It’s Finely Finished

 This is what craft room number one aka the guest room looks like when all the crafts are finely put away. The room is dusted and vacuumed.  John did the dusting and vacuuming.  This is usually the only time you can see all the carpet   

On the left side of the room is the Murphy Bed.  It folds down to a queen size bed.  A nice cozy spot to hang out in.  

The Transformation

Just yesterday night I was finishing up 9 dog pillows for the shelter which John dropped off for me today. Just 24 hours later the room has been transformed to a guest bedroom. I put away the sewing machine and supplies.  Put up the fold down tables. Then vacuumed. I forgot to dust or make the bed, I am sure my helpers can help with that.  After company leaves I might go through the books and thin them out a bit too.  I see more Bookman’s runs in my future.

Dog Pillows

I finished the 9 dog pillows for left over fabric. I sure hope that the dogs like Mickey Mouse. They are going to the shelter tomorrow.

Then I cleaned up the craft room. All I have left to do is vacuum. Lower the Murphy bed and make it.  Then the guest room will be ready.

Filing My Circular Knitting Neddles

This was the mess that had to be filed by size this morning.  Yes, this is the pile of knitting needles that I have used since Teri’s last visit.  I usually drop them in the front of the drawer or on top of the filing box.  I am usually so interested in starting the next knitting project that I don’t always fully put everything back in place.  The job took less than 20 minutes and will not have to be done any time soon.

All my current projects are in bags with patterns, knitting needles, yarn and the kitchen sink.  I wonder if John can 3D print small kitchen sinks?  Just a little more sorting and a few things left to put away.  Then it will be dust, polish and vacuum time.  Then my craft room will become our guest room.

More Spring Cleaning

I spent the day spring cleaning with an emphasis on going through everything and getting rid of what I don’t need.  This included going through the fridge and freezer and having one of Eric’s aides taking home all the high carbohydrate foods that would get me in trouble.

The craft room is now clean , dusted and vacuumed. Although at times like this I am jealous of the author Stephen King, because he has a dedicated work space and can close the door when company comes over.

I found something interesting about my new Fitbit Inspire HR model.   When I am cleaning and madly dashing around the house it thinks that I am running.  I did not know that I walked that fast.  It also did something totally unexpected.  It buzzed me and told me to take a rest. I took this to mean that my Fitbit wanted me to knit.  Why it just did not say it’s time to knit, oh well.  I also found that the larger band fit my wrist better.  I do have to admit that about 10,000 of the 12,000 steps taken today were with out leaving the house.  I did manage to get out for a walk around the block after dinner.

It’s time to call it a night.

Spring Cleaning

Now that everyone is feeling better and 2 rooms of carpets are clean, spring cleaning shall go forward in earnest tomorrow. My goal is to have the craft room finished by Saturday afternoon.  I will also be  decluttering counters and polishing cabinets. The floor boards are also over due for polishing.  My expectation is that I want to be finished by Wednesday.  I, of course will leave the windows to John.  Wish me luck.

Eric is back on formula tonight.  So this makes me very happy. I have a busy day tomorrow so it’s time to call it a night.

Zenning and More

I am currently zenning my craft room / guest room for company later this month. I am tired of moving things from room to room when company comes and then moving the same things back. So I have gone to Costco twice for storage boxes. It is my hope that once all the extra fiber and fabric is in one place I will be more productive. Just think I can add about a month more creative time to my year.

I am also gathering knitting things that I don't need anymore and hope to sell them to other knitting guild members. My idea is to recoup some space and money. Wish me luck. They will be priced to sell.

Speaking of being productive, I managed to drop off 6 hand knit hats, 12 hand woven scarves, 1 hand knit scarf and other new clothing items to the Flowing Wells Clothing Bank. My part of today's delivery is pictured below. My friend Rita also knit 14 hats for the kids.

Going into Week Three

Eric and I will be ushering out February and bringing in March together at home. Yes, another week at home. So if you need me, I won't be hard to find. At least I had time to get to Trader Joe's today for a few things. I am happy now that I left the cookies at the store, let's see how I feel about that mid week. Tomorrow I will try to get to Fry's to round off my shopping list. 

I will be completing knitting projects for me next week. Hopefully I can finish a few new hand knit items for me. Once those are finished I will randomly pull a new project off the shelf to finish it. I wonder how soon I can clear the shelf's in the craft room? Optimistically it will take a year or three.  It is time to go knit.

Blender to Tuesday

Monday evening as I wrote my blog I had such great plans for Tuesday. Well long story short, Eric shared his cold with me. I am not quite sure how Eric and I made it through Tuesday. Did I mention that this cold hit me like a brick wall, hard and fast? Wednesday was a little better, I even had the energy to watch Sesame Street with Eric after napping all morning. Eric was nice enough to nap all morning too.

Today Eric made it back to program and I slept for most of the day. On the sweater that  I am now knitting is about 1 inch below the arm holes in the mid 50's by row count. Now I know why some friends prefer to knit sweaters in the round, no purling every other row. I am also way behind on chores. I know that I will catch up 5 minutes at a time. I need to leave plenty of recovery time.

My sleep cycle is really messed up from Eric being sick and this silly cold. So the first thing I need to do is reset it. I figure with about 5 minutes of zenning the craft room tonight that I will be tired enough to sleep. Wish me luck.

Raising the White Flag

I am rasing the white flag today. The household has not fully recovered from the last round of colds. Eric has been cranky all day. So before I went out shoe shopping I checked Eric's tempature to make sure that I could leave the house. 98.6, I was good to go. Two pairs of shoes and 1 1/2 hours later it was 100.5. So much for finishing the craft room today.

i have finished row 21 of the sweater. Hopefully I can find some knitting time for the sweater later. If not it will just be hats and scarfs for charity. Tight now it's just Eric time.

More Zenning

Today was day two of zenning the craft room. There were some surprises along the way again, such as finding out that I had done enough knitting to move a lot of yarn to the closet yarn stash. Also 18 cotton yarn cones takes up about a cubic feet of space.

I am trying to organize the rack by fiber craft. This makes it much easier to see what I have lined up. Yes, I also found more yarn, please tell me that you are not surprised by this. I need to set up the wider loom to make some more rag rugs and summer shawls, yes I found a lot of supplies. A few quilts are in the line up too. Before and after pictures will be forth coming.

Today I sent 5 knitting looms to Ironwood Ridge Elementary School for their hat knitting project. One class makes hats for sick kids and baby's at the local hospital. A great project to support in my very humble opinion.

My hands are still tired and sore from last weekend so only about a half of an inch of knitting got done. I did however make a chicken tomatillo soup for dinner.  Cutting the vegetables was very interesting to say the least, no even cuts today. The best part is that we have enough for tomorrow too. Let me know if you want the recipe.

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." 

Another Use and a Fond Farewell

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that my craft room has had a major design change. What most people don't know is that the white cabinet on the wall also hides a Murphy bed.  The bed is now down in anticipation of Teri coming home for a visit.  I really like the versatility of having a multipurpose room, although when down the queen size bed takes up most of the room. The shellfs that John put up elimated all the bags that use to be on the floor, that way we can add 2 chairs and a foot stool in the room for company.  It seems so strange to me that my darling daughter has now been out of the house and on her own long enough to be considered company. 

I would also like to say good bye to the first pair of socks that I knit by hand. They are now amassing wholes in all sorts of places.  I have the skills but not the inclination or matching sock yarn for repairs.   So at this time I would like to say darn, darn socks.  Now they have been darned. They will not be heading for the landfill but rather they will be part of the stuffing for another dog pillow. 

Now to post the pictures and get on with my day.   

Ta-Da

The craft room is just waiting for a carpet cleaning on Tuesday before I finish putting things on the floor. No not junk, but organized boxes, spinning wheels, a loom and an Ott Lamp. So what do you think, is it better than before?

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving today. We had a laid back day. I got to use the oven for the first time since we bought it. The good news is that it was easy to turn on and the tempature  was  spot on. No more guess work and an separate oven thermometer.  The only problem was when dinner was finished, I could not find the off button.. Maybe I should have read the directions that came with the oven.  John was great and came to the rescue, he found the off button.   I might have to read he book before I use the other features. 

I forgot to cook the green beans, so we used the stuffing as our vegetable.  Before you say stuffing is not a vegetable, mine is made with a ratio of 80% vegetables and 20% bread. We had freshly baked sweet potatoes instead of whipped sweet potatoes. Since we used luncheon plates we did not over stuff ourselves. We saved some room for a slice of apple pie with ice cream. 

John added another shelf to the craft room. We will work on filling it this weekend. We are busy doing the little projects around the house. The kitchen is still in flux as we decide what goes where and then change things up yet again.  

A Place for Projects

John spent part of the weekend putting up a shelf in the craft room for me.  I filled it up with projects waiting to be started. It took me less time to fill up the shelf then for John to install it.  I think I have enough projects to keep me knitting for a while.   By moving some of my projects off the first rack, I have more room for larger items on the first rack.   

Slowly things are either finding their way to a better place or out the door. We finished the rest of our Bookmans runs today. The rest of the books will go to Goodwill on Friday along with a few other boxes. 

I Tink I Must

While I was reorganizing the craft room today, I found a sweater that I started over 5 years ago. My plan was to finish it. I thought just for the heck of it, I should try it on. Well it was 2 sizes too big. So I decided not to finish it.  So I think it is time to Tink the sweater.  For those of you who don't knit, tinking  is knitting spelled backward. So it is time to rip it out. So tonight I will rip out my first sweater in progress and start it again.  Hopefully I will finish it before it is 2 sizes too large again.  

Peeling Away the Decades

Today I spent cleaning the craft room and bookshelfs. Surprisingly by just putting 8 inches of old books in the Bookman's box, it felt like a big weight has been lifted.  They were all books about parenting a child with disabilities. How to get through individual education plans and how the various diagnosis would affect our life's.  Now that Eric is an adult they are no longer needed. 

I then went on through the piles that got moved into the craft room at the beginning of the remodel. A lot of things were just dumped in mass n the floor.  So every single item was gone through one by one. This is the type of cleaning that I hate with a passion. Magazines are being sorted. Books are coming off the shellfs with books that I want to read being put on the shellfs.  The before and after pictures don't show much progress today, but you can see more carpet. 

Saturday's Progress

The first part of the morning was spent cleaning and organizing the craft room.  I managed to. combine to jewelry supply boxes into one box. I am cleaning the room from left to right.  I am about halfway done.  Right now I am going through all my books, deciding which ones to keep. 

Part of the kitchen remodeling project involves reorganize all the srounding rooms.  So those of those who know me know that the bookcase in the den was 3 deep with books and other stuff. So the second part of the day involved going through all my. Cookbooks and fiber arts books. I am going to let some books go. The knitting books will go to the Old Pueblo Knitting Guild for their raffle prizes.  3 cookbooks have already left the house with my friend Lisa.  I have 2 boxes and 2 bags for Bookman's. This is the picture of today's progress. The top shelf is being reserved for for the TiVo, since John will move the tv to the other side of the den when the kitchen is finished.  

1975 and More

Today was spent doing laundry, I only had 7 loads today. All but the last 3 are finished and put away.   One of the loads was the last 2 rag rugs for the sale on the 21st of October at the Tucson JCC to benefit the Taglit program. All I have to do is trim the little bits and pieces.  I also finished one scarf and started another scarf.  

The big news of the day is that I started working on the next phase of the remodel, yes I know the kitchen is not finished yet.  I am so excited that my craft room is our very next project, that I started working on that project today.   While I was sewing the edging of the rag rugs it occurred to me that I had a whole lot of cake decorating patterns that were so politically incorrect that they had to go. Don't get me wrong, they were ok to make in the mid 1970's, but this is not the 1970's anymore.   So I gained a whole 5 inches of shelf space back.  Yes, they were recycled. It may not sound like much, but it is a start.  

Rumor has it that the rest of the cabinets and the granite are arriving tomorrow.