them efficiently. Somewhere near Berlin there is a cave-full of batteries. That is sort of wonderful, isn't it?

Maybe I just need to implement a way of organising these 'deferred moments' (be they hobby, chore or a bit of both), so they won't feel like a mess. Maybe we just need a bigger flat. Or more time. That, or David Tennant and his handy time-traveling box with the giant insides. For now, all this one does is store my glasses.