Oliver's First Book

Being a grandmother for the first time has little joys involved that I think I took for granted as a mother. So I'm always thinking of what I can give to Oliver as "firsts." I did give him the very first quilt, of course. Choosing the first book would be tough -- or so I assumed -- but the first title I thought of was the winner. This happened to be my favorite book when I was a very little girl:

I loved the spotted protagonist because he could do all sorts of neat things with his spots, and I think Oliver will love it just as much when he gets old enough to read the story. Anyway, I inscribed it for him, and read it to him when we visited his parents in their new place last Sunday. Oliver sat on my lap and stared at the pages while I was reading, which at 4-1/2 months old was very cool of him. To reward him for being a good boy we played in his activity chair next:

This was the first book, but certainly not the last -- and it's not about me being a book writer, really. It's more about family. My great-aunt instilled the love of reading in me by giving me books when I was a girl (she even mailed them to me), so I'm simply passing along her gift.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

Look at that adorable little face! He's just too cute :) And reading to him now is a good thing! I started the girls off early like that. My oldest reads though not as much as me. My younger, when the mood strikes her, but still, good habits.

Good gravy, he's adorable.

January 14, 2020 at 10:42 AM

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Valerean

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