Skip to main content

Simplicity

Now that fall has arrived I'm starting to plan things for the holidays (my motto this year is keep it very, very simple), but I'm really not ready for it to be October the day after tomorrow. Time has dragged quite a bit over the course of the pandemic, but for the last year I've stayed busy with work and my art, and that seems to keep me from watching the calendar. It feels as if yesterday it was July. How can it be October?

Things are going quite well at the day job. I should finish up my current novel series next week, and then take some time off to think about the next one.

Our holidays will be quiet with just the two of us, but I have a couple of birthdays before the end of the year for which to make gifts. I've finished one and have to start the second now. I'm only making one Christmas gift for Katherine, and I'll make a meal and a cake for my guy as we've agreed not to buy anything for each other (hopefully he sticks to that.) I have three neighbors for whom I'll bake something for Christmas. That's it, so should be easy to keep things simple -- I hope!

Comments

Maria Zannini said…
First of all, I hope you weathered Ian unscarred. Reports are sketchy as to what the actual losses were. Please let us know how you are as soon as you can.

Secondly, what do you bake for your neighbors? I need some ideas.
nightsmusic said…
I kind of wish ours was going to be simple this year. Maybe it's time for me to turn everything over to one of the girls. Or not. I don't know if I'm ready for that yet.

Popular posts from this blog

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

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.