On Wednesday night, I decided to build myself a studio, and I started before 7am Thursday.
The first step was dividing my current bedroom into two sections by rearranging. I finished tidying the bedroom side this morning.
I am well pleased! Next up, the studio side.
It looks like a six month project, I know, but I’ll have a usable space here before the day is over.
Sewed the last few seams on this queen-sized top this morning. It’s for Daughter Number Three in fabric she selected and a pattern she approved.
I had to stand on the upstairs balcony to get the picture, because huge! I’m planning to do some piecing on the back, and here are the leftovers I’ll start with. It joins the stack of finished tops, so I’ve scheduled a long arm quilting lesson for the first weekend of June, which should give me time to get the back together.
After the sewing, I decided to assess the state of the stash I swore not to accumulate. Now, have some mercy, because some of the stuff in these pictures has been in my possession for over 20 years. But some of it, more than half of it, has been purchased since March. Here are the quilty bits (and a few chunks that might be large enough for other purposes):
Yeah, the pic cut off on the right, the camera can only capture so much, and I stood on a chair to get what I got. I think that table is 2×4 feet.
Here is the yardage that will become clothing and/or backing:
Yesterday, when I said I would not need more fabric until next year’s Fabric Fair, I didn’t realize how serious I was! I think I will hold off on any purchases not needed to complete something I’ve started with what you see here. And yes, there are two complete planned tops on the table, along with a slew of random possibilities.
If you’ll excuse me now, I need to go clear off my bed and my idea space.
P.S. I’ve changed the name of the the category “cass knits” to “cass makes things,” because I do way more than knit these days. The slug will stay the same so that all the links continue to work. Carry on!
Oops! I almost forgot to post today until I noticed that open spreadsheet tab. Not that I plan to post every day this month, mind you, but I am not yet far enough along on the 10K word goal that I feel comfortable skipping.
Not much has happened since I posted yesterday, except that the fabric I thought my oldest son might like came in yesterday– 24 fat quarters worth. It’s Hanami, from Connecting Threads, and I really like it.
I plan to make a Dresden Coin with it. 
I think the simple pattern in high contrast fabrics will work well for him, and it’s the least I can do after cheating him on his color vision genes. He was able to identify 22 separate fabrics on his phone, and he likes them, so I think we’re good. I’ll need to order some sashing and border fabric, but that can wait a minute because I’m still working on Daughter Number Three’s Strip Dash.
Alright, that’s it for today. Have a good one!
In which we say TaDa!
Now, I realize this one is not quite as impressive, being a mere 8.5 feet, but here is my Fourth Doctor Scarf. Go me.
I’m a bit ahead of my knitting schedule, so I need to figure out what is going to happen next. Now, I’m a list maker by nature, and a social worker by profession. I know that I know that I know that what gets measured gets attained. With that in mind, I made this hobby tracking page for my BuJo in December:
You will see I had to cross out “weekend” because we had an area-wide snow day this week and I used it to knit. Also, I’m in a different relational space now and some of my weekends will be filled with fun stuff that doesn’t include crafting of any kind. (The boxes, empty and with dots, just indicate the 10th such action, so I don’t have to count by ones over and over.)
So here’s the deal, I can’t decide if I want to think of the year in quarters or sixths. Finishing my scarf so early in February brings this to the fore because it affects how I allocate my remaining craft days in February and possibly into March. So naturally, I’m talking it out on the blog.
Sixths makes it easier to track the one ofs, but quarters is best for everything else. I’m leaning toward quarters, and will probably take a couple days to consider this while I catch up on my reading. I know the chart says I’m ahead on that, but the book on my right which hasn’t been touched for four days assures me otherwise.
I’m guessing I’ll knit during the week and do other projects on the weekend for a couple of weeks. Well three weeks if we include next weekend which is one of the “fun stuff that doesn’t include crafting” I previously mentioned. Yeah, okay. By quarters. Take a couple of evenings to read, pick up the last Fourth Doctor Scarf midweek, and do a different hobby the weekend of the 24th. Thanks guys, you’ve been very helpful. I knew I could count on you!
Errykitty gets to eat. Errykitty gets to use the box. Nokitty has to play Hot Lava 24/7.
Ya’ll. So tired. I contemplated going to bed, but the nightly tea ritual. So I’m not in bed yet. But soon.
In truth, I am trying to garner up the energy to tackle that closet one more time. I made a plan at work that I think will help me both weed out more things I don’t use and better organize what is left. But I pretty much have to take everything out and put it on the bed. And I’m tired, in case I didn’t mention it. I’m going to want my bed long before I would be through with the project. Unless this is magic tea.
I just want to reach in there and get dressed for the day quickly and efficiently. I mean, I know what I wear to work, right? Always a solid shirt and a print skirt. Occasionally a dress. Why don’t I already have that stuff on one side, with the shoes I wear to work underneath? Why do I paw through my dress shirts every. damn. work. day. to get to my solid knits? Yeah, I don’t know either. But I do know when I went in there to start the process, I eliminated three more things off the bat. And half a dozen more are iffy.
So, I’m excited to do that. But I am not going to bury my bed at 7pm, when bedtime is 8. Nope. Gonna finish this tea, wash my face, and slip between the sheets. Maybe tomorrow morning.
For years, plenty of them, my younger girls have been asking when I was going to make their scrapbooks. And my older kids have been asking when was I going to finish their scrapbooks. I finally have an answer: 2016.
This pile (plus two more bins tucked into a closet) is roughly 30 years worth of memorabilia, minus the 5-6 years in the middle which I’ve completed. Oh, and I quit developing pictures when digital got big, so there will be more.
Here’s the rub: I haven’t had a dedicated scrapping space since I left Topeka in 2000. I made one today. I’m not sure the children will be entirely happy with me, because I claimed the dining room table to make this happen. And I have to be able to leave things on it. Scrapping isn’t something I can do in 10 minutes and clean up and take back out for 10 minutes again later. I need the pictures, the papers, the books, the mats, the tape runner, the page protectors, the pens, the, the, the literally at my fingertips.
So. We’ll be eating our meals Japanese style, seated on the floor around a coffee table in front of the glass wall to the balcony for the duration. Not a great solution, but a solution. I want to get these stories down before I get dementia. My memory is sketchy enough as it is.
In other news, I cleaned the living room today. I have a guest coming this weekend. I’ve promised to spend next Tuesday with my daughter. I can tackle the bathrooms and kitchen next Thursday. Then Marscon the next weekend. That means I can start scrapping on the 18th (if I’m off for the holiday and I am pretty sure I am) or the 19th. The first thing I have to do is look at all this stuff and see what I actually have. It’s been moved and removed so many times that all I have now is a great big jumbled up mess of memories.
It takes forevah to brew 2 liters of coffee with a keurig.