Slow Progress

This weekend while putting up the Halloween decorations we decided to clean out the Halloween storage box. Some was trashed, but the best part was that some was passed on to someone else. I got very creative. I made a FREE sign and taped it to the box. Then I left it by the mail box. When we got back from dinner all of it was gone. Somewhere our unwanted decorations will be decorating someone else's house. How cool is that?

I am also cleaning out my closet very slowly. I put a bag by the closet and every time I go to pick out my days outfit, if I find something that I do want or need I just put it in the bag. This weeks total is 10 empty hangers. It's a slow start, it it is a manageable pace for me. And then it will go on to charity for its next life.

I have also also decided not to try create anything else for the November 10th fundraiser at the Tucson JCC. I will just be finishing what has already been started. I will suggest getting there early for the best selection. Now it's time to finish the next project.

Sharing is Caring or Is It?

We have always been told sharing is caring. Share your cookies with a friend. Popsicle's used to be made to break in half so that you could share with a friend. We give to charity to share with those in need. We break bread together as a sign of friendship. These and countless other ways are great ways to share.

Now here is where I get on my bandwagon. There are times when sharing is not caring. Sharing tubes of toothpaste, not cool, everyone should have their own tube of toothpaste. The plus side of this is colds will not spread as fast through the house. When you send your child to school sick or conversely go to work sick and share the illness, not cool. When you hug someone who is medically fragile, just because it makes you feel better and then tell the caretaker or person that you are sick, really not cool. What part of medically fragile is so hard to understand? When you go out shopping when you are sick, really!!! The person making close to minimum wage can not afford to get sick, they might not even be able to afford a doctor's office visit.

Lets face it we are living in an age where superbugs are a reality. The miracle drugs of my parents generations are losing their effectiveness do to overuse and bugs being able to evolve faster than scientists can come up with new versions of old drugs. So lets go very old school on this. When you are sick, stay home until you feel better. When your child is sick, keep them  home from school, day programs and afterschool activities. If you need to go shopping, Then go online, they delivery everything from groceries to ready made meals. Heck, you can even do your holiday shopping and they will even wrap and deliver your presents for you.  So let's care for each other by not sharing colds.

If you are wondering why this post now, Eric has been erypy for the last 4 hours. Eric has been exposed to any of those ways of sharing colds this week. I don't have the time to deal with this this week, I have too much on my plate. Most of all I don't want to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, it is not good for my hands recovery form surgery. I can expect a set back tomorrow.

So my request is PLEASE Don't Share Your Colds.

One Step Back

My hand has taken one step back. I need to slow down a bit on physical therapy among other things. So I gave my hand a day of rest.

Thus the short post.

This and That

The day started out with a BBD, but I did my best anyway. Now that my hand range is increasing, the exercises at physical therapy are getting harder. I don't know how they mange to get my hand so tired in 1 hour, that I need a 2 hour nap after therapy just to recoup.

I did get a lot of finishing work done today. I also started tagging some of the items. I am caught up to the point where I need to take inventory and see what I need to make to round off my fundraising table on November 10, 2016 at the Tucson JCC. Remember that 100% of the sale price will go to Taglit, which is Eric's day program and other special needs expenses not covered by program fees.  So it would be a great time to get your holiday gifts. 

I also decided to reduce the number of craft bags that I have. To that extent, John helped me empty out the hall closet of all the bags. I then started to sort through them. I have a bag and a half of craft bags ready to leave the house, this is from the quick first sort through. I will go through the rest of the bags again at a more leisurely pace and make the final cut on what I am keeping.  I would estimate not more than 50% of what is left. This of course does not count the bags that already have projects in them, they do not count in this process. 

Well it is almost tomorrow so it is time to call it a day. 

Projects Can Be Finished

Eric and I spent the day finishing projects. Eric and one of his Elmo's sat next to me as I worked. I managed to weight, label and tag all my Spinzilla 2016 yarn. Sorry friends have dibs on all the yarn. The good news is that it all leaves the house on Tuesday.

I managed to do the trimming on a dozen hand woven mudd rugs and trim the fringe. Next the failed attempt at twisting fringe was given up after 30 minutes. It did not help that the sound would not come up on you tube. The visual did not complete the necessary information to complete the task. So I did the fringe the way that I had learned.

Even without the sound I did learn that placing a heavy book on the woven scarf while tying the fringe did help a lot and made things go more smoothly. The scarfs were then washed and beat up. Yes, I slam freshly washed scarfs against a table. Then they get hung up to dry.

As as I was running out of energy, I decided to to set things up for tomorrow. I also emptied a knitting bag that tore and put the yarn away. I also decided not to repair the bag since it was not well made in the first place.

Zenning in 5 Minutes

Today after spending most of the day on fiber related activities I felt the need to do a bit of deep cleaning. Since it was 11 pm, I gave my self a limit of 5 minutes. In that time I cleaned out Eric's medicine cabinet and put a fresh bottle of shampoo out. Then I took the empty shampoo bottle to the recycling bag.

Most of the morning was spent setting the twist twist on freshly washed yarn and blocking hand knit and Chrochet items. Alas my blocking mat was not big enough so I will have to finish that later in the week as it is suppose to rain tomorrow.

A New Routine

Well it seems that I am starting a new routine with physical therapy. It goes like this, one hour of physical therapy followed by lunch and a two hour nap. Grrr. This does not help with my to do list. It also leaves me scrambling to keep Eric entertained while I try to catch up on my chores.

Today this lead to white and beige silk drying on one end of the clothes line and ten skeins of yarn from Spinzilla drying on the other with about four feet of empty line between the yarn and silk. I want a good distance between them so the dye from the yarn won't transfer to the silk. I would have finished setting the twist on the rest of the yarn, but I ran out of daylight. Since my left hand is still wonky, they will take longer to dry because I could not squeeze enough water out of them. I am really hoping that the lower humidity of fall will help the yarn dry faster.

I would also like to thank Prayag Verma for his very thoughtful suggestion for a new application for blogspot on my iPad. My post should be more regular now.

Night Time Pain

There is nothing quite like being up in the middle of the night with arthritis pain. Then having to take care of Eric before the aspirin kicks in. Eric was half asleep and still tried to give me hugs to make my hands feel better. It almost makes up for not being able to sleep.

Spinzilla 2016

For Spinzilla 2016 I spun 1,959 yards of yarn. mostly lace weight. Lace weight what was I thinking. The picture shows it all dumped on the kitchen floor. Now I have to wash it and set the twist.

Facts

1. It takes longer than a presidential town hall to fill a four ounce bobbin with lace weight yarn..just ask me how I know.. spinning

2. It is possible to fill the recycling bin to over full 3 weeks running..deep cleaning is the answer.

3. I really hate it when my screen goes blank and I lose an entire post.  Thank you iOS 10. Apple please fix the glitch. 

4. The universe has plans for all of us, it's just not talking.  

5.  I can't fix the whole world alone, but together if we all do a bunch of small things we can make the world a better place.  

6.  Children take you on fantastic adventures. Be prepared to follow.

7. I have spun over a pound of yarn this last week. Pictures and yardage tomorrow. 

It's time to end this post.. the screen has gone blank 10 times now.. John says at least iOS 10 has a mission..new tech hates me. 

Delving Deeper - Less is Really More

Today I hit another level of deep cleaning. I started going through the note books that I started making 12 years ago as a new knitter. I tore out and saved everything the new knitter in me thought was important. Things like how to do certain stitch patterns. Patterns that I was going to knit. Patterns that other people thought that I should knit. To the very old knitting magazines that I just could not let go of. Things that were just plain neat to a brand new knitter.

Fast forward 12 years and the notebooks are a bit dusty. Some of the stitch patterns that I thought were so difficult that I knew I would need written instructions for if I was ever going to knit them. Now most of what got tossed I can do without thinking. They are also in knitting stitch dictionaries or on the web. Patterns for triangular shawls that were and still are so pretty, that do not look good on my body type, my shoulders are just too broad. Yes the boring rectangular shawls look much better on me.  To the very lacy patterns that 12 years later I can now knit, but do not fit into my knitting life style. To the hat and scarf patterns that I can knit while I am half asleep or busy talking, yes they got tossed too.

I still have piles of old knitting magazines to go through and decide which ones I want to keep. If there is an old or vintage knitting magazine you are looking for just let me know very soon. I might just have a copy.

I am keeping it very simple. I go through one notebook at a time or one pile of papers 6 to 12 inches in height. If I finish that and still have energy I go onto the next pile or notebook. Depending on the age of the notebook or pile of knitting magazines I toss between 30 to 70% of what I have. Now everything else can be condensed in an orderly fashion without having to buy or find more storage. This will be the third week in a row for an over full recycle bin too. I am going at my own pace, but I feel that some people want me to go faster and just toss without looking at everything. I am not quite able to do that yet. I know that in the end that I will have more room for fluff and yarn. That's not what my minions really want to hear, but I still have bins full of yarn and fluff in the garage that I would like to someday soon move back into the house.

So the short term plan is more tossing, gifting, knitting, weaving and spinning things in the house. The long term plan is to go through the things in the garage. So that in forty years or so whom ever is going to do the last cleaning of the house will not have to call yarn hoarder's anonymous to haul everything off to sell to other fiber people.

Resting

After I over did yesterday, I had a very bad night. So I spent the day letting my body decide what to do and it wanted lots of rest. So I seem to be back into the cycle of do everything I can one day and rest the next. I really need to find balance again.

More Deep Cleaning

OK, so today I actually hired someone help me with the deep cleaning and organizing. At times it really helps to have another craft person to help organize a craft room instead of an engineer. While we were deep cleaning we also managed to get a few quick projects finished and out the door including a 4 foot by 3 foot dog pillow. It is bigger than Eric and very hard to finish. It took 2 of us to get the last seam sewn. I did the sewing and Amber held up the pillow. I also found 2 sets of old soft cloth diapers that needed to be surged in half so that the cleaning rags don't land back in Eric's room as face wipes.

Amber and I also divided the yarn into kits and projects in progress and just yarn. I have officially turned 1 closet into a Fibber McGee closet with fluff.  Sadly all the fluff did not fit in the closet, so I will have to look for more homes. We also separated the weaving supplies out so I know what I have to weave.

Amber and I decided that I was going to be the go to person during the Zombie Apocalypse. I will have all the fiber you could want for a price. We figured that I would have about a year's worth of knitting in my kits and at least 2 years worth of spinning. We did not even take a guess at the weaving supplies.  I also am passing on a sock pattern and using the yarn for something else. A few more balls of yarn were added to the destash bag too.

Still to go through tonight are a pile of patterns. Some from 12 years ago when I started knitting. I also found more knitting books not already on the shelf, so I think a book purge might be in order, but not today. My mind says keep cleaning, but my body says nap. So I will rest until its time to cook dinner. When John called after work, being the great husband that he is,"said that I sounded tired and is bring home dinner."