Category Archives: Life

I found this on facebook this past week.  It was originally posted by Oh My Crafts on their facebook page, and it defines my battle with the craft room.

Bit by bit the craft room is getting cleared.  Some of the things I’ve lost in there (that I’ve discovered this week):  5 bottles of nail polish, a Father’s Day card, 6 skeins of DMC that I’m now pulling my hair out trying to remember what I pulled them for, my 20% coupon to Bath & Body Works that I dumped my purse out looking for yesterday while I was at the mall, the timer I use to keep myself focused on cleaning my worktable for 15 minutes each day (this one was really helpful!), and the top of my worktable!

Don’t get too excited.

I’m cheating.

Remember what my worktable looked like?

Well I cleared off the cutting table, moved it into my guest room, and started organzing stuff from my worktable either on to it, or in its forever home.  Now my worktable looks like this:

(oops, I seem to be having image problems 🙁 – I’ll try to update this photo later)

and my cutting table looks like this (in the guest room):

Everything on the cutting table is nice and neat, and pretty much how it needs to be, except put away.  The two zipper bags in front will have the contents put in a wooden magazine holder and added to this loverly collection:

You can see the new magazine holders in the bottom right side of the above photo.

Now, for the life of me I cannot find the post, but someone MaryK was influenced by my cleaning up my worktable and posted photos of her own space on her blog this week.  I wish you would comment about it here and I wish there were more than the two of us brave enough willing to do this.  Misery loves company 😉

I promise to be back with a quick (hahahaha) recap of my trip to Vegas, but I seemed to have acquired some sort of V(egas)T(ransmitted)D(isease) while there that has left me with barely the energy needed to get out of bed and downstairs to snuggle my puppies and drink tea.  Bleh.  I am feeling much better today than yesterday and hoping tomorrow finds me back on schedule.  I would like to get something off my worktable so it’s not quite the disaster photo it was last week 😉

I didn’t want to neglect my blog too much though and I have been waiting for today so I can share a blog post from another needleworker that inspired me to try making a bit of jewelry!

Mayté is someone whose stitching blog I’ve followed for quite some time.  She shared on her blog, in July 2012, a gorgeous bracelet she had made using mother of pearl buttons. She was also generous enough to share some instruction* and photos of how she did it.  It was one of those “aha” moments for me where once I saw what she had created, and I saw how she had created it, I knew I could do it myself.  Ever since, I’ve been studying bracelets at the jewelry counters and saying to myself “I can do that” and I’ve been collecting buttons for my own.  My only remaining decision is whether to create the actual bracelet part myself or purchase a redi-made one.

*you will probably have to translate her blog.

I actually had a panic moment today when I realized it was Wednesday already and time to show my worktable. And since I’m putting it out there and showing you the real me, I thought I would show you more than the worktable. I’m also going to show you to the right of it, and underneath, and so as not to make it jealous I’m going to show you my desk.

Maybe there are others who are also brave enough to share what their workspaces look like today?

Deep breath. Going in.

This is to the left side.  You can see that even my cutting table (although folded up) is stacked.  The plastic tub that contains the Christmas Woolens pattern and has the red toile box stacked on top is the container I’m using right now to hold the new starts and Summer Soiree stitching stash mentioned in Part 1 of my crafting plans.   And no, Annette, I still haven’t covered my little ironing board.

This photo shows the right side.  The 3 zipper pouches are my patriotic, Halloween, and “other,” cross stitch designs (I say other because I can’t remember what I sorted into that pouch right now), that are waiting for their own chart holder to be labeled for my shelves.  The stuff in front of it, on the tabletop, just needs to be put away.  There’s also a chain maille bracelet project there 😉

Then there’s underneath.  The black drawer unit is actually most of my organized (gasp) quilting fabrics.  The two blue plastic buckets to the right of that contain completely kitted cross stitch items and WIPs.  In front of them, in the Hobby Lobby bags, is craft supplies for a couple of tree skirts and a basket that contains piddly things I need to find a home for.

Last photo of that side of the room is “THE STACK.”  It deserves all caps.  It takes up a lot of real estate both in my room and in my mental calmness.  THE STACK is made up of 4  boxes of items that I’ve decided I no longer love and need to get rid of (except for the clear sewing machine table).  These will be the items I offer up on my blog before putting them out there in internet land.

Last, but not least, is my desktop.   The basket to the left holds the items I need to enter in my spreadsheet before being in their proper spot.

Okay, that was actually quite easy!  It’s hitting the “publish” button that’s going to be the hardest part.  I will say that once I started breaking it down I realized that the majority of it is sorted, it just needs to be put away.

I’m headed to Vegas bright and early tomorrow morning.  I have started pulling things out to take with me but they need to be organized into my suitcase and tote.  I have a manicure appointment and a couple of errands, and a mountain of laundry to do when I get home, so there won’t be much organizing of the craft room over the next several days.  I do hope there are some progress photos next Wednesday though.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a scared ninny when it comes to doing a lot of data/communication/network run things.  I think it’s mostly because I can’t understand the terminology or I’m so afraid of messing up so horribly (maybe because I have in the past?) that I have to beg for help to get myself straightened out. I’m not a new blogger, nor is this my first blog. I think it’s actually my third. But I’ve never done anything to make it “Who I Am.” That’s about to change, I hope.

Last year was a huge step for me in that I added drop down bars to the top of my blog, and figured out how to make a collage for a personalized header.  This year, I just figured out how to take the comments off those pages.  Confetti falls!  I just felt someone roll their eyes, but it’s a big thing for me.  If you look at my blog you might have noticed that over the last week I’ve made some slight changes.

It’s because I bought a 2013 calendar featuring monthly signs and this is what January’s sign is: “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.”

and was inspired by this:

I don’t put myself out there very much. I have a very tiny circle of friends who know the real me. Obviously, by the number of subscribers I have, that circle doesn’t expand much beyond in the blogging world either. I’m hoping to expand that circle by putting myself out there a bit more, both in person and here. I want to live a life worth watching.