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.