December 16, 2008
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Getting It Together
What do you do when your high definition wide screen television goes out right before the long four-day Thanksgiving weekend? I seized the opportunity to clean up my very messy sewing area and my crafts supply closet. It’s hard to be creative in an area that looks like the aftermath of a hurricane. During the past year, I traveled quite a bit and I was away from home a lot on weekends, which is my prime time for sewing. I have done more knitting and crocheting this past year because they are more portable projects for traveling, and they are easier to work on in the evenings when I am tired and burnt out from my day job and I just want to relax. My goal for 2009 is to stay home more and create more art quilts and mixed media art pieces. I’ve felt very ungrounded and scattered creatively this year, and I feel that by first cleaning up and reorganizing my creative space, I can then begin to let ideas flow and keep a journal of those ideas and inspirations. I also need to sit down and read all of the wonderful artsy books I’ve purchased in the last year. I was given a lot of craft supply donations this past year, and by adding some of my own still-good discards, I was able to gift others with supplies, from Adult Education classes to young moms on Freecycle. You have to let stuff go in order to free up space in your life for new and wonderful stuff, like the great deals I’ve found on nice carded buttons and beaded fringe at Dollar Tree.
Armed with the nifty P-Touch labeling system that my husband got for me last year, I labeled containers. On the table you can see the vintage glass refrigerator container found at a Salvation Army thrift store that I use for spools of thread, and the picnic organizer basket is used for scissors, rotary cutters, and the like. I prefer natural material containers, but plastic containers are kind of a necessary evil to keep out dust, sunlight, and cat hair.Anyway, I thought I would share the results of staying home over a long quiet weekend. (Incidentally, it was the lamp inside the television that burnt out, and we found out that they need to be replaced after awhile. We found one on eBay, but even with paying for overnight shipping, it didn’t arrive until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving…exactly a week from the day it burnt out. We survived! In fact, after a day or two of withdrawal symptoms, we found we didn’t miss it all that much.) The last thing on my reorganization list is to sort and store patterns, directions, inspirations, and other information I’ve collected into binders. I’ve been doing this for years, and it works for me. I am reading the book listed, which I checked out of the library. I think the advice will work for me, too. Now I just need to work on keeping all my crafty stuff organized once I start digging it all out again…..
