December 23, 2016

I’m not going to be able to finish my clean up and re-arranging before Christmas. At one point today I was close, but Pat came upstairs to see how things were going and offered a few suggestions on some changes. They were good ones so, in a large part, I started over. The furniture has pretty much all been moved, but all of my surfaces are covered again. They will take less time to tidy up this time but there is still a lot of work to do.

I decided early on in this process that tomorrow was going to be the start of my Christmas vacation – not much work, and certainly no moving and cleaning. I’ll do a bit more this afternoon and then call it quits. I have a couple of recipes I want to make tomorrow but they should be quick and the smell of baking in the house will be perfect for Christmas Eve.

We’re off to a concert at the Anglican Church tonight; we went last year and I loved it. It isn’t quite the same as Christmas Eve services in Wartime but now that we know so many more folks in town it is a lovely evening.

I have pre-posted several entries for the next week; I’ll be back live on January 2nd!

Thursday, December 22, 2016

I cleared off another surface today. It is a challenge to clear these surfaces without just cluttering up something I’ve already cleared but I more or less manage. There is just one more surface to go before I can re-arrange the furniture; I’d like to get that all done before Christmas. As I tidy up and put things away I see that I need to clean out a few of my drawers; they are getting cluttered and I suspect there are things in them that could be added to my Economy Shop bag.

Over the past few days I’ve said I was going to cross stitch at the end of the day but I never managed to get there – always tripping over things on the way across the room that I decided to deal with. But today is the day! Cross stitch here I come.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

It was back to work today, but I have managed to avoid cleaning for yet another day!

I did Pat’s accounting and got the files sent off to the accountant this afternoon. It takes time to go through everything but it is easier now that he isn’t working as much. There is still a bit of tidying up to do on some of his paper files; I found my new filing cabinet arrangement works well, but I kept forgetting I didn’t have to get up to go to the cabinet!

Since the basket I had planned for my office tools didn’t materialize I need to find a spot for them. I have a shelf between my sewing machine and my computer that I think will work – once I’ve cleared off some of the stuff that is sitting there right now. There’s always something!

There isn’t much afternoon left but I’ll spend the rest of it with some cross stitching – once I switch my laundry loads.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

I finished up the crochet part of my basket last night before dinner – and then decided to pitch the whole thing! I had already ripped it apart twice and the bottom wasn’t stitching together well with the sides so I decided not to waste any more time on it. The yarn was purchased at the Economy Shop because it was a rich gold-brown colour and I thought it would make a nice scarf. But when I got the bag home and opened it the yarn was more like baling twine and certainly wouldn’t be appropriate for anything that was going to go next to anyone’s skin. I made one basket from it (my own pattern) but the rest of the yarn and the remnants from this latest basket will be filler in my next dog pillow.

I wasn’t going to go to the bee today but Pat persuaded me that I should go and wish my friends a Merry Christmas. I have loaned my car to friends who have family visiting and whose vehicle wasn’t large enough to transport everyone. I took my sewing machine out of the trunk before I dropped it off for them and I didn’t feel like loading it into Pat’s truck. Besides, I really didn’t have anything I wanted to work on, although in my cleaning I’ve dug out a lot of works-in-progress that I had conveniently forgotten about. In the end I took a hand stitching project and enjoyed the day.

I’ll be back to cleaning tomorrow but for tonight I’ll get back to some knitting.