End of week three

Who knew that I would be better at  getting rid of stuff than I was at making stuff?

This afternoon I will fill a bag with the 10 items for this week. (It's a sad commentary on my house that I am not having any trouble meeting my 10 item quota. )  I am doing better in that area than I am on making things.

On the craft front, I have been spinning the hair from my 2 Shetland Sheepdogs almost every day.
The weather has been most cooperative and so the screened porch is a delight during most of the day. My spinning production has improved since I have put the bag of dog hair and the spindle next to my favorite chair on the porch and spin when I let the dogs out to go potty. It has confused the dogs no end. Conner will walk by and smell the spindle and just stand and look at it. I guess he is trying to figure out how he can be in his own skin and yet have part of him on "that wooden thing". Nah, that would be giving Conner more alert brain cells than he has.  Allie tends to ignore the entire spinning process. This could be a result of trying to put her nose in the spokes of a spinning wheel when I first got her. Maybe she has just decided to stay away from anything that goes around, including the hand spindles.

One thing that can really eat up the time is Pinterest.  It is great fun looking at all the various ideas. I have now posted so many that I will need an army of crafters to get it all done. If you haven't found Pinterest, be sure to check it out. You too can become addicted.  Guess that  would make  me an enabler.

Days 1-3 creativity

Well, I thought this project was going to take one day but I really underestimated the time needed. However it's done and I am pretty pleased with the finished product.

I made Halloween cards. To me there is something so satisfying about working with paper and a glue stick. Maybe it takes me back to 1st grade and that fabulous paste that came in jars. It smelled great (well, not perfume great, but still a good smell.) It was fun to put it on your fingers and then let it dry. Peeling it off with your fingerprints on it was most entertaining. (Please tell me other people did this. I have always been fairly easy to entertain but I really don't think I was the only one.) A little bit of it didn't taste too badly either.

I still have to tweak the cards but it was a fun start and felt great to be creating something.

Rock and Roll, High School, and old bladders

This post should have been published in 2009 but somehow didn't so here it is a few years late.

Went back to my old High School tonight for the first time in 48 years. There was a concert to raise money for the 2 radio stations at the school.

The concert was awesome and worth every penny (dollar) of the ticket price. It was 3 hours of great entertainment, both new songs and some old rock classics. If you are a performer, you better know your lyrics when the audience is singing along with you.

The opening act was a classmate and it was wonderful to see him on stage. His style of music has changed over the years but he is still as good and funny as we remembered him being.

We were in the balcony which doesn't have any bathrooms on that floor. Not a problem when you are a teenager but quite a problem over 40 years later. It's not nice to take comfort in the fact that you weren't one of those who had to make the up and down trip twice but sometimes in life you take comfort in what you can.

Anyway, the company was good and the music made us all feel young again, even if just for a few hours. It also reminded me how very, very glad I am to be the age I am. I am also grateful for having grown up in the time that I did. (Ok, now that did sound like an old person's comment. It's the truth however.)

Really, a year?

Well, as hard as it is for me to believe an entire year plus a few days has passed since I wrote the last post. I know you have suffered greatly missing my ramblings.

A lot has happened, almost all of it very positive but I won't bore you with all the details. A quick summary is that I made a major move and have rejoiced everyday since. When you have great peace after making a decision, it is almost always the right one. At least it seems to be that way for me.

Now, 12 months later I find that I really STILL haven't gotten rid of enough stuff. It is so much easier to acquire things than it  is to get rid of them. Why don't they teach that in schools? It would be a fabulous and much needed lesson that would certainly come in handy later in life.

All of which brings me to a challenge I am setting for myself. For the next year I am going to work toward 2 goals.

The first goal is to create something every day. Whether it is a card, a collage, a knitted washcloth, or finishing a larger project, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I exercise my creative side daily, not weekly, not sporadically, but daily. I'm depending on my friends to hold me accountable--- and join me in this endeavor if you wish. Birds of a feather and all that.

The second part is to get rid of the clutter. I recently took a carload of family stuff to my son with the understanding that he is free to toss whatever he wants. Getting it in the car was the easy part. Letting    go of ownership and, yes, guardianship, was harder but very, very freeing.  

Yesterday I came across a blog which talks about getting rid of ten items each week.. Well, as sometimes happens, I read it at an impressionable moment and immediately got rid of ten items from my closet. Put them in a bag and the bag in my car. That was so much fun, and painless, I now have a second bag in the car waiting for the trip to a local charity.

So, the second part of my one year challenge is to get rid of 10 items each week.  That's 520 things that will go away. Ok, that large a number sounds overwhelming so I am going to only think of the ten each week. Just those ten not the big number, definitely not the big number.

You are welcome to join me in this adventure also--double dog dare you.

The Mountains

The Mountains, a photo by january spin on Flickr.

Surprise!

What a wonderful surprise package arrived today.There was a drawing on the Knits for Needs blog (See earlier post here about the wonderful things being done through Knits for Needs.) and I was one of the winners. WOW!
 There were several knitting books and wonder of wonders, quite a few of them had patterns for baby things. I have several precious babies that I want to make things for so this was a huge gift. I am thrilled and can't wait to get started. An unexpected gift from a very wonderful cause.

I finished the prayer shawl for Prayer Shawls 4 Fallen Soldiers and just realized I didn't take a picture of it before I mailed it off. I really do think all this hot weather has melted several vital brain cells. I still have another shawl ready but haven't been able to contact the recipient to verify the address. Has to go on the Must Do list for next week.

Well, the house is being shown again tomorrow morning. Maybe this will be THE one. I am working on keeping a positive attitude but sometimes sitting in a really clean (boring) house makes that difficult. Netflix and playing with my iPad2 are the major things holding my sanity together since I can't get my craft/art stuff out. Ok, I could get it out but anyone who makes things knows that getting into a project and having to put it away in the middle of it is not conducive to creativity. Nor does it make for a happy camper.

Ok, now I really do have to go hide more stuff. My sweet realtor doesn't know I have taken a break from packing for over a month .  I need to look like I have done something before she comes to take the next set of pictures.

Babies and Two Year Olds

There is something about holding a little baby that just tugs at the heartstrings. They make little baby noises and just seem to naturally cuddle. What a shame that sometimes we lose that ability when we become adults. The cuddling part, not  the noises part. The noises part we have and it's not always good, but we should try harder to hold onto the cuddling part. Whether it's a parent holding a child, a husband holding a wife, a friend comforting a friend, or an adult child holding an elderly parent, we should remember how to cuddle someone. It's one of those things that seems to bring comfort to the one who is being cuddled and the one who is doing the cuddling.

Last night I got to cuddle the 2 month old baby of my precious niece and her wonderful husband. It had been a couple of years since I had been around a baby I could cuddle. There's magic in that feel. You look into that little face and you see all the amazing things that life can offer. At that moment, there aren't any cant's, wont's, or limits. I just see a huge world and a tiny baby who hopefully will embrace the joy of living and exploring that world. I see love and trust and possibilities.

I also got to hold her 2 year old brother . He was scared because Mom and Dad had gone out and he had only seen me a few times before in his young life. The possibilities of life were still there but some of the scariness had crept in also. He was starting to discover that life didn't always go as you planned or wanted it to and sometimes you just had to adapt. Although tears and yelling were ways to vent that frustration and disappointment , and we've all done that at one point or the other, acceptance of change brings more peace.

I've found that you can't make people's problems go away permanently. The best thing you can do it just to be there when they need you. Hold them close and sometimes when they are a scared two year old, tell them they are loved, and safe,  and sing An Irish Lullaby to them as your Mother did for you when you were two and scared.

So little ones, I wish for you people in your life who will help you explore this marvelous world and will be there to cuddle you when it looks a little bit scary.