The Unintentional Gift

 I gave John the most unique gift for the holidays this year.  This morning I went through the desk shelves that I stored paper and other stationary.  I divided the items into four separate piles.  They were Goodwill, keep, donate and recycle.  By the time I was done there was a large pile for Goodwill and donate.  A bit for recycling and less than half was put back.  

There were duplicates and even triplicates of some items.  In my defense most of the duplicates and triplicates were at the very back of the shelves where I find it difficult to get to.  I then put back the keep stuff.  Had John move and pack up everything leaving the house. 

I then gave him a pile of John type stuff.  Not surprisingly most was recycled.  

After all that I told him I had a unique holiday gift for him.  I told him the bottom shelf was his, but he was responsible for dusting and polishing it.  He promptly took his 3D toolbox and put it on the shelf.  It fit perfectly.  Also added were two additional tools in their own boxes.  Apparently this was on of the best gifts that I have ever given him.   Who knew it could be this easy?  

I hope everyone is having a very happy holiday season.  

Cleaning Out The Cobwebs

 Today I decided to clean out one of Eric’s boxes. I kept the yearbooks and the pictures.  Threw out the yearly journals.  Also a lot of awards for the best smile and friend.  Birth certificates for his stuffed friends. I did some crying too.  In the end I expected to reuse the box for yarn, but that did not happen.  There were several big cracks on the bottom of the box.  The net result was that I reclaimed 2 square feet of space. I also threw 4 bags of recycling into the recycling bin. That is something to be proud of.  The yarn will have to find another home.

The journals that I save because I thought that they would bring me joy, only made me cry.  The loss can still be raw all these years later.   It still amazes me that a child and later a young man with so many physical and medical issues could bring so much joy to so many people.  

I know all my family grieves him in their own way. No form of grief is bad.  We all move forward at different speeds.  

Over Done

 Today I tackled some deep cleaning, tossing and redoing a bathroom to make it less cluttered.  Gone is the magazine rack that held magazines and wash cloths.  I used to go through about 50 wash clothes a week with Eric, now that I am only using them to dry my hands I don’t need that many out anymore.  All the wash cloths are either in a drawer or have been reassigned to other uses.  The counter is far nicer to look at. 

At lunch I was able to open a fresh jar of peanut butter for the first time since January. I am not sure how much of that is contributing to my current level of hand pain. 

I had so much recycling going to the bin that I asked John to carry it all out. By the way he was more than happy to help carry it out.  I wanted to do more cleaning and tossing. My body said it was nap time. My hand said “what did you do to me?” Yep, I might have been too gung-ho on the cleaning front today.  

We also went dryer shopping today.  We tried to shop local first, they said it would be about 10 months to get a gas dryer I wanted.  Then we went to a big box store and got the same dryer to be delivered this week.  Guess which store we bought from?

I also filled one box for Goodwill for good measure.  

Binge Cleaning

 After a bad morning dealing with getting older and still feeling very trapped by COVID19. I resorted to binge cleaning after lunch.  I did a pretty good job.  I filled the green rollout recycling bin 1/2 way full and added one trash bag to the garbage rollout. That made me feel a little better. 

After dinner I finished the same gloves I made a few months ago in pink. The picture is below. This time I kept copious notes and they were 1/2 inch too short.  So doing my thing, I will rewrite the pattern to suit my needs.  If they turn out good, I will type the pattern up. Wish me luck.  

A Rest Day?

 Since I over did things yesterday, I tried to take it easy and have a slow day.  I almost seceded. Unless I am sleeping my inclination is to keep moving and going.  To that end I used a bag of poly fill in the craft room as a desk. I then proceeded to empty and throw away or recycle most thing. I did find a pair of circular knitting needles that I did not realize that I had lost. Filled up the to be shredded basket that I just emptied on Wednesday. 

I did a little knitting on 2 different projects. One were finished.  We also tried not to watch every show that dropped today.  We did save a few for tomorrow. Well it’s getting late and I am going to call it a day.   

Really Deep Cleaning is Tiring

Today I had a system for cleaning up craft room 1 aka the guest room.  I started out with one bag for trash.. one bag for recycling..lastly one box for charity.   I spent 1 1/2 hours going through everything that I swore I would never touch again. I had everything in boxes to be ignored forever, I don’t think my family agreed with my plan of moving the boxes out of the way with out going through them. So I meticulously went through everything bit by bit.  I threw out projects that were never ever going to be repaired.  I put beads in their places.  I cleaned off resting places for things that I had just not put away.  I put all my broken stitch markers in a box to be repaired.  I stacked boxes for future delivery.  I worked until I was too tired to move.  Most importantly I managed to empty one box. That box will help organize my knitting projects stacked on shelves, so they don’t fall as often   I have one more box that I hope to finish tomorrow. At least with that part. The whole process should take about a week to finish. I might even try to get a bit of sewing done before I need to set up the guest room.

At the same time I was washing the last 3 skeins of yarn from Spin Together 2021. Once they are mostly dry and can be moved into the house for the final drying, I will take a picture of all the skeins.  Some colors did change drastically, others were about the same.  Then I will play with the order of colors to make my next shawl.  I might even spin a few more skeins to get the colors just right.

I even had time to add 6 inches to the never ending scarf..

 

Unintended Cleaning

 I was so tired that all I wanted to do was take a nap.  Instead I organized my tea cups and tea.  I wonder if I could really justify a couple of me Pawley tea cup in the 30 ounce size? This is just a thought.  I gave the plants some of the expired tea. Plants that are not native to the Sonoran Desert need a boost of caffeine a couple times a year,  I am sure that there are other things that they like in the tea too.  By the way coffee works just as well if you don’t drink tea.  I was left with 2 bags of recycling, 2 bags of trash, 1 1/2 shelfs of newly freed space, no tea cups on the counter, tins for an art project and a lot of happy plants. 

On the me side I got 3,000 steps while cleaning. If I thought I was tired before I started, we’ll after I finished I was just to tired to move.  I still feel it hours later.  I hope tomorrow is a good body day, I could really use one about now.  

Knitting Books

I have got to really organize my knitting books by subject matter. I spent one and a half hours looking for Domino Knitting by  Vivian Hoxbro, for a class I am teaching tomorrow. I decided to take one more quick look before bed and found the book in the sock knitting section of my library.

This means that I really need help to sorta d organize my books.  I would trade this for duplicate books or hand spun yarn. I think I am down to about 10 feet of shelf space for knitting books.  I am not the best at organizing despite my best intentions.

On the bright side while I was looking for Domino Knitting,I managed to fill two bags with recycling. These things will never have to be dealt with again.  I also manage to get over 9,000 steps today. Then just like that it is almost 11:00 p.m.  so good night.

A Hard Day

It’s been almost two months since we lost Eric. I needed to do Eric paperwork which in it self is not hard, but the emotions will over take me in a snap. I got through about half of what I needed to do.  Then it was time to find smiling pictures of Eric to remember the happier times. Eric had a smile that just lit up the whole room.

After that I went on a small cleaning spree.  I managed to get a lot in the recycling can. I also did 2 loads of laundry.  There seems to be a lot less laundry now. The loads are also smaller.

Before I knew it time had flown. It was time to reheat some stew for dinner. After dinner it was. I needed to figure out how I managed to get 6 eye lashes stuck in one eye. I still don’t know how I did it.  The skin around the eye is still a little tender.  My advice is not to get 6 eyelashes in your eye at one time.

It’s getting late so it’s time to call it a day.

Extreme Zenning

For the last two days I have been in the extreme zenning mode. Yesterday it was a closet. I have filled three bags of clothes that will be going to Goodwill. There is actually room in my closet now, not much but a little more. Unless I find the time to ride about 100 miles a week on my now nonexistent bike.  Swim laps for 90 minutes a day, six days a week and rock climbing a few days a week these cloths will never ever fit again. I am sure that some very skinny person will love these retro clothes.  As mom to Eric that level of fitness is never going to happen.  I am lucky on most days to walk 8,000 to 10,000 steps, just a small fraction of the steps my younger self took. As a grownup, I do not have as much time as my teenage self to get all that movement in every day.  

The Zenning continued today with old paper work that no longer needs to occupy space in my closet. Eight bags of shredded papers from the 2010’s  made their way into the recycling bin.  I managed to fill it up half way.  We have a 90 gallon bin.  I need to save the rest of the bin for every day recycling. As a bonus I found enough none expired coupons for a free case of diapers.  This has inspired John to find more old papers for me to shred.  

Even though I took most of the day off from knitting to let my knitting elbow rest, the rest of the world knows this as tennis elbow. Let it be known that I no longer play tennis so , therefore I can not possibly have tennis elbow.  I have decided that I must start finishing projects other than hats, which seem to fly of my knitting needles. I am really great at starting projects. Not so much with finishing.   Speaking of knitting needles, I might give some more away to a young mother who home schools her kids and teaches knitting to the next generation.  More space. I need more empty space in my closet. 

Well it is getting late and I need to try to rest, ahem I mean sleep.  

45

Hat number 45 for the year was finished tonight. With any luck and a little time I just might be able to knit a decent number of hats this year. I currently have 3 more hats in progress. I even managed to make the ugliest shade of blue look pretty by combining it with other yarn.  There is no use trying to get rid of this cone of yarn either. Every time I try some one hands it back to me.  I think I have about 6 hats left on this cone of yarn.  Then I am done with it.

Zenning went well today, I managed to get 5 bags of recycling and 2 bags of trash out of the house.  I have also divided books to go to some of my knitting friends which should leave the house this week.

Physical therapy left my foot stiff and sore.   Hopefully I will be done with this soon.  Although there is one exercise that I can not figure out and neither can the therapist.  Three different therapists have said this one exercise is done differently.  Oh well.

Around the House

I am feeling better. I just have this nasty cough left. So I am slowly getting things done around the house. John has really done a great job picking up my slack while I had the cold.  My major accomplishment of the week was filling the recycle bin to the top. There was no more space so I have started a recycling bag for next week's recycling pick up already. I found another area to zen. So far most is being recycled or or sent to Goodwill. Very few items are finding a new home.

As usual when I miss a day of laundry, the laundry room was knee deep.  I stopped after four loads and left the rest for later. Since I got all of Eric's laundry done this should not come back to get me. The other four plus whatever Eric makes tomorrow can wait for tomorrow.

I also gave up trying to figure out where a can be added to my blog. I guess I will have to ask my techie about that or do a whole lot of reading. I really need to learn some basic coding. 

Hat number 31 was finished today. I have 1 hat that I need to weave the ends in. I also have 2 hats on the knitting needles. I am adding some rolled brim hats to the mix to shake things up a bit.  I think that I will get my bedtime snack and do a little more knitting tonight.

Early December

Eric is just getting over the cold that he has had since last Thursday. John and I are very tired and trying to get too many things done at once. Can someone invent a 48 hour day for me please?

Holiday presents are going slower than I would like. I wanted to be done with a few more than none by this point. It did not help that my body needed rest today. Hopefully I will make progress tomorrow.

Deep cleaning has kicked up to high gear again. It's not like I have the time, but with itemized deductions disappearing next year it has to be done by December 31st. We filled the recycle bin to the point that it needed to be stuffed down yesterday. So that is some slow progress.  All the quilting batts have left the house and freed up some much needed room. Fifty percent of that is filled already. I also need to clean up a desk to turn it into an electronic work station for John. You did not think that I was going to play with the electronics did you? The electronic equipment has started to arrive. So I guess that I am way behind on that too.. I wonder how many drawers will need to be emptied?

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

Deep Cleaning

My deep cleaning by the numbers today:

1 car load to taken Goodwill, thanks to John.

2 boxes ready to be re-homed tommrow. 1 box is full of art supplies. 1 box is full of carrier and gift bags and cfl light bulbs.

3 trips to the recycle bin. My recycle bin is now half full and it will not be collected until next Monday.

Countless projects were put together to be finished soon. I need to finish the deep cleaning of the craft room and its closet. I did manage to get about 3 cubic feet of closet back.

I also managed to get 2 loads of laundry finished. I also found time for a long nap.

A Busy Day

Today besides a doctor's appointment and a physical therapy visit,  I started organizing my handmade items for the November 10th fundraiser at the Tucson JCC For Eric's day program. At best I have 3 tubs of items with very few items left in the pipeline to finish. Well maybe John's dreams will come true and I will come home with 4 empty tubs.

We we also had less than 10 trick or treater's tonight. I blame it on being a school night. I bought as much candy as I did last year but had so few kids and we have so much leftover candy. John and I did not even touch the candy this year.  Yeah for us. Our leftover candy will be sent to Operation Gratitude so that they can include candy in the holiday care packages for our troops. 

The neighbor who picked up our unwanted Halloween decorations yesterday, thanked me for them tonight. They are in her front yard and her kids love the "new" decorations. I will have to drive around and see where they landed. This is recycling at its best. 

I just need to wait 1 1/2 hours so I can take some more Excedrin for my hand. I have noticed that about 10 to 12 hours after physical therapy my hand just starts to throb. So I guess that I will find a quiet activity to do and try not to wake the guys up. 

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.

More

Yesterday I started the next round of really deep cleaning.  I bought storage containers which turned out to be the wrong size for what I needed.  So they were returned today.  I bought a better solution today.  I started filling it with jewelry supplies and even with de stashing some things already, I appear to have  a space shortage.  My only current solution is to destash more and make a bunch of jewelry for the November Taglit fundraiser.  

So far today I have recovered half a shelf and a magazine rack.  I filled a bag so full of recycling that John will have to move it to the recycle bin for me.  I have also emptied out another magazine rack and taken that to the recycle bin already. 

 I wish I was not so tired from that really stupid cold that I got last week.  My mind is quite willing. My body is very tired.  I would throw some caffeine in, if I did not already know that is the wrong solution for me now.  So a quick nap before I go to pick Eric up is in order..

The Search is On

I am not always as organized as I would like to be. Sometimes that leads to cleaning sprees like today. I misplaced my copy of Mollie Makes Magazine Issue 58, 2015. So I started out looking in the most obvious places. No luck. Then I went through all my knitting bags that I could find. No luck there either. Then it was off to the craft room. I tore everything apart. As I was putting things back I did some organizing and tossing. I also decided that it was not worth repairing some items so they got tossed too. 

The end result is that I still can not find my copy of Mollie Makes. There is less clutter in the house. My crafts are more organized. I put some of my yarn into the Old Pueblo Knitters yarn stash. Which means more things out of the house. The recycle bin is over halfway filled, I also filled one bag for the trash bin. I found some weaving warp in the wrong place. So the warp yarn went with the other warp yarn and more yarn was put into the drawer and out of bags. I also found the Valentine gifts that I got for the kids while Teri was still in college. I hid the gifts so well it took me a long time to find them. Ooops! I did not even remember that I misplaced them. Luckily it was not chocolate. 

I know that I will find the copy of the magazine when I have given up looking for it. Just like the Valentine gifts. In the meantime I will keep looking, organizing, cleaning and tossing. Also I am not sure why the majority of the post is not like the first line. Sorry. 

Today's Progress

Today I tackled 7 boxes in Teri's room.  I did the daughting task of separating her tea cup collection that she inherited from her Grandama Audrey from my own tea cups and precious memories.  My collection is now neatly arranged and Teri had 3 boxes to deal with.  I also found a lovely Spode serving dish that we got as a wedding present and never used waiting for a fancy enough dinner. I made the decision to unbox it and make it an everyday dish, because everyday is special.  

For those of you who remember what the shelf used to look like here is the new view.  I still might rearrange things so all the Woodland Flowers tea cups are together.  John on he other hand has 4 boxes to break down and recycle.  I also did not need all the newspaper that I thought that I would.  This means that the recycle can will be extra full this week.