New Year, New Goals

So it's 2019, and 2018 wasn't my best year for either blogging or crafting. I did finish several pairs of socks and a few other knitting projects, but no quilts during that time. The coming of Thanksgiving and the mystery quilt with Bonnie K. Hunter served as a welcome kick-start to get back into both sewing and blogging. But it also was a kick in the pants to me to organize my scraps and long-neglected projects, both of which were in a shocking state.

When I had to make blue string blocks, it forced me to organize my strings. And not just the blue ones.

 I have a 3-drawer plastic unit; it goes beside my sewing chair so I can just reach down. Top shelf is cool colors, middle shelf is warm colors, bottom shelf is neutrals and browns. The above photo was taken when I was almost through sorting the cool colors drawer and dumped out a bunch more.

I thinned it down considerably. I stirred up a LOT of dust and had to take frequent breaks. I threw away strings I disliked or were too small for my purposes, and now my three drawers are reasonably tamed. I also started the process of organizing my other small scraps. All of this was in the week immediately preceding Christmas. I ended up getting my entire sewing area thoroughly vacuumed and the storage area under the Megaquilter much neater. I will probably do other purges and take more pictures to document this in the future, but I took a break from that when Christmas came.

This was Daniel's gift to me, and I got them on the wall for the Last Noel.

I was detoured right around Jan. 1 with a friend's post on Facebook about "Bullet Journals," and I fell into a rabbit hole thinking about ways to apply them to my life. I took a notebook I've had since 2011, a gift from a student, and had been using very sporadically as a quilting and knitting journal. If you look back in my blog, you may see some of the WIP and UFO reports I've made in the past were based on notes I originally made in this book. So far, I have not really caught the desire to write in a bullet journal daily, nor to make it look pretty. I did pick 12 knitting and 12 quilting goals (loosely defined) for this year and entered them down in the notebook. But for now, my "bullet journal" is just experimental and I don't think it would make a good picture at all. However, I will post my year's UFO goals from it here on the blog.

The way it works is I select a random number from 1-12 each month, and that number is the project I work on during that month. Then I will have to report on goals achieved or missed each month, and maybe connect with one of those awesome link-up parties that some bloggers are still doing.

UFO or stash reduction projects (knitting/fiber) randomly chosen each month.

1. spin the light green/silver roving from Sock Summit
2. spin the autumnal Dicentra Designs "Black Bottom Stomp" roving in merino/Tussah
3. start a new pair of socks
4. Manu cardigan
5. Manu cardigan (it's in fingering weight, I figure two months are necessary)
6. Rosalind cardigan
7. Mint Chocolate cardigan
8. spinner's choice (may order fiber if that is what I want to do that month)
9. small gifts for gift stash
10. On Your Toes cardigan (or bail and frog it)
11. start new cardigan from reclaimed yarn stash: boyfriend or favorite color(?)
12. any knitting finish
13. (bonus) design my dream colorwork cardigan 

UFO quilting/sewing projects randomly chosen each month

1. classical tote bag
2. bowling style bag
3. linen blouse
4. machine quilting finish
5. machine quilting finish
6. machine quilting finish
7. machine quilting finish
8. 1996 Piecemaker's top
9. mariner's compass hooked rug
10. rainbow star quilt (applique)
11. frugal patch quilt
12. felted wool blanket
13. (Scrappy trip)
14. (LOTR paper piecing)
15. (Baltimore album quilt)
16. (Extra baby quilts)
17. (Spare block quilt "scrap soup")

Numbers beyond 12 are "bonus" choices that can be substituted for another one if it comes down to getting nothing done, or can be done in addition to a completed month's project.

These UFO's are an extension of my yearly urge to clean up my sewing and crafting area. I am assuming I will be working on one quilt and at least one knitting project of my own volition each month; these are in addition. 

So this month I chose the random number 2: the Dicentra Designs spinning fiber was very easy to find and my spinning wheel was easy to dust off and get going again, while Steve and I watched a few episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. 

 It was incredibly fun to get back into spinning. I love these autumnal colors.

 And, believe it or not, the two bobbins of singles plied perfectly; they worked out to exactly the same length! Now to figure out a fun future project to knit with this yarn.

The bowling-style knitting bag is still in pattern pieces on my work counter from more than a year ago, and I will attempt to get to that. I know where all the supplies are.

My current sock project is the Bovary socks, top-down socks so a little out of my comfort zone, in some "Vixen" Hipster Knit sock yarn I bought at Sock Summit in ...2011? I am approaching the toe of the first sock; it has been fun to knit, although kind of slow. I would like to finish both socks by the end of January, so I can join the World Down Syndrome day knitalong. 

My current sewing project is obviously, finishing the Good Fortune quilt top. Hopefully by the end of January as well. Then it will join my 5-7 quilt tops awaiting quilting. I seriously need to get some machine quilting mojo going. But for now I am happy to have my goals lined out.

More Dusting of the Blog; Thanksgiving

 As my few readers know, I took a very long hiatus from blogging, from January until October of this year. The catalyst was a broken laptop, but I also got distracted and worked on things I haven't usually blogged about in the past. So we are catching up, but today will be more traditional, post-Thanksgiving. I know how to blog about all the homemaking business of Thanksgiving. The pies are always made the day before. I made the ones on the top: Chocolate Bourbon Pecan pie (plus some extra filling), two Apple-Pear-Cranberry, and the Birthday Blueberry on bottom left (Steve's birthday is the same as Thanksgiving this year; he was born on a memorable day for those above a certain age.) Quarta made the Pumpkin Pie (extra filling in the tin) from a Binging with Babish video. The butter crust was particularly tricky. Mine were just made with Crisco. I don't even really measure anymore.

 After pie-baking most of the afternoon, Steve took me out for Chinese. These adorable cuties were parked next to us. Quarta is fond of using words like "doggos" and "puppers" and I have to say, they made me want to use them too.

 I love the fact that I have a well-stocked herb garden that can be harvested even in the late months of the year. Actually, the parsley is growing as a weed and I need to plant some in my herb garden. But our gardening philosophy is to encourage weeds that we like. I have no process photos of the bird, or, sadly the group of us at dinner: it was only 5 of us at home, plus Steve's mom. Daniel is in Scotland visiting my sister and eating haggis instead of turkey.

After dinner Quarta went to visit her friend whose family was having a feast at their church for all comers; then when she was dropped off in the evening, my friend, her friend's mom, left us two slices of Pie-Caken, which is a thing she has learned to make. I will stick to basic pies, but I did have a third of a slice (pecan) for breakfast this morning.

And now, one of the main reasons I needed to dust off my blog. This is my most recent photo of last year's Bonnie K. Hunter mystery quilt, On Ringo Lake. It is not much farther along than this. I have made all the necessary blocks, but I have not connected them into a quilt top yet. One of the reasons I need to keep posting on my blog is to keep myself accountable with various quilting and knitting projects. When I am not blogging, I may not be quilting at all, and I may only be knitting in small increments. And even worse, I am certainly not keeping my sewing room neat and tidy. But, Bonnie has just issued the first clue of this year's mystery quilt, Good Fortune. Once again I am feeling the siren call of starting another scrappy quilt project. Some people shop on the day after Thanksgiving. I prefer to eat dessert for breakfast and start a mystery quilt that I have no guarantee I will finish. The obstacles are great this year:

1. I must clean my sewing room first, at least enough to be able to use the cutting table, ironing board, and sewing surface.
2. I must also make adequate progress on finishing On Ringo Lake, ideally within the first few weeks.
3. I know I want to change the color scheme, but I'm not sure yet how. I am leaning to changing Green, Blue, Red, and Orange to a more country/vintage palette of Yellow, Green, Red, and Blue. I don't really want to work with orange this year since I used a fair amount last year. But I am still dithering about the changes I'll want to make. Fortunately, dithering about the colors is something I can do quite easily while blogging!
4. The odds are very high that I will get distracted again and stop blogging, and therefore, stop sewing. Christmas is coming. Daniel is posting pictures of the Highlands. I might decide to start another language. 

You will notice that I did NOT list "I don't have enough fabric" as an obstacle. I have enough fabric to make about ten years of mystery quilts, only I might have to change the colors on them. Well, here goes, signing off and maybe I'll start in on some light cleaning now.

Works in Progress and a Reality Check

It was one of those "if you give a mouse a cookie" moments.  Although I still haven't been blogging much, I have been chipping away at various quilting projects in an attempt to get back to having something to blog about.  There is Allietare, with all the blocks finished and needing the setting triangles and borders:

There is Grand Illusion, which looks like this at the moment:

You'll notice I ran out of the gold constant fabric that shows up in the squares, and I had to substitute the gold stripe for the inner borders.  That's because, when I was playing catch-up last month, I mis-read one of the clues and I made 25 of each kind of 4-patch, instead of 25 of the one and just 4 of the other:

That means I have a lot of "orphan blocks" to use in a future project, and also I used too much of the original gold and had to use the other gold. But I actually like the stripe better, so it's all good. There was getting to be a large pile of fabric on my worktable as all these different scrappy quilts piled up, and I hadn't put any of the old fabrics away yet because I wasn't sure I was finished with them (and this was taken a few weeks before Christmas!):

But! I never met a scrappy quilt-along that I didn't want to jump into, and some of the chatter on the Quiltville Facebook page led me to the 365 Challenge from Australia.  The idea is to make a block every day, and the ones they were starting with were easy and cute.  All 3" squares so far.  I decided to go scrappy blue and green, and added that to the mix (Allietare red, gold, black and neutral; Grand Illusion green, pink and aqua; and the flannel baby quilts and string quilts I had been working on as well).  Here's the first 19 blocks:

 (Yes, that's Dr. McCoy in block 6, scraps from some boxers I made with Star Trek fabric).

There's no denying they are awfully cute little blocks.  But little! Did I mention they are only 3"? I have no guarantee that all the different fabrics will work together, but I did make the Farmer's Wife Quilt a few years ago (even though it's STILL on the quilting frame) and that all worked out.  I certainly am not worried about running out of blues or greens.  But I'm not sure whether I'll stick with it all the way.  I think it's a sampler quilt that wants to be more matchy-matchy than I am necessarily willing to be. It's kind of cool, though, to be able to do tomorrow's block today because it's already tomorrow in Australia.  But I discovered, in one of those necessary reality check kind of moments, that the huge mess of scraps, bits of fabric, and multiple projects in my sewing area, had made me lose my triangle ruler.  So I went looking for it.  The more I looked, the more it wasn't there, so I resolved to take the necessary action and remove all the mess from my sewing counter and put it on the floor of the family room:

 Um, yes. I need to deal with all that.  I have bins for strips that are 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3.5", and bins for some special fabric collections, and bins for strings and squares and bricks.

 First I had to declutter around the sewing machine, and vaccum the lint and dust it nicely.  I raised enough dust that I have been suffering from bad allergies for the last few hours, and that's why I'm blogging now instead.

I'm happy to report that my cutting counter has now also been cleaned and dusted.  I'm using it as a staging area for cutting up the rest of my flannel into squares (I'm getting out of the flannel storage business by making a bunch of utility baby quilts that I'll eventually give away). Oh, but I did also find my triangle ruler -- it was under some of the other mess on the cutting counter, and I did go ahead and make tomorrow's 3" block. The clean-up of the family room floor is going forward; most of my fat quarters are now put away, as well as yardage. There are about 4 bags or bins of scraps that need to be cut into usable smaller strips, strings, or squares.  That's a lot, but I can manage it if I work steadily.  And throw out some of the scraps I don't like anymore.  I've been discovering quilt projects that have been neglected for a long time. Some of them I don't like anymore.  I will eventually have to make some decisions about priorities.  Maybe I'll get together a UFO list for the year sometime.  But I have learned one thing for sure:

Apparently 4 active quilt projects going at once is the point I start to lose things.  And the warning sign is when your cat starts sleeping on your fabric pile.  She has had to move:

From on top of the lovely sweater I bought at Goodwill to unravel for yarn, Muffball rebukes me for taking on too much at once.  I know, I know.  I think I'll go to bed.  Tomorrow's block is already done.

Manic Monday

Daniel's first day of college classes was today.  Here's the cell phone picture Steve took on move-in day... wasn't that considerate of him?  He knows I like pictures of quilts for my blog.  Look how neatly the new bed is made with the new twin-extra-long sheets!  Shirt-Stripe Boxes is now in Pennsylvania.  Just a little over a week ago it was on his own bunk bed.

Daniel is loving college by all accounts, and Steve and Secundus are on their long way back home.  They drove from Grove City, PA to Hillsdale, MI today, and then on to Davenport, IA.  That's a lot of driving... Secundus is logging some serious hours.

The girls and I were at Family Camp in Wamic, OR last week.  We're all pretty much exhausted. 

Tertia and her best camp buddy, before and after the big splash.  They did this for hours.  I finished a shawl and started another one.  It was a good Family Camp; wish the boys could have come too.

Today was a manic day... laundry, and then some special shopping, then cleaning before the delivery of the special shopping items, more laundry, cajoling the girls to do their chores, killing fleas (I treated the cats more than a week ago, but the stragglers are die-hards).  I tried a new recipe for macaroni and cheese today, Quarta picked a few blackberries to go on our ice cream for dessert, we watched a bit of an older Pride and Prejudice miniseries on Netflix, we assembled a tabletop soccer/foosball game the boys never put together from at least two Christmases ago, I went out to Knit Night at Starbucks for about 15 minutes, and I still have to sort laundry.  I actually did more laundry today than usual because my extra cleaning was part of an intervention I'm staging in Secundus' room.  Pictures to follow.  Honestly, that boy needs some serious organizational help.  But the only way I'll ever be able to get in his room is when he's halfway across the country.

I can't believe I need to get the back-to-school planning done for the rest of us.  Where has the summer gone?

Some Grandma quilts

My mother-in-law has been busy.  These are some quilt tops she had me pin for her; she'll tie them a little later.  However many tops I may finish, she can easily do about twice as many.  And obviously, we both like scrappy!

I really like this little one, with green and blue batiks.

This one is like an elegant tiled floor.

The handyman is coming tomorrow morning: I'll be getting a new countertop for my sewing area.

You can kind of see where the formica surface has peeled away, but what you can't see is that it's my own improvised supports holding the sewing table up, and the sewing surface is warped.  It's going to be replaced with butcher-block and there will be new supports installed by a carpenter who actually knows what he's doing.  I can't wait!  And they'll also be replacing the extremely wobbly rail around our stairs: it's been freaking me out for several years now.

In the process of emptying out the cabinet on the left, I rediscovered my stash of unravelled thrift store sweater yarn, and cast on a 6-strand cotton bathmat with some of it.  I was happily knitting a few sections of that while watching TV this evening.  There's always something therapeutic about mindless cotton knitting, whether it's dishcloths or rugs or blankets.  It's been the kind of week at school where you need therapeutic knitting.  Grades due, 7th grade drama, 8th grade stress, 6th grade squirreliness.  And Tae Kwon Do in my classroom.

Veterans' Day

This little girl got to sing in the choir at the Veterans' Day assembly at her school yesterday morning.  She was very proud in her new black dress and shoes.  She has worked very hard on blending with the choir and not singing everything at the top of her voice.  I wish I had been able to hear her, but of course that's right during my own teaching time.

We are still trying to sort out her math, though.  She's supposed to be in the Learning Support classroom for math, but that classroom appears to be swamped with a lot of kids needing all the attention of the teacher and aides, and they can only teach the 6th grade curriculum in preparation for the state tests; Tertia is not working at 6th grade level and we couldn't care less about the tests, so she gets packets of worksheets at her grade level from the Life Skills classroom.  But right now, it doesn't appear that she's getting ANY instruction in math, and that's going to have to change, however we address it.  She's established in her schedule and really likes school, especially the classes that she's fully included in.  I'm putting off sending an email to her teachers to try to figure out what to do about math, but it has to happen.

The battle against the pantry moth infestation continues... the big pantry was even worse than the small one I cleaned yesterday, and the worms were in all the little crinkles of the plastic bags and, for some weird reason, even in cardboard boxes used to store appliances we don't use that often.  Steve pulled all the sealed packages and put them on the table this morning while I was at school, and we worked all afternoon, wiping down and vacuuming the shelves.  And then vacuuming up the little escapees every 20 minutes or so.  And to think I've been puzzling over all the moths I've killed in the last several months: I thought they were wool moths and I've been pretty diligent protecting my fiber stash, when all along they were having a party in the far reaches of the pantry.  Well, tomorrow I'm off to hunt for sticky traps with pheromones to attract the male moths... we're going to break this cycle!

Pest control

It was going to be a day to catch up.  I got up early and made a batch of steel-cut oats for the kids' breakfast.  And, since everyone likes brown sugar, I figured I'd save a step and add it at the stove.  Then I opened the Tupperware cannister with the brown sugar in it and a couple of little white squashy things fell out onto the stovetop.

Plodia interpunctella, the Indian Meal Moth, in the larval stage.  And no, I hadn't cleaned my pantry thoroughly for a few years.  It was worst on the top shelf, which is above my eye level and where the honey container sat in a puddle of honey (Secundus doesn't clean up after himself) and the chocolate chip cannister had its lid ajar (Secundus again, with some others, not sealing it after grabbing a snack).  I mean, ick.  Even when the containers are sealed, they can crawl up into the crevices of the lids.

We have nice pull-out shelves in our tall pantry cupboard in our kitchen, remodeled 5 years ago.  So I pulled out the shelf boxes and cleaned them out, wincing each time I found a wriggly critter.  I threw away about 3 pounds of chocolate chips, half a pound of brown sugar, a bunch of crackers, nuts, and beef jerky.  Then I vacuumed out the nooks and crannies of the cupboard walls.  You know that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the one where they're in the Well of Souls and the snakes come out of the holes in the wall? Imagine that scene played out in grotesque miniature as the little worms poke their heads out of the pre-drilled holes where they had made their little nests.  Except even when I vacuumed, their webbing held them tight in there.  I had to poke each little hole with a toothpick and then vacuum again, and I'd have to go back every half hour or so to catch another one wriggling away.

I ran a couple dishwasher loads of the storage containers to sterilize them and will think about putting stuff back very carefully after I'm sure the cupboard is completely clean.  And maybe tomorrow or Saturday I can tackle the main pantry, which I'm sure has some issues too.

For some reason, I wasn't very hungry today.

WIP Wednesday #4 - Quest for the Holy Grail

This will be my fourth time linking up to Freshly Pieced, which is kind of a quilter's block party.  Since we just recently returned from the Great American Road Trip, there hasn't been too much sewing going on yet.  But I do have three Famer's Wife Quilt blocks to share, one of which I made this week.

Continuing in alphabetical order, we have Box.  It's a simple 9-patch, so each of the individual squares finishes to 2".  The HST's were cut 2 7/8", and the one square was cut 2 1/2".  That's a wacky vintage gray print I used - pretty sure it's not 100% cotton.

This is Broken Dishes, but I think of it as Grandma's Broken Dishes because those were her colors.  The check is some of her fabric, I think, and the flower pattern is from one of my mom's aprons.  This was another one where I drew a grid of 2 3/8" squares to make the HST's.

And the one I made this week: Broken Sugar Bowl.  This is another 9-patch pattern, very similar to Jacob's Ladder.  I used one of my Grandma's old aprons for the sugar bowl fabric.

She must have loved that apron a lot, because it was mended very carefully in several places.  Look how she first sewed a bigger patch on the back, then reverse appliqued the edges of the hole.  And she even matched the pattern a little bit.

Here's what it looked like on the back -- the patch was machine hemmed, but hand sewn on.  It is a really pretty vintage print, but there aren't many usable bits of fabric left unfortunately.  There's even a little bit of fraying on one of the triangles in the sugar bowl that I didn't notice until the block was together.

Now, the Holy Grail for me has nothing to do with quilting; what I'm really in search of is a clean, healthy, well-organized house (with kind, well-behaved, respectful kids, of course).  Not that you'd know it from looking at it or anything.  So when we came back from vacation, I realized that company's coming in less than a week and summer vacation is FLYING by, so I would need to act fast to get the house in even semi-acceptable order before All Hope Is Lost.  The way things go during the school year, I don't do much cleaning.  And of course, summer vacation is supposed to be for fun, right? Well, sometimes I get the nesting impulse and cleaning is actually fun.  A little bit.  A very little bit, and only when you pick a tiny corner of the house where no one else ever goes that you know will stay clean for a day or two.  Like the basement.

I'm always intrigued by little racks and storage things for organizing your house.  But just locating the hammer and 2 nails for hanging this rack was an ordeal.  And yes, those are canning jar lids tacked up onto the wood - I'm not exactly sure why, somebody once said it was so that mice couldn't get through the knotholes.  There are a lot of them, especially on stairs.

Our basement is a scary place.  Here's the site of my unfortunate accident at the beginning of the summer.  That's after I vacuumed up vast quantities of spidery cobwebs from the rafters and swept up the loose dirt and rocks a bit.  Yes, about 10% of our basement walls are bare earth, and that is probably a bit of groundwater seeping up in the corner there and turning the earth damp.  I've been concentrating on cleaning the storage alcove - we call it the "coal cellar" although really the old furnace burned sawdust.  The last time it flooded we lost the particle-board shelving unit along the far wall and I recently bought a metal rack to replace it.  So that's been put together and I'm slowly organizing stuff in there.  I'm spraying the walls with a bleach-water solution to help with the mildewy smell.  But what I really need to do is to clean the parts of the house that will be used by the 19 people that are coming for our family reunion next week - especially the guest room and dining room.  Are they going to care about the coal cellar?  Probably not.  But I actually have a chance of cleaning the whole coal cellar, and there's not a chance in the world of getting the dining room neat before they get here.

Spring Cleaning - better late than never

The old aquarium sold on Craig's List... yay!  And to a nice vet from the Oregon coast who needed an emergency habitat for an abandoned corn snake.  He took the whole setup in hopes that he could find a home for the snake and use it for fish someday.  He had a lot more compassion on the "poor little guy" than I would have had.  Catch me leaving a snake in a cardboard box in my living room for even a second!  I would be climbing on top of the piano.  But it's a relief to have that out of the house and a little bit of time to give the living room a much-needed reorganization.  Not much time, though -- guests are arriving for Bible study in less than 4 hours.

I've moved the bookshelves in the living/dining rooms around, and we now have 3 by the front entryway.  One is holding the 10-gallon aquarium and A-list theology books, and the other 2 are probably designated for the Great Books set and more theology and history.  That's about as far as I've gotten, besides trying to locate the missing pieces for 2 chess sets, 3 checkers sets, and 2 sets of dominoes.  Some of my children apparently have a compulsion to drop them behind bookshelves (I suspect Tertia).  The worst is the random playing cards I find all over the house in odd corners.  I keep putting them with the massive Hand and Foot deck in hopes we will play that again sometime.  I'm going to make an attempt to tackle the scrapbooks this summer too.  I'm writing it down here so I can't weasel out.  The scrapbooking gene completely missed me, so unless I get to write the captions under the photos that somebody else organizes and puts in place, I have no desire to do it whatsoever.

I made Kale Chips with the bunch of Kale we got from Grace's Garden this week.  They're actually quite nice - in the way that healthy food is "quite nice" if you adjust your expectations because of its healthiness.  Secundus has been snacking on them a lot, but the girls took one look at the dark green leafiness of them and shuddered away.  I'll put them out tonight next to the chocolate chip cookies Primigenitus made.  Wonder which will be gone first?

The Allure of Red and Aqua

I have been noticing a new-to-me color combination a lot on the quilt blogs: red and aqua.  For years I had a subscription to at least one quilt magazine so I could keep up with these trends, but I've been simplifying, or trying to, the last few years and I've also been focusing more on knitting instead.  I was surprised by how much I immediately loved this color combination and wanted to do a quilt in it.

It's also appealing when you add in some sweet pinks to the mix.  That helps temper the aqua skull and crossbones a bit, maybe.

Now, I'm not really an aqua person.  I never thought I was, anyway.  Too close to teal, which is about the only color I don't love.  (I won't say I don't like it, but I'm not terribly likely to use it much). But it's been growing very trendy in recent years and, as trends have a way of doing, aqua has been growing on me subtly without my being aware of it.  I decided to lay out a possible grouping of fabrics from my newly reorganized stash, figuring I probably wouldn't find much aqua.  Ironically, I had a harder time finding true red, because of my red Chinese Lanterns quilt from a few years back.

So, I'd have to buy more red, which I can't do because I have absolutely no more room for fabric in my sewing corner until I make about 5 scrap quilts to use up what I've got.  In fact, I could probably make a monochromatic quilt similar to the above in blue, green, pink, purple, orange, and yellow, and then we could talk about fabric shopping.

You can see some more inspiring examples of the red and aqua color combo here.  I really do like the idea.

Bought a new vacuum cleaner this week.  It's the one on the left.  The old one has lost its mojo, and some of its attachments.  The new one is supposed to be especially good at picking up pet hair, and it comes with a special attachment you can use for grooming your pet during shedding season:

<Snort!> You just try that on any self-respecting cat!

Coming Up for Air

Okay, the last few days have been a bit of a frenzy.  It's my aunt's fault really.  She shared a link to the Moda Bake Shop's Framed in Quilt, which I loved, because of course I love scrappy quilts.  This quilt was designed by Little Miss Shabby, whose site I also visited and loved.  So I put both in my blogreader to follow (you can do that when you have a blog, it's very fun.  I think you can do it even without a blog, but I haven't figured out how yet).  That was how I found out about the "Giveaway Day" at Sew Mama Sew, which is when hundreds of blogs get together to have a big blog party and give stuff away.  I have spent every last free moment of my time for the last two days visiting blogs to see what they're giving away and putting "pick me pick me!" type comments to try to win some of their fabulous loot.  It's inspiring to see how many other fun blogs there are out there.  I'll be excitedly watching my inbox to see if I won anything.

Of course, what I was supposed to be doing for the last few days was not trying to win new stuff, but to slim down my old stuff.  The stack of craft stuff to clean and organize has moved away from the wall and is now spread out through the family room.  Yarn is organized, some quilt projects are organized, but I just discovered a moth infestation in some of my older spinning fiber and a stack of cards and letters from my wedding (19th anniversary is later this year).  I have numerous plastic bins but some are missing lids, and I have some random lids with no bins.  I keep getting sidetracked with archeological finds like my rug hooking and that triangle rag rug I was knitting at least 3 years ago.  I'm going to finish it, by gum! And of course, the kids need my attention every few minutes and I have to teach school every morning.

Now that I know about it, the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day will be something I want to participate in next time around.  Too bad that I wasn't ready for it this time, because I could make up several nice prize packages - scraps that I'm not in love with anymore, leftover cuts of fabric from quilts, some vintage things I've picked up here and there, extra balls of yarn, quilting magazines and books.  It will be fun!  I'll have to figure out how to run the "random number generator" thingy they talk about to choose winning comments, and I'll probably have to recruit tech help to set it up, but I can do it.  And now, I'm off to do more cleaning.  Steve is coming back from business travel tomorrow and it would be nice if he could walk through the family room.

Cleaning my corner

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. 

William Morris

One of my new year's resolutions was to clean my sewing area before some HGTV show tries to stage an intervention there.  Now, my sewing area is a 6' x 6' alcove off of the family room, fitted with some old cabinets and a countertop sewing table that I hope to hire a carpenter to replace this summer (because it's falling apart and shored up only by my own pathetic carpentry skills). In that small area I do mending, machine sewing, ironing, cutting for various sewing projects, and I try to store everything I need for sewing, quilting, knitting, ironing, papercrafting, gift-basket making, mending, thrift-store-sweater-unravelling, rubber-stamping, rug hooking, embroidery, soap-making, paper-making, and picture-hanging.  We don't even talk about scrapbooking... that is the elephant in my living room that I have been ignoring for many years now.

There is also, of course, "the beast," my mid-arm machine quilting frame, which takes up the rest of the south wall of the family room and slightly obstructs the entrance into my little nook.  It has a shelf for storage underneath it, and some of the overflow ends up there.  But even so, it's getting ridiculous. I have enough scraps for many more quilts than I will ever be able to piece.  I desperately need to lose a couple of hobbies and be more selective with the ones I keep. 

So I started by removing all the junk from under the sewing counter and from behind the ironing board and on top of the cabinets.  I dusted, and I finally finished the painting that was finished two summers ago for the rest of the family room.  That's Devine Colors "Mocha" on the walls.  Nice and cozy.  I'm slowly allowing stuff back into the alcove, and slowly deciding to get rid of some fabric and old patterns.  I haven't gone through the actual cabinets yet because they are in relatively good shape -- my quilting fat quarters and yardage is neatly organized above the sewing counter, and most of my yarn stash is underneath the cutting table.  The cabinets above the cutting area need to be reorganized, and I'm pretty sure I need to part with those yellow curtains I bought years back that are not what I want anymore.  I am not going to make them into decorator pillows or tote bags or Sound of Music dresses for the girls.  I also don't really want to do anything with the navy blue corduroy.  And I really need to be ruthless with some of the old balls of yarn that the moths have found.  But what about the _______?  That's the trouble -- every bit that I uncover has its own eloquent plea for considering its sentimental value.

Here's the stuff that is waiting to be let back in.  Somebody send a professional organizer to dig me out if you don't hear from me.