"What SAL’s are you participating in this year? and If you are participating in the Olympic Stitching Challenge, what challenge are you accepting? What are your goals?"
I partially answered these questions on January 7 in the initial blog of the year but I will restate:
- The only SAL I have on schedule this year is WIPocalypse. However, I am collecting the bands from the Linen & Threads Mystery sampler and I reserve the right to take on that, or any other SAL that comes along if my stitching mojo returns!
- If I accept an Olympic Stitching Challenge (and I am not sure yet) it will be the "Endurance Race" adn teh Elizabeth Almond "Save the Stitches" blackwork sampler.
- My primary goals are to a) get my stitching space organized and b) to get back into the stitching groove.
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So let's start with my primary goal: Cleaning up and reorganizing my stash!
Back in the final paragraph of my last post, I blogged about the mess my craft space was in, and how I hoped that, in 2018, I would make some progress in getting it all put back together and neatened up. This is my January progress report on that organization.
I started out gangbusters on January 1 and kept it up for a week before I fizzled out somewhat, but I did make progress, slowly but surely.
To start with, the dining room table, where my computer lives (and so where I blog and, therefore an extension of my crafting space.
On January 1, I set to work on a box that contained (and was overflowing with) charitable solicitations which were, for the most part, duplicates of ones I had already paid... I filled a kitchen trash bag and emptied that box. I didn't even sort. I just emptied! This took roughly an hour... and was relatively painless:
On January 3, my husband and I worked on getting several framed pieces of stitchery off of the table and into plastic bags before storing them in the basement with our other framed pictures.
On January 6, I cleared various receipts, sorted, and bagged them into manila envelopes according to tax category. Benefit of doing this? Two checks found that needed to be deposited!
Finally, on January 7, I tackled the area to the left of my laptop which held bills to be paid and various bill-paying requirements (new checks, deposit slips, envelopes, etc.), membership cards and discount coupons, and miscellaneous "stuff". The result: a cleared workspace so I can do my taxes, pay my bills, AND blog.
So that was basically less than 24 hours spent in one week. Still to be done... box up last year's taxes and move several boxes from the corners of the dining room to a storage location (TBD). Then all that needs to be done is tidy up the tchotchkes and the dining room is serviceable again on relatively short notice (sure, I'd have to move a lot of studs and Charlie would have to move his puzzles but you know what I mean)!
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Next, Now to my stitchery space, which encroaches on my paper crafting space more than it should, given how little I've been stitching this past year and a quarter!
In my basement stitching area, there is a lot of stuff that lands on my cutting table and never seems to leave. As a result, I have roughly 12 inches by 30 inches of work space on that table!
I started there, on January 2, with beads and buttons and charms and the like and got all the aforementioned embellishemnts into two bins and a covered box and stashed in a cabinet.
Next, there was that bin of needlepoint wool in front of my stitchery cabinets
Next to one of my storage cabinets, there is an area/nook/wasted space that was FILLED with bogs of polyfill! It also held my needlepoint blocking board and some extra-long rolls of needlework fabric, some in tubes and some not. On January 2, I set about clearing that corner and getting as much of those yarn bins out of the way and into that nook. Let's just hope I don't need to block any large needlepoint pieces in the near future because that blocking board is WAY in the back! But I'm hoping that, when I get finished here, there will be a better place to put that blocking board!
On January 4, I set about finding a place for all those finished pieces that need to be finished that were stashed in in bin under my cutting table I found a lidded storage bin in the basement and set about gathering all the finished pieces in one place. This did clear a space for something else but the bin still needs to find home...
On January 5, I tackled the mess around my sewing machine in stages:
- To the left of the machine, I cleared out the area, consolidated all project bags in a black 31 Tote and place the tote on top of my Bernina case
- To the right of the machine, I cleared out the area and found other places for most of it. All that remains is my old Singer in it's case
- And finally, I tackled the surface of the machine table.
Much of the stuff that was on top of the Singer and the Bernina table ended up in a reorganized top shelf of my Quilting cabinet or in a bin on the door. The fabrics in this cabinet and in the one on the other side of my sewing machine need a major sort but that will come later...
And finally, on January 19 and 20, I started on the daunting task of sorting floss. AAARGH! It was a total mess... and still is but I'm getting there.
The DMC floss that I have is in zip-lock bags on rings in sterlite baskets, stored by color number and floss type (nylon, rayon, metallic, varigated, etc. all have their separate rings). The rest of my floss is in different containers, labeled by manufacturer (e.g. Anchor is in a Sterlite bin on rings, GAST and weeks and similar threads all have their individual Artbin cases, left-over kit threads have their own Artbin cases, and some silks are in special boxes). And all were/are scattered throughout my cross-stitch cabinets.
On that infamous cutting table, the floss that had been pulled for projects and not put back, nor had newly purchased collections (example: DMC's new colors) benn put away are were still in their packaging. I started going through all the project bags and sorting according to manufacturer. The boxed collections were put into the cross stitch cabinet on the bottom shelf, still in their shipping packaging, to be dealt with later. Kit left-overs were placed in their respective Artbin cases. DMC (some of which was already bagged in large ziplock bags by 100 color numbers) and speciality threads were bagged and set aside for future sorting.
Now that is not ALL the organizing I did this month --- there was, of necessity, some papercrafting organizing done as well --- simply because the two areas are overlapping in both storage and mess! It may look as if I have tackled the easy bits first (probably true... I mean, I didn't alphabetize my beads or arrange by color; ditto buttons; and I still have two quilting and two cross-stitch cabinets to empty out, sort, and reshelve). Still, I think I made some progress on all fronts and and am encouraged enough to keep on this task in February..
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