Reality

My friend V dropped in for a coffee yesterday. I looked at my big table. It was totally covered in stuff. I will justify myself by saying that maybe a third of that is current projects. The remainder is accumulated paperwork and various fibre things that have been displaced while looking for other stuff. I did manage to find room for a coffee cup--in the middle of a frame I'm painting up for a Christmas gift. I didn't intend to juxtapose the local paper's article on homelessness with my household organisation issues. But it's a sobering thought: while I'm celebrating a special room for my creative endeavors, others are struggling to find a place to live at all.

I spent most of the day painting my new studio. My friend C emailed me recently and referred to it as "the craft villa". I laughed. In the afternoon I went out to choose flooring. It seems that timber laminate will be cheaper and hardier than the vinyl I'd planned to use. Now I'm thinking of it as my "Studio Sofitel". The reality is that this is turning into a really lovely space for me to work and it's making me very happy.

Uh Oh!

I declared in yesterday's post that my next task was to sort the Spinning Certificate box. This big box of spinning stuff had been lurking under my weaving bench. In it were a variety of fleece samples, skeins and swatches from the early months of the Spinning Certificate course. Problem: like most neglected piles of stuff it had become a bit of a monster in my mind.

Well, I tackled the box. Here's some of what I found: The good news: a lot of the bags and skeins were nicely labelled. I can tick those straight off my list of requirements.

The bad news: there are a couple of skeins there of lovely spinning that I didn't label at the time. I can just imagine that after working on them for hours I would have been so familiar with the work, that the thought of ever confusing it with anything else was incredible. Incredible, but true! I had no idea at the time how the skeins would multiply over the months until one day's work is hard to recall amongst the many days of concentrated spinning I've done over the year. After doing a bit of detective work: matching fleece samples and skeins; I think I've come pretty close to identifying most of what's there. Some of it I'll have to just write off or use for sampling. Uh Oh!

Today's going to be another scorcher. Thankfully it cooled down enough overnight that I've been able to enjoy a couple of hours of knitting this morning. This afternoon I'm planning to retreat to the Brunswick Library. It's in the old Town Hall building, with great thick stone walls. I'm hoping they do a good job of keeping out the heat. The library doesn't open until 1.00 pm. Between now and then, I'm going to tackle the pile of stuff that came out of the box. I'd like to get as much of it as I can into it's final state for presentation. Then I can tuck it away safely and reclaim my big table.

Hot Pink

It's fun week at the Neighbourhood House. Not that every week at the Neighbourhood House isn't rather fun. But the week of the Winter Solstice is set aside for a particular focus on FUN. It's usually one of the last weeks of term and we all need a bit of a cheer up. This year each day has its designated colour. Today was pink . . . or should I say, PINK:

Leigh dropped in to welcome my washing machine and share a cuppa and a scone with me this afternoon. She was also wearing a pink shirt, but those stockings are just eye-poppers. I'm a woman who loves vibrant colours, but I don't think I could mix up something as potent as that.

By the way, that is my bamboo floor in the background. I've had so much drama with broken appliances and furniture woes, that I haven't offered as Ta Da! shot of the floor yet. I'm still trying to cope with stuff. Of course I may be still trying to cope with stuff this time next year, but I'm counting on it getting a little better.