Aren't You Clever?

Nice dog hair on that.

My latest new start, Home Sweet Home by Good Housewife. It's stitched on silver 32-ct Belgium linen with the called for silks.

Instead of stitching, I've been working on my homework for the organizer. I've started a number of things but haven't finished them for various reasons. For example, this weekend I started to change the outlets. (When we moved in they were all brown. Who has brown outlets and light switches? Why?) But I was one outlet shy. Yesterday I ran to Home Depot and picked it up but after running all my other errands it was too dark to finish the job. (Since I have to cut the electricity to the outlet--by cutting it to the room, really the whole upstairs--it's a job to do in the daylight.) However, while I was at Home Depot--where three different employees asked me if I was finding everything I needed!--I picked up zip ties.

Part of my homework was to find paper storage. I had found this DIY project online. We had an old nine cube set in the basement languishing unused. Add a few hundred zip ties, and voila. I'd show you a photo, but the few hundred zip ties need to be snipped before I can load it up. I was so pleased with myself that I found a really cheap shelving system. ($8)

Today I pulled into the consignment store on a whim. I'm looking for a bureau and a bookcase but I saw this beautiful oriental cabinet in the window yesterday. The cabinet was too much money (and really dinged up). None of the dressers had tracks for the drawers, but I did find a red bookcase. Twenty four inches wide and five shelves--perfect for the corner! And the price was right. I have five days to find a bigger car and pick it up.

Okay, that outlet isn't changing itself.

Quilt Skillz

Last night was my last quilting class, and I'm sad to report that I did not finish my quilt. I skipped last week's class to dine out for the dogs (a favorite restaurant was giving 15% of your bill to the fostering program I work for). And I forgot to go buy stabilizer, so I still haven't zigzagged my applique.

Because I knew I couldn't work on the quilt, I brought the sewing box to class. (Another woman had "had it" with the quilt, came to class and sat for an hour, and then left. How weird is that?)

The sewing box itself comes from a DKNY sweater my mother bought me last Christmas. Since she was in the process of moving, she requested gift wrapping and paid an exorbitant sum to get this box wrapped with a ribbon! I was going to leave the box at my sister's but my mother guilted me into taking it since she paid so much for it. In her defense, it is a pretty nice box; it has a magnetic closure and everything. In my slow-paced craft room reorganization (I need a helper*!) I decided to use it to hold sewing projects that I have cut out but not completed. And it was a smart idea, because last night I just grabbed that and knew there was something in there for me to work on.

I finished the five seams on my MIL's Amy Butler bags from last Christmas (remember, my machine clattered to a stop).

Then I finished sewing the pillow I was stitching for my aunt when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. That was two years ago; she is already cancer-free.

It's just so weird that I can manage to juggle ninety million tasks when I have a job--at home and at work--but I am so discombobulated when it comes to my hobby. Really, a former boss once called me "terrifyingly efficient" and used to drag me into her office twice a semester so we could reorganize it. Maybe that's why it's a hobby because if I were organized and task focused it would be work?

* It'd cost about $300 to hire a professional organizer. Should I start a fund?

Nearly There

I have a pile of 98 patterns that will be variously placed on e-bay and made into grab bags, depending on the state of them. I'm still hoping to find a few more to reach my goal of 25%. Fortunately, I have stitched most of these.

As I clear up more of the craft room, I come across things I have stitched and finished. These items seem to float about because there really is no good place for those patterns I am done with. No more floating! There is a pile for them!

Unfortunately, I don't know where the pile should live, even temporarily.

Now you see how difficult all this "organizing" is for me...

Craft Room continued

I was flipping through Oprah's magazine--the one featuring clutter reduction--and came across a woman who buys cosmetics because "they're pretty." She has spent well over $30,000 on hair and make-up supplies. She vowed to get rid of 25% of her things, but only gave away 5%.

Anyone who's seen me at camp, or for more than seven days running, knows that makeup purchases are no vice of mine. However, I recently retrieved my cross-stitch database off our oldest computer and have been adding my new purchases--the stuff that was piled on the filing cabinet in this photo. (Oh, by the time I took the photo, I had shoved it into a basket. I had to; the big pile kept sliding off.) My project list has topped out at 413--that does include stuff I've stitched. I just never get rid of anything.

Fortunately, when I multiply 413 by $8 (an average chart price), I only hit $3304, which seems completely reasonable--especially when you compare me to the makeup hoarder. I have been collecting these things for twenty years, after all. ($165 per year. A lot, perhaps too much, but well within my means. She had to have her husband bail her out of $15K of credit card debt.)

If I were on Clean Sweep or Mission: Organization or one of those shows, they'd probably "let" me keep 25% of those projects. I'm considering getting rid of 25%. Unlike so many of you, though, I am hard on my charts. I travel with them. I write on them. They're still perfectly usable, but I'm not sure anyone would pay for them. And I don't want to trade because the last thing I need is something in return! I'll think about this more and let you know what I decide. (Suggestions welcome.)

In other organizing news, I found the perfect baskets to hold my in-progress stitching, my kits, and my finishing pile. They're from Target's new re/Organize store brand. I unsuccessfully tried to find a photo online, but you'll be able to see them soon. I only have two more weeks* to get things in shape before my niece comes over.

*She's not coming for three weeks but we are taking spring break in Tampa.

No Pride

As you know my niece recently had a birthday.* Because she's always trying to get into my craft room, the dude and I gave her a list of crafts we could do together: craft cards, style a scrapbook, concoct candy, sew an Ugly-style doll, make Muddy Buddies, construct a wreath, fashion a fleece scarf, applique an apron, paint a pot, transform a t-shirt, brew up body products, jazz up a switch plate, stamp-a-stack, decoupage a decoration, can a jam, string a necklace, knead ze dough (bake bread), or make felt acorns. We thought she'd choose a couple at some point shortly before she came over to work with us.

But she was kind of excited: she sat down with the list and put checkmarks by the ones she really, really wanted to do; circled the ones she kind of wanted to do; and struck out a couple (wreath making, applique, stamping, stringing). The most popular was the switch plate, which I had put on the list to round it out, although I had seen directions for it in a couple of the books I flipped through. At first, she had to ask what a switch plate was. It turns out, however, she had just told her mother the butterfly switch plate she had to have when she was younger was "babyish." She's also interested in canning, bread baking, making a fleece scarf, and making cards.

This means of course, that we actually have to--ahem--be able to work walk in the room. Fortunately, craftzine is in the midst of showing how some professional crafters organize their spaces. I'm taking careful notes.

The title of this post refers to what I am about to show you. I want you to know that I come by my disorganization honestly. When I was growing up we had what we called "junk rooms." If you've ever watched Clean Sweep, you know exactly the kind of room I mean. When I was very young, it was our toy room--you'd be knee deep in toys until the hammer came down. In this (rather seldom) cleaning frenzy, we'd always discover toys we had forgotten. You would have thought we'd have learned from this. In our adolescent days it was the room that had the attic access. Things were always getting dumped there on the way to the attic. (And you've heard plenty about that attic lately**.) When the dude (not the tidying kind) and I lived in our two bedroom apartment in L.A., half the study was given over to the crap. There was a little path so that you could get around the outside of the room where the bookcases were. Now, it's the craft room. (Although the basement is starting to get out of hand too.) Here's what I need to fix up in the next two weeks:

So you see what I am up against. I do hope you don't think less of me...

* Though high pitched, the girls were really very good. I only had to use my teacher-voice once when one girl pushed another into the pool. And sissy gave a lecture on not being down on themselves for being "fat" (two girls were spinning around saying "fat fat fat fat" which "wasn't directed at anyone" but one girl--the tallest and hence biggest--was blushing, and taking it personally). Ironic since sissy refused to put on a bathing suit to chaperon because she "was feeling fat." I'm pretty sure if you're a size 6 you're not allowed to feel fat. No, you've got to be in double digits for that.

**Did I mention my parents sold their house? They put it on the market shortly before Christmas and sold it three weeks later, after the first open house! If you need a stager, call my mother.

Mission: Stash Reorganization

A lot of people seem to have a tiny little fabric stash. Beginners? One at a timers? Anyway, I just wanted to show you a before* shot on what 17 years of stitching will do for you. See the blue Bucilla/Zweigart packages? 17 of them. See squares still enshrined in plastic? 10. That big piece just to the left of the gingham? A whole yard. (The gingham itself is 2/3 of a yard.) And you can't see the two afghans or the yards of hardanger. It's disgusting.

Now that's why I asked the question.

* Don't hold your breath on the after photos. It's going to take me a while to find a house in the neighborhood where it can live. ;)

I Need a Team

What I have.










What I want.

SBQ: Fabric storage

Since I am one of the people who contributed to this week's SBQ, I really don't have much to say. My fabric pieces are stored much like my overdyed flosses. Except they're not in ziploc gallon bags. They're in a big rubbermaid tub. They're only labeled if they are still in the original packages.

But did you see the most recent JCS? Martha Beth Lewis, the woman I love to hate, has an article--two parts, of course!--on stash storage. This month focuses on threads and fabric. (Next we turn to charts, tools, and kits.) So does she do her usual bloated best to inflate the section on fabric storage that I really want to know about? No. No, of course not.

She writes about two hundred words that amount to:

• Try not to fold it
• Iron it before you put it away
• Sort it the way you browse it
• Sew a piece of paper with thread count and color name on the fabric
• Put it under the bed

Gee thanks. Sort it the way you browse it. I would have never thought of organizing things by thinking about how I use them. Two hundred words! There's a whole sidebar on how to wind a bobbin--I kid you not. Over two pages dedicated to storing floss. But the best she can do on fabric storage is to tell me to put it under the bed? Oh for the love of Christ. Somebody blow up Hoffman Headquarters.

SBQ: Now Where'd I Put that Floss?

For those of you who use hand- or over-dyed floss, how do you store it? It's ugly. It is separated by brand into big ol' ziploc freezer bags, and stuffed--depending on whether I've put it all the way away--either in a cube in my shelving system or in a random rubbermaid tub. I don't know how much longer this can go on...

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A Wharton student--watch her, she's clever--is doing research on the craft industry with a focus on Joann's. She's looking for subjects and I told her I would send you craft store shoppers her way. Her email is deborahy AT wharton DOT upenn DOT edu. You know what to do.

Stamp Storage

I finally remembered to take a picture of the "Alex" set of drawers from IKEA. The top three drawers are about 3? inches high? (I'm bad at spatial relations.) The three bottom drawers are deeper. We figured we could put two Stampin' Up! sets on top of each other in those drawers, although I don't have so many stamps sets that I had to do that.


Here's a picture of one of the filled drawers. You can get a lot of stamps in them. I'm pretty sure that you could put 12x12 paper in there too, but I haven't done it.

In this picture, you can also see the hideous green rug that was in both bedrooms on the second floor. You can see why removing that from the master bedroom was our first project! Now that we have the heavy duty elliptical trainer in the craft room, I despair of ever removing the carpeting. It shall be done! Even if it takes a super-human effort on my part.

Maybe tomorrow I'll show you the "before" pictures of the craft room. Of course, I haven't done much work on it, so they are the before shots of some hypothetical future when my craft room is as it should be.

Book Review: Organizing Your Craft Space

Organizing Your Craft Space gives some straightforward advice to organizing your craft space. Imagine! The book is divided by type of craft: rubberstamping and stenciling, scrapbooking, paper crafting, quilting, stained glass and mosaics, beading, and yarn crafts and needlework. I would have to say the weakest section of the book is the one on yarn crafts and needlework. Perhaps it is my bias as a needleworker, but they didn't seem particularly inspired in their suggestions. Plus, they didn't have a “guest artist” whose craft of choice was knitting, crochet, or needlework. (Guest artists included Dee Gruening (stamping), Anna Corba (paper crafting), Sandi Genovese (scrapbooking), Freddy Moran (quilting), Susan Pickering Rothamel (stamping), Suze Weinberg (stamping), and Linda Woodward (stained glass).)

Ultimately, most of us are probably cross-over crafters and we'll all find something useful in this book about organizing our particular mix, taking a bit of inspiration here and more from there.

The book begins with a sort of schedule for organizing your room. It's a little remedial which the most disorganized of us really need. Two quizzes follow. Purportedly, these assessments will tell you what kind of style you have and what colors you should use to decorate. I thought these were a crock o’ baloney. First of all I scored 8 As, 8 Bs, 2 Cs, and 7 Ds. Am I an A, B or D? A leader? An idealist? Indeed. The "personality assessment"--to choose your colors--came up 9 As, 7 Bs, 10 Cs, and 7 Ds. Color C is Fire/red and I should choose this because I'm a hard worker always striving to be my best. Yes, right. And the tooth fairy's dropping by later this week to stamp with me. I got your personality right here. I want a green room, and green was not one of the choices.

An interesting thing about the book is the various styles that people use. There is something sort of appealing about every flat surface being empty—more room to work—but ultimately, that style seems sterile. In fact when I showed my sister how the paper storage unit I wanted would look in a craft room she said, "That place looks like a store!" (It had more than one of those units.) She's right. It didn't seem like a place people lived. When I think about what I want the room to be like, I think I want empty flat surfaces for doing what I do, but I don’t like the way those rooms feel. Empty flat surfaces are utilitarian but not inspiring. When I was perusing the pictures in this book, I liked the ones that had wooden sets of drawers, the ones where the furniture had meaning and personality, not necessarily just utilitarian furniture. I know wooden drawers aren't entirely practical since I don't have x-ray vision to see through wood. Plus they can be expensive. I know I can afford plastic, but would I want to work in that room?

There were no suggestion for locating the storage or other items used in the rooms. Like I have time to scour stores for this crap. I want to get to work!

So, back to what was so bad about their suggestions for needlework: they put floss in old cigar boxes and Krienik spools in glass jars. Oh, sure they look pretty, but doing those things is about as practical as these suggestions: "Empty floor space can be a great place to stack books [which can] serve as a makeshift table for displaying cute knickknacks or fresh flowers," and "Personally, I like to organize my books by color." I don’t know about you, but how am I going to use a book that's on the bottom of the "makeshift table" that's holding the knick knack collection? I’m not. And if I'm not going to use the books, what are they doing taking up space in my room? As for visual organization, I don't get it. Oh yeah, that pattern is in my orange book. This is why they write descriptive titles on the spines, people.

I really enjoyed seeing the pictures of other people's spaces—and there are a few that aren't dedicated rooms, one space is just part of a bedroom, for instance. I have a better sense of what I like and I know where I can compromise and where I cannot. The styles range from sterile galvanized tin storage to pretty shabby chic florals to wild burst of color so there really is something for everyone in this book.
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Last Saturday I popped into Mar-Stans the local unfinished furniture place. I looked at kitchen islands, but they were pretty expensive, and none of them seemed big enough. If I rely on this sense of seeming big enough I'm going to end up with a huge table. The room's going to be all table. It's like when I was a single girl in New York City, and I had the tiniest bedroom that I filled up with my queen size bed. When you walked into my bedroom you were on the bed. Oh, those were the days...but I digress. So we kept looking around the unfinished furniture because Sissy and I both need things for our new houses. (Sissy closes on her townhouse on the 24th!) And then we came to the gathering table. The price is right, it's unfinished so I can choose the color, and it's 54x36 and with the leaf it's 54x54. Perfect! The dude's out of town this week. Boy will he be surprised when he returns!

The Chapter on Whales

I'm in a bit of a mood. I haven't been stitching. I reorganized the scrapbook materials on Tuesday because my husband asked if we had "to have all this crap all over the place." Mostly he's a good guy and he understands my need for crap all over the place. But it took me some time to put into place a new filing system for 8.5x11 papers and all scraps. It'll do until I have my fantasy craft room. It would be a whole room that would have big windows, and two comfy chairs with ottomans (because my legs are short and no comfy chairs are ever short enough). Two, so stitchy friends could visit. Then I'd have bookcases for all my craft books and also my giant binders with my cross-stitch booklets. I'd have a nice big closet for the yarn and fabric stash. Maybe the room could be lined with bookcases and the yarn and fabric could be stored on them in lined baskets. There'd be a section to keep all the 12x12 paper flat--like in stores. And a big work table. I'm not sure if I want it waist-high or chair height. Two tables! And I'd never have to pick up after myself or take my cross-stitch projects off the edge of the chair or ... or... or... That'd be nice. What's your craft room fantasy? Are you living it? Maybe you should e-mail me instead of using this stupid comments feature I can't read.

I had to send off the knitted goods to England, so on Wednesday I finished the baby's hat.

On Thursday, I played hookie--I was sick of going to work--and ran errands all day and cleaned my kitchen and packed because we are off to San Fran this weekend for a wedding at Grace Cathedral. I'm wicked excited to get out of Dodge, but I find it deeply troubling that I have put aside the afghan for so long. And for this weekend too. It's just too big when we're carrying everything on with us. I did bring a couple of UFOs: Carriage House Samplings's "Hearts and Flowers" which I almost finished in time for my "cotton anniversary" and Bent Creek's "Wooly Zipper" which I bought to do on this kind of trip. There may be one or two more little projects tucked in the bag, but no scissors. After a heart-wrenching moment in the Tulsa airport, I am meticulous about scissors. Will that hold you until Monday?