Saturday, January 22, 2022

I accomplished several thirty-minute jobs this morning and I’m happy that so far I’m able to keep up with everything. The first reminder today was some Guild work and I spent all of my thirty minutes working on our blog archives. They are almost ready to be proof-read and put on a thumb-drive for keeping in the archive collection. I’m debating about whether to make another copy for the library; if members take the thumb drive out can I be sure it will come back virus free?

A weekly task came up to clean out a drawer. I’m still working on a cabinet in my sewing room so I started on a small one. Then I moved to another small one and by the time my timer went off I was onto a third and larger drawer. I thought I’d find lots to donate but it turned out that a lot of it can be put to use or simply went into the garbage/recycle.

Cleaning out my bin of pre-cuts was an eye-opener – I had no idea I had so many. There are three large-sized fat quarter bundles, a jelly roll, four charm packs and way way too many mini charm packs. There were also a couple of batik collections; I must have won them or was gifted them because I rarely purchase batiks. I organized the individual fat quarters into colours and tied them together. In order to use up some of the pre-cuts I’ve decided that every six months I’ll repeat the process and find a pattern to use up one of the bundles. This time I’ve picked a pattern (that came from Stacia) that will use up the four charm packs. Two of the packs are the same fabric and I have two individual ones but for the pattern I’m using I’m pretty sure they will all go together.

Another task on today’s list was cleaning up the kitchen/living room. While I was wiping down the drawers in the fridge I found some apples that were past their best-before raw-eating date so I made an apple crisp for supper. It was after one before I got to my quilting but I’ve managed to get all the blocks quilted. I’ll wind another bobbin and I think I can get one of the borders done before supper.

Friday, January 21, 2022

Today was the last day of my sewing room declutter challenge. Many of the tasks I’ll be repeating every week or month until I have the tasks complete. Today we were to be clearing out our bins. The leader specifically said we were to take out our garbage bin and donate the bins we had set aside. My hallway is full of bags to be taken to the thrift shop but they are still closed so they will sit there for awhile longer.

For quite awhile now I’ve wanted to rearrange some of my bins so that’s what I was up to today. No doubt the bin I want will still be at the bottom of the stack but they are a bit more accessible now. I had a small filing cabinet that I stored “stuff” in but there was no way I could get at it even if I had remembered what was in it. I emptied it out, donated quite a few things and moved a smaller stack of bins into that space. There was no need for the filing cabinet; my initial thought was to put it out on the boulevard for free but when I asked Pat if he could use it he thought he could so it moved down two levels and it is in his storage area. Out of my sight, out of my mind.

We never dealt specifically with pre-cuts over the course of the 21 days so I’ve added that task to my list for tomorrow. I have my pre-cuts all together in a wicker basket but I think they can probably be better organized. It will be a quick task and when it’s done I’ll feel like I have put my hands on everything in the room.

I’m back to quilting this afternoon. It is going well but there is still so much to do. It is a big quilt with thirty blocks. I haven’t even started to think about the three borders I’ll need to work on next.

Thursday, January 20, 2022

I had quite a few decluttering tasks on my list today but I managed to get them all done. Well not done, but they each had thirty minutes of my time.

Somewhere about this time last year I made a note to myself to clean my filing cabinet. When I cleared my unfinished reminders at the end of the year I brought the task forward to today. I managed to get through a number of files and I’ve cleared up a lot of space in my filing cabinet. I’ll carry on and maybe I’ll be able to combine my two filing cabinets into one.

I was on a scrap mission today. I try to sort through my scraps every Thursday morning. My thirty minutes and more were over before I even got to the bottom of the scrap basket on my cutting table. I’m pretty good at cutting scraps to various useful sizes but I’m to the point that I don’t have enough space to store them all. My declutter guru would say I should be getting rid of them but I’m not quite ready for that yet. So I started two new bins, sorted by size and colour and I’ll see where that takes me.

And the decluttering task for the day was dealing with fabric. Again I went well over my thirty minutes but didn’t get through it all. I’m working on the fabric in my glass cabinet and I was able to sort quite a few fabrics into my fat quarter basket; larger pieces (but not yardage) went into various bins sorted by colour. By the time I was finished I really couldn’t say that I had achieved anything or made much progress.

I finished up my January piecing challenge this afternoon – four placemats made from the Guild Challenge fabric. I went ahead and sandwiched them but I’ve no idea when they might get quilted. They are due at the Guild’s year-end party but I’ll likely miss it (in favour of sewing in Panorama) so I don’t think there is any rush.

I haven’t made any cards for a couple of weeks so I got started back at that today. I’m still in plenty of time for February dates but I like to keep ahead of the calendar.

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

It was an intense two-day session with Stacia and Deloise and I was so tired last night I went to bed shortly after eight. I managed to stay awake and read until almost ten and then slept right through to this morning.

The first day of sewing was a group project. Stacia gave each of us a pattern for Christmas last year and we had decided to work on that together. I worked a bit ahead but was quite happy to know that this was a project we’d be continuing together in the next few months. We already have a three-day session planned for February. I accomplished more than the one basket but the rest are in bits and pieces; I put this one together mainly to see how it would look.

My second-day project was also courtesy of Stacia. The last time we stitched together I was looking through some of her magazines and found a pattern I really liked. Stacia said I was welcome to take the magazine home with me. When I was going through magazines in my decluttering mode I found the magazine and still very much wanted to make it. Although I have started checking my pots for signs of my crocuses I know it is too early. Hopefully it will still be crocus season when I finish this one.

Today was a cross stitch day and I feel like it has been a good break. I didn’t get as much finished as I would have liked because I kept winning lives on Candy Crush and it is so hard to turn it off when you are on an eight-game winning streak. I’m enjoying this new Peppermint Purple stitch-along and the cross stitches in the pattern make it a bit different from last year’s. I thought I’d have enough of the border done on last year’s model to move my hoop and take a photo but I didn’t get there today.