Important Stuff

I was feeling kind of bad about not blogging for two weeks.  Until I noticed that LOTS of people took some time off from blogging between the holidays and now.

Congratulations to my blogging friend Rita on her new grandson.  A couple of bloggers have been on the road over the holidays.  And some folks are just taking a breather!

Between Christmas and New Year's Day, I worked at home a few hours but mostly I was off work-work and doing home-work.  Christmas Eve is always at my house, and I cook and clean and do generally fun stuff like that.  The kids go to the various in-laws on Christmas Day, and I do a whole lot of NOTHING but what I want to do! 

This generally puts me in my sewing room.  A lot. 

I work better when things are clean and organized.  My self-proven theory is:  if you can't find things, you can't finish anything.  I do enjoy finishing things... once in a while I have a deadline and that makes it easier.  Deadlines make me schedule things.  Thus I finished up the boss's embroidered golf shirts with the tasteless logos, the baby baptismal gown (photo coming -- hopefully soon!) and the batch of 18" doll clothes.  I also used some of my scrapbooking skills to embellish some small legal pads for the Sunday School crew and finished a tablet keeper for a friend.  Whew!  When you write it down, it looks impressive!

After the mad dash to Christmas, I took some time to clean up.  I tossed a small pile of scraps that probably should have been tossed ages ago, and condensed my boxes of potential doll clothes fabric down to just two.  That freed up a square yard of floor space.  After other culling, two trash bags made their way to the curb.

Do you do what I do with patterns?  After I use them, I put them in a pile and forget that they came in an envelope, thus also creating a pile of envelopes without patterns to match.  Or not match, as the case may be.  Then once in a great while I have to pull EVERYTHING out, organize by brand, then match the pieces and parts and hopefully have whole patterns again.  Hopefully.  It's not an exact science.

So I spent a couple of days on the cleanup.  I used a gift certificate to buy another storage cart that I'm using for thread, cutting implements and small quilting rulers.  Boy, did I have a lot of thread!  But now that it's all in one place, I realize I'm short on some basics like white and black. 

My youngest granddaughter, Miss A, 'helped' by sorting out my pile of two inch squares.  She spent many hours counting making piles of tinly patches and generally having a good time.  We didn't accomplish much except maybe the joy of being together. 

I ask you, what more important task could sewing friends do for each other??