Pic Your Inspiration

On Christmas Day last year my guy and I meant to go and walk the beach, but it rained, so we settled for a long drive in the country and (when the rain stopped) a walk in a state park we like. I brought the camera along because although it was a wet, kinda miserable day I like taking pictures of interesting things I see. Sometimes all I need for an idea for a story is an single photo, like this one of an ancient wooden sailboat boat that looked like it sailed onto this property and got wedged in these trees. If you found that in your backyard one morning, would you look inside?

This tumble down barn we passed seemed a bit menacing. What secrets might it reveal if it suddenly collapsed? Treasure? Bones? A tunnel that leads to an underground world, or another dimension?

At the park there are these concrete steps everywhere that are green around the edges and suddenly start and stop in the oddest places. If you follow them, where would they take you? Forward in time, or back?

I loved these little ferns I saw growing out of the side of this step, and they gave me the strongest story idea of all. I wondered how I'd react if I came home and went to take a shower, and found one growing out of the side of my foot.

Maybe the squirrel watching me knew -- or maybe he's someone or something that is just disguised as a squirrel. :)

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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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