Another Home Project

This weekend the DH had another project and because I am still trying to figure out the whole Photbucket blogging thing my pics are backwards. The top picture is of two freshly painted doors of a locker unit that was being thrown out. I told DH to grab them, and he couldn't understand what they could be good for and I told him storage in the garage and maybe the other unit we picked up can go in DS#2's room for storage. These are great lockers and I can put a padlock on the doors to store soapmaking supplies when I finally get around to trying my hand at that. You may notice the same colors on the doors that we used on our chairs. We had so much paint left over that instead of painting both locker units boring gray DH painted the back and sides gray and is doing the doors in the same bright colors we did our kitchen chairs in.

Below is the before pic of these lockers. I think they look fabulous now. You can see a bit of the fresh gray paint inbetween the locker doors in this picture. Dh asked me where I came up with the idea of using old metal lockers as storage or even in one the kids rooms and I had to be honest and say I found the idea in an old issue of Southern Living magazine. These particular units are three on top, three on bottom. Since they are half lockers it gives us lots of storage options.

Do I keep the DH busy or what?

Unfortunately I have no interesting stitching or crochet news. Wish I had some fabulous progress to show of BOAF's Peace but it's mostly black blocks and some grass. I'm still hung up on round 7 of my flower crochet block. I'm think I'm just going to go on and crochet it the way I think it should be and see how wonky I manage to make it in the process. I think I'm making it lot more difficult than it is, then again maybe it's a sign that this afghan is going to be hideous when finished.

Weekend

Not much got accomplished this weekend but I do have some new pics of recently framed cross stitch projects. This is Good Huswif's Two Pinkeeps. It's one of my favorite designs. It's stitched on 36ct BOAF Morning Glory fabric and I used DMC floss.

This is Carriage House Samplings Americana. It's stitched on BOAF Barn Owl linen, 36ct and I once again used all DMC floss.

This weekend I'm working on Birds of a Feather's Peace Sampler. I hope to make a lot of progress today but I'm an amazingly slow stitcher so I try not to get too discouraged when I've stitched for 8 straight hours and don't have too much to show for it.

We spent most of yesterday running all over town getting the boys' haircuts, taking them to lunch, going to the mall. I didn't think we'd ever get home.

We also started planning a family vacation for either the spring or early summer. My brother is currently stationed in Maryland so we plan to head up that way with my mother. She hates flying so it should be an interesting experience. With any luck I can plan it so that it's not so traumatic for everyone. My mother can be difficult to travel with at times. I'm excited because I want to take the boys to DC and to Colonial Williamsburg while we are up that way. I think they'll enjoy both a lot more than they think they will.

Dumbass

What is the definition of dumbass? Hmm how a person who forgets to pay the gas bill, forgets to call the gas company and let them they'll be in to pay the bill on Thursday, and those two actions cause the gas to be shut off! DUMBASS! MOI!

I can't believe this happened. In the three years we've lived here and had gas heat, gas stove and gas water heater we've managed to always pay that particular bill on time because we knew that it would be a pain to get it turned back on. But this month, I wasn't paying attention, DH had the date of the 20th in his head so I come home from work and what do I find, no hot water, a chilly house and the stove won't light. Deduction? Gas service has been disconnected. Sometimes I can't believe how absolutely stupid and irresponsible the DH and I can be. Hard to believe we are both 40 isn't it? Now I guess I'm going to have to set up some appt to get someone out here to relight all the pilots. What a mess.

Somedays it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

On a positive note since I'll more than likely spend my day off waiting on the gas person to come light everything, maybe I'll get some new pics up on the blog. Who knows maybe I'll figure out what the heck I'm doing wrong on round 7 of my flower block. Maybe if I'm lucky I can find someone else to work on Friday and just sit around and spend another day waiting on the gas person.

Speaking of work, in today's classifieds I ran across an ad for a BBQ business for sale. Guess I'm not going to have a job too much longer. I called DH and told him we need to start budgeting again, this is before I discovered the gas had been shut off. Funny thing just last week the owner told me they weren't selling the business. Guess they didn't want all of us to quit and find other jobs. Unless I don't have a choice I'm planning to once again become a stay at home mom. We survived for 8 yrs on one salary, we're eating out way too much, time to get a little bit of my life back. Maybe I'll be able to remember to pay the gas.

In Search Of

With apologies to Leonard Nimoy, the remote. Hmmm, what would possess any woman to go on a frantic search for the elusive remote control? How about the fact that the aforementioned woman can't watch a flippin' DVD without the tv remote as the tv has to be on the video channel to be able to view the DVD and one can't put the tv on the video channel without the remote. Who new that a $28 DVD player holds all the power? Or is it as the DH has always said, "The remote holds all the power."

Hoping for some crochet pics tomorrow, but I'm stuck on one of the rounds of the flower block. I've frogged about a gazillion times and can't seem to get the thing right. There's some step I'm missing, or the error is in the round before, but it appears to be correct. Quite the conundrum.

What DVD was I so anxious to watch? The Village. DH said it was lame, I thought it was great, even though I had sorta kinda figured out the premise before I ever watched it. It was the only thing that made sense to me just from reading a few reviews. Tomorrow night we are going to watch Anchorman. Got to love that Will Ferrell.

Hissy Fit

Apologies for the hissy fit in the previous post. I'm over it, have moved on and understand I behaved badly.

Crochet Stuff

A while back I started a Peyote Granny that I ended up renaming Girlpower Granny and giving it to my great niece. Yesterday while laying on the couch and watching A Passage to India I decided to not make my own Girl Power Granny. So then I pondered what to do with all these super bright Red Heart yarn colors. I pulled out several crochet books and decided on Granny's Flowers from Vanna's Afghans All Through the House. By the time I made that decision I had to jump in the truck to go meet the DH and pay bills. So I thought with all the rain coming down it couldn't hurt to bring a project with me so I stuffed a couple of balls of my yarn(I wound them using the very low tech method of a toilet paper roll with a slit in the top), my book(didn't have time to make a copy of the chart), a pair of scissors(I remembered to bring a pair of scissors, go me!). I get to the meeting place, DH calls and lets me know he's going to be late, so I pull out my book, my yarn and my, my, uh, where's the flippin' crochet hook? I remember scissors, I remember the yarn, I remember the pattern and I forget the crochet hook. Let's see, there's a JoAnn's just over the bridge, do I really want to get out in this storm and buy a new crochet hook-size J, do I need to tell you how many J crochet hooks I already have in the stash? OK, I decide, who knows how long the DH is going to be, so I pull out of the parking lot head to JoAnn's get soaking wet but leave with my J hook(after freaking out when I saw every size but J, then I saw it behind the K hooks.) Get back in the truck, head back to the bank, and start the first flower block of the aghan using Red Heart Kids Pink. I managed to get one petal finished before DH showed up. I plan to crochet the flowers using bright pink, bright orange, lavendar, bright blue(or maybe it's a dark blue, haven't looked in that bag in a while, basically all the colors I used in the previous project, along with orchid and purple). The granny squares will all be in yellow and I may use Red Heart's Pinata, an ombre, for the lacy border around the finished afghan. Yes, I know that ombres take away from the pattern but right now that's what I'm going with, I may change my mind(I'm thinking Pinata for the granny squares and bright yellow for the border too). My first flower block is almost finished. Hopefully I'll have a pic or two tomorrow. Believe me I do have a clue how ugly this afghan could be. Then again it may all come together in the end and work(this coming from someone with absolutely no color sense at all). Some of the crochet projects of the 60s and 70s were successes despite popular belief. They weren't all orange, brown and avocado green ripple afghans. Surely there's hope for this bright, happy afghan. At least that's how it looks in my head.

What inspired me to pull out the hook? I was tired of working on Fairy Grandmother. It's tedious and slow and I've been working on it every day before work and yesterday was my day off so I decided to take a break from FG and work on something else.

No Crafty News

Just a whine. Do you ever a plan? You see it, you just know it's meant to work out in your favor? It appears that it was meant to be? Then one night you get that slap in the face and realize that you've just been living in a dream world? That was me last night. Slapped so hard with reality that I almost uttered the "F" word in front of a bunch of kids. I stopped at "Fu". You see, I'm a renter. Only on one other occaision have I ever wanted to buy a house. It's a huge step, it's a lot of money and it's a major commitment, it means you're settling down, you're growing up, you aren't going to wander any more. A house on our street was going up for sale. I had talked to the nutcase owner many times about letting us know when she decided to sell. I was told over and over again, "You'll be the first one to know." It was all BS. She had told several other neighbors the same thing, they wanted to buy it as an investment, screw them. They have homes, I don't care they were mislead. It was nothing to them. I had the rest of my life planned around this. Yeah, I should know better. It was stupid I know. But I never dream about buying houses. It's just not me. This wasn't my dream house, but my middle son doesn't adjust to change very well, this would have just moved him a few houses up, he could stay on his bus, at his school and with his friends. I had so many plans, there was no doubt in my mind she'd let us know when she was ready to sell. We'd have given her just about anything she wanted for the house. The biggest heartbreak came when I found out the amount she took for the house. She just wanted to get rid of it. Wanted it sold. The man she sold it to told the neighbors he only paid $134,000. This house could have sold in 5 mins for $180,000. The financing for the $134,000 would have been so easy for us, especially since property values in our area are skyrocketing so much so that 99% of the homes are now out of our price range. I know it's wrong, I shouldn't have planned so much around this house. I knew who and what I was dealing with but.....

Anyway, I spent the night crying into my pillow, I'd skip work today if wouldn't cause complete and utter chaos, I know life goes on, it's a stupid house, we're happy where we are, we don't mind renting, it wasn't even my dream house. I just wish I could let it go. I'm just hoping I'll be over it in a little bit. I can't stop crying.

I never realized how much emotion I had invested in this goal.

To top it off, I pull into work Monday morning and I see a sign "restaurant for sale". I ask, "What did I miss over the weekend?" Come to find out, the land is for sale, the restaurant will be relocated. Not a problem as it's a BBQ trailer on the side of the highway. As much as I've complained about working more than I ever intended, I was sick to my stomach thinking I might not have this place to go to every day, where I truly like the people and we all get along 95% of the time. Did I envision myself selling BBQ when I was 40? No, of course not. But it fits in with my family, our schedules. While it's not mentally stimulating, it's enriched my life. I know sounds silly even to me, but it's true. It's around the corner from my house so I spend very little in gas, I work when the kids are in school, I'm home just a few minutes after they get home, it's pretty comfortable.

Maybe finding my comfort zone is the problem. I should never get comfortable or content with anything.

Sunday's Project

Here's what we started with:





After some sanding and some painting we reached this point:



Then after letting the paint dry, running to JoAnn's to purchase a staple gun and staples this is where we found ourselves at dusk:



DH did a great job didn't he? We acquired these chairs for free. They don't match our oak dining table at all, so we decided to get creative. I saw in a magazine at one time a table with mix and match chairs, all different colors and styles. I figured we could make that work to our advantage. DH wasn't very supportive at first until he started to see everything come together. The fabric was $3.50 a yard at JoAnn's. He didn't like the fabric at first either. He said and I quote, "We're just not that hip." It was then I determined I had been "served" so this vision was going to happen. We matched paint chips to fabric, then paint chips to cheaper paint chips, bought a staple gun, and DH spent Sunday bringing it all together. There are three more chairs, a yellow, an orange, and bluer shade of tourquoise than you see in this picture. They were wet and drying in the messy, messy garage so I took a pass on taking their picture.

If I can ever get the laundry off the dining table, find a new table cloth and make a runner out of left over fabric, I might just a take a pic of the 100% completed project.

Pet Peeve of the Weekend

Going to the bookstore, wanting to purchase a book, the book is the only one in stock, the cover has been bent and mangled in various places, and the bookstore won't take a dime off the price of the book. Do they think it's ok to sell a damaged book? Am I a freak? I just think that if you're going to spend X amount of dollars on a cookbook, any damage to the book should occur after you get it home. Don't know why I even wanted to buy a cookbook, we can't figure out how to relight the pilot in the gas oven. I hate to pay someone to come out and light it, it seems like it should be simple thing. So we are going to figure this out over the next week, or rather we'll pay someone to come light the stove after we've stared at it for the next few days, tried to light it with telekinesis, gotten close to lighting it but then the whole fear of blowing the house up takes over so we don't really attempt to light the pilot, just go through the motions. I mean we aren't really going to put actual fire anywhere near that stove. We just have to feel like we've attempted it on our own then we can justify calling someone out to the house, paying them however much it's going to cost, because we made the effort.

Unfortunately due to the absolute necessity of having to run 100,000 errands on Thursday, my day off, no sewing was accomplished. Does that make me sad? Do I feel as though I missed out on something fun, exciting? No to both questions. It gave me a huge feeling of relief. I was glad I didn't have to wrestle with the sewing machine, dig through my rubbermaid bucket where I think I stored the instructions on how to thread the sewing machine. I had forfeited this round to the sewing machine, and I was happy. That was until I read carrieoke's knitting blog.... Not only has she felt the fear and done it anyway, she finished a denim throw in just a couple of days! I bow to her courage. Now she's got me wanting to make some tote bags, the tutorial can be found at super eggplant. It's in the sidebar along with instructions for making pillowcases. It's pathetic that I need to be inspired by someone else's success to get motivated to do something. It's due to the fact that I don't enjoy sewing. I avoided it most of my life. My aunt begged me, seriously begged me, when I was younger to let her teach me to sew. It was her passion. She made the most amazing clothes. It also helped that she taught Clothing Textile Services at the local community college. But nope, I was going to be a Cosmo Girl. Buy my haute couture off the rack, I didn't need to know how to sew. Now it's one of my biggest regrets. I have to fumble my way through the process and it's all due to my lack of foresight. I know we shouldn't have regrets, live your life, move on, but for the last couple of years I've been really regretting not learning the basics of sewing from someone who has a passion for it like none I've ever seen. Her mother taught me to crochet when I was kid, for some reason while I didn't see sewing as creative(I know, what kind of dork was I?) but crocheting to me seemed a lot more creative than sewing. More fun. I guess it's that it's done in hand while my aunt wanted to teach me to sew by machine. I love cross stitch. It's art to me. I can't draw a flippin' stick figure, but with cross stitch I can create beautiful pieces of art for my walls. Sure someone else designs the piece, but the stitching is mine. Back in the 80s I became obsessed with school girl samplers. I couldn't believe those young girls created such beautiful pieces of needlework. I still never ceased to be amazed when looking at samplers created by 5, 6, 7 yr old girls. I just love handwork. It's not frantic or fast, it has it's own rythmn.

Not Resolutions, More Like Guidelines Really

This is not a list of New Year's Resolutions, they are more like my guide for the New Year in crafty endeavors.

1)Finish Fairy Grandmother sometime before the end of the year. I'd love to have her done in time for my grandmother's birthday in April but I'm not counting on it or working toward that. It has been FG's death wish for the last five years as that as been the target date every year since I started this. So it is very very very realistic that she will be finished this year but not realistic to plan on a March finish(have to allocate time for framing)

2)Finish Mermaid of the Pearls for my niece. She saw this back in 2001 and has claimed it as hers. She deserves it and my brother has told me that if I give it to her he will guard it with his very life as my SIL is known for giving anything her sisters like to the sister that wants it. Not going to happen. But I adore my niece and I want her to have this.

3) Learn how to f&^%ing purl! I will own this stitch before the end of the year, I will be able to make socks! I see it, I see it, therefore it will happen. Isn't that the basis behind Creative Visualization: Use the Power of Your Imagination t?

4) Finish DS#2's Dragon Isle. It's so close to being finished, I cannot let the sun go down on another year and not have it hanging on his wall.

Remembering these are just guidelines:

I'm hoping to get back on track with all things creative. Starting a job has really stifled my creativity this year. I can no longer blame that for not working on projects. Yes, I know, these creative pursuits are for our pleasure and shouldn't bring us stress, but I tend to get overly stressed when I have no time for the things I love to do.

Chaos in the home doesn't help. I don't want to become one of these nagging "every thing has it's place" kind of people but it would be nice to have a general idea of where certain things regular places are just occaisionally. I know this will be a slow process. I mean seriously, not only do I have to organize the cross stitch stash, I plan to start collecting wool for sock knitting, if I buy the wool that means I'm seeing myself knitting socks-back to the whole Creative Visualization theory again-I'm also obsessed with having everything I need for a project way before I ever plan to start it(that explains the humongous rubbermaid tote storing prekitted cross stitch projects-it also in my mind makes feel as though the project is "free" warped, yes, twisted, yes, but it get me through) so I need to set up a place to store those supplies. I want to attempt to knit Sophie Bag and Black Sheep Bags-Booga Bag for special friends and family members as gifts throughout the year or to have for Christmas presents. Why? Purely self indulgent. I love knitting these bags. They are cool, don't take a lot of effort and I enjoy making them. I like not having to think too hard sometimes. I am going to figure out those purse handles too. I stopped by the Garden of Beadin' the other day while running errands and explained to them what I wanted to do, they suggested soldering wire for the handles.

Guess that's enough guidelines for the day. There are more, tons more, things I want to accomplish this year, things I dream about making, skills I hope to conquer over the next year.

Weekend Home Projects

This weekend DH is creating new dining chairs for the kitchen. We acquired some chairs for free. They in no way match our dining table. So we are attempting to be hipster doofuses by painting the chairs different colors. I found some great fabric on clearance at JoAnn's, bought 4 yds, and then we matched the fabric to 6 shades of paint at Home Depot, but the paint was out of our price range there, so we took those paint chips to the store who shall not be named, and managed to come very close to the colors we wanted. We bought 6 qts for about $5.50 a qt. That was within the budget for this project. I will have pics later. While at the store who shall not be named I picked up some size 15 knitting needles and two balls of Bernat White Eyelash. This will be the year long project(maybe not that long). What in the world could I possibly be creating with white eyelash that will take a year? Well how about this-Ljc's Projects: Craftiness: Knit Christmas Tree Garland. Saw this and had to do it. Almost everything on our tree is homemade. For years, uh almost 20, we have used some cheapie plastic white pearl garland, I'm so over it, I saw the knitted eyelash garland and thought, now there's something I can make for the tree, will keep me busy when I want to be a slug but don't want to really work on something that requires thought, and I will have something actually useful when it's done, it won't cost an arm and a leg. I have no clue how long I will make it, how long it will take, I just bought needles to keep with it at all times, it'll have it own little tote bag, I plan to just use whatever fun fur or eyelash I find at the time, not going to be fiber specific and there you have it.

I picked up Cozy Crochet: 26 Fun Projects From Fashion To Home Decor at Barnes & Noble this weekend. Pretty basic stuff, but I love the crochet mouse toy in there. I liked some other things too but the mouse toy hooked me. I put the book down three different times and then finally went back and bought it. I also browsed Celebrity Scarves but it seemed way too basic for even a novice knitter like myself. The photographs were nice, the fibers used in some scarves was interesting, Darryl Hannah lost one of her knitting needles and used a Sharpie to finish her scarf-it's apparently the same size as an 11 knitting needle. The book might have been worth the $24.95 if the articles on the celebrity knitters had been more than a paragraph or two. It's definitely a coffee table book, and for that money I can buy almost three skeins of Noro for a booga bag. I'm also annoyed that it lumps Vanna White and Rosie Perez in with the knitters in the product description on Amazon. Their scarves are crocheted not knitted. How could someone miss something that obvious? Am I being picky? I don't think so. It is inspiring in that most of the knitters in the book used hard to find or no longer available fibers for their scarves so that inspires a bit of creativity.

Well I'm off to find catnip so I can crochet up a batch of mousey cat toys.

Feeling the Fear

And doing it anyway. That's me tomorrow. I have DS#3's makeshift I Spy Quilt(it's basically a 9-patch quilt with lots of different novelty fabrics, I refer to it as an I Spy because I'm just not very creative with titles.) I have put off adding the borders because I'm terrified of my sewing machine, I can't help it, it scares me. It takes me hours to get it threaded, not to mention the hours I spend looking for the instruction book on how to thread it, and then I can never seem to sew a straight line even though my friend Linette has told me time and again, "Duh, who can't sew a straight line?" Duh, me, that's who. Anyway I have the backing fabric(cute fishing fabric, different kinds of lures because DS#3 is a fisherman extraordinaire), I have the batting, I just haven't had the damn courage to pull out the sewing machine and just do it! I pulled out Lisa Boyer's That Dorky Homemade Quilt again and now think that I can accept my hideous sewing attempts for what they are and DS#3 would like this before he gets married. Just a hint, this does not in any way resemble a matrimonial quilt. I like sewing by hand but sewing those long borders on by hand just seems like an overwhelming task, I see no fun in that. Sewing the rows of blocks together by hand wasn't a day in the park either, but I hate the sewing machine and Jinny Beyer gave me permission to piece by hand in her book Quiltmaking by Hand. I'm not a dinosaur. Anyway, my sewing machine and I will bond tomorrow. Hopefully it will be good for both of us. I'm hoping in the afterglow of connecting with the mechanical nightmare I can then move on to making one of these Too E-Z Denim Quilt.

I don't think there are pics on the site. All I get are little red x's in the blocks. You can see a finished one at this blog: Action Hero : : Knitting Weblog. Scroll down a couple of entries. I have some old jeans and kids shorts just waiting to be cut on and made into a fantabulous chenille denim quilt. This is another reason my sewing machine must be my friend. I hope to back my denim quilt with flannel so I will not only have chennilled denim on the front but nice pretty flecks of flannel in the seams too. No way I'm going to sew through all that by hand. I'm hoping to score some flannel shirts at the local thrift stores this weekend. Maybe even some extra jeans too.

This week I have picked up MLI's Fairy Grandmother and been working on her every morning from approx. 4am until 8:30am. This is a gift for my grandmother, I started her 5 yrs ago, I restarted her 4 1/2 years ago. Why did I have to restart her? I tried to get creative with the fabric. When will I learn that MLI knows best? Why do I think I'm an artiste? When do I remember that I'm flippin' colorblind? This piece takes my breath away. The shading is stunning. It's a huge pain in the ass. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. But it's breathtakingly beautiful. I can't say that enough but for some reason this breathtakingly beautiful piece that is being stitched for a woman I love more than just about anyone else on the planet, makes me sick when I pick her up. On a positive note, this time I feel at peace working on her. I have accepted the fact that I can work on her for two hours and not see much progress. It's not a fast stitch, it will never be a fast stitch and yes, I'm going to have to change colors ever 20 or so stitches. That's just how it is. I accept that, I have opened my heart to that knowledge. I have reached Nirvana where this particular part of my life is concerned. I am enlightened and I have found peace because of it. I have missed every deadline I have ever set for this piece of needlework, EVERY DEADLINE over the last 5 yrs. I'm not kidding. So there are no more deadlines. I stitch, I stitch for hours, I stitch 30 damn stitches in two hours, it's ok. I can breathe. I have let the anger go. No deadline, so if I stitch on this for the next 15 years and only get 30 flippin' chuffin' stitches done in one sitting it's alright because I have no deadline. Fairy Grandmother doesn't own me. But when I finish her, once she's framed, I'm having so much S.E.X. it's not funny. People in the LNS will weep when I leave because they can close up for the day, hell maybe for the next week! I'm ordering from the The Scarlet Letter - Samplers, Needlework, Reproduction Samplers, Historic Sam. I have a huge ordered already written up, when Fairy Grandmother is taken to the framers, this order will be placed. I will go to the LNS and I will buy lots of charts, because I don't believe in S.A.B.L.E. I believe in a rainy day fund for my stitching. I will begin kitting up long neglected charts in the stash, I will start 50 new projects if I want to and there will be no one to stop me. Not one shred of guilt in this most major of purchases because the hag will be out of my house, my hoop and my life. I'm totally feeling the joy.

My next mission, to figure out how to make beaded purse handles for the Sophie Bag. I saw Yarn Harlot's Sophies and fell in love with the beaded handles. I think a trip to the Garden of Beadin' is in order so I can hopefully figure this out and make my own. I love gibson girl design - beaded purse handles but I'm a "try to figure out how to do it myself first " kind of chick and then when I make a mess of it I'll break down and order them. I just have to try it on my own and fail once or twice.

How Have I Spent the First 24 Hours of 2005?

Reading craftster.org projects forum - Index that's what. I'm so in love with the CD Book purses in the Purses-reconstructed forum. My 16 yr old told me that all the girls at his school carry those Caprisun bags and all different kinds of duct tape bags. I know at 41 I'm a little old for a Ramen Noodle bag but I am definitely going to make a couple of the CD book purses since I have several CDs I've purchased more than once. I want to give the album bags a try too.

2005 rolled in quietly here on the NW Florida coast. I like it like that. Yesterday I worked on a long overdue RR and have it packaged and finally ready to ship to England. We spent the day watching some Seinfeld, some Buffy and the movie The Big Bounce with Morgan Freeman and Owen Wilson. Would I recommend it? Well if you're going to be sitting around doing nothing anyway it's ok to have on in the background, if you really care about not wasting 90 mins of your life that you'll never get back, then take a pass on it. Of course I happen to think getting to see Owen Wilson while stitching is time well spent.

Not sure what I'll work on today. I have a pile of projects to sort through and a hundred things I want to make at all different levels of craftiness. This is my problem. There are so many things I want to make that I just overwhelm myself and end up being a slug and doing nothing at all. I think I will spend a good bit of time this January working on projects that are already started and trying very hard to get them finished. Of course I will be planning all those other projects, gathering supplies(I'm definitely a gatherer, love collecting supplies for projects, labeling them, storing them away, and just having them around the house, it's all like a nice little security blanket).

I'm hoping with the new year I'll begin to organize my time better. This year has all just gone to hell. Not one time line I set for myself this year was met. Not one. I hate deadlines and just refuse to set them for myself any more. They stifle my creativity. Basically I just want to manage my time better so I have more time to do the things I want. I'd love to do better managing my money. That doesn't mean that I won't buy stash of all kinds but I'd also like to save up for a Nikon digital camera and a lap top for my own personal private use and another desktop computer for just the DH and I so that we don't have to share with the kids. I'm selfish that way. When I have time to get on the computer I hate having to argue with someone to get off my flippin' computer.

Goals

My goals for 2005 are pretty simple. I want to learn how to knit socks, I want to suck up the courage and attempt a crocheted thread tablecloth. I want to crochet it in individual blocks, maybe even using some of the blocks from the 200 Crochet Blocks book. I'm sure these aren't probably what are supposed to be used for a tablecloth but I'm going to play around with them and some cotton thread and see what happens. It doesn't have to be your grandmother's crocheted tablecloth now does it? Other than that I hope to start many new cross stitch projects and finish some that have been WIP for way too long. I say this every year but this time I only said I "hope" to finish not that I plan to finish. I have so many plans circling around in my brain, I know that I will only begin to scratch the surface of all the things I want to make in 2005. Here's hoping I managed to start and complete 1/5 of the things I'm dreaming about.