So

I had planned to "wow" you all with pics of my Mason Dixon Knitting Warsh Rags. Why can't I wow you? Well DS#2 likes to video himself for his My Space(he is so the kid in the You Tube video taping himself for his My Space page):

YouTube - My Space Movie

So I have no batteries in my camera. This is the story of my life. I buy batteries but when I need the camera they are as dead as dead can be.

Since I can't, at the moment, wow you with my own Mason Dixon Knitting let me hook you up with the Mason Dixon KAL. If you scroll down approximately four posts, give or take, you will see someone else's Warsh Rags. I'm on my fourth one. The first two I gave to my friend, I'm on my second one for moi. These are addictive and pretty much what my soul has needed the last few days. I've been restless and unfocused.

I'm trying to design a creative space in the house for myself. It's not easy when there are five people in a three bedroom house. Every inch of space is occupied by some thing or someone. I'm toying with the idea of creating my space in the very public living room. The garage is too hot, although they, whoever "they" are, are saying that Air Conditioning Can Make You Fat so I might be better served making my creative space the garage. No, not going to happen. So what am I left with? Creative space in my own bedroom? As much as I enjoy being alone, being hidden away in a cave isn't creatively stimulating for me. Creative space in the kitchen? Well even though we rarely eat at the table, that icebox with the tv in the door at Best Buy looks really good to all of us, the kitchen is another no man's land and even when I'm home alone I don't want to be hidden back there. So I'm left with using very available space in the main living area. Seriously no one else uses the living room except to watch tv so why can't my creative work space be designed for this area of the house? Is it possible to make a creative space that is pleasing to the eye, clutter free when not in use, and at home in main area of the house? I think with the right shelves and desk it can work. As it is, the fold out table in front of the living room window(pretending to be a desk) is piled with DS#3's latch hook project(that happened to get Koolaid dumped all over it so it's really just waiting to be tossed, I hate to throw it out, seems like some of it could be salvaged but truthfully not as far as I can tell and it's been a couple of months since the great Koolaid Disaster of '06 occurred. Time to let it go.), several photo boxes full of various cross stitch WIP, in front of the table there are two Rubbermaid buckets full of cross stitch stuff and underneath the table is a Rubbermaid bucket with all my family photos and my "rarely sees the light of day" scrapbooking storage cart. Next to that is my 1940s Singer sewing machine that needs some kind of electrical maintenance because every time we try to see if it will work(plugging it into the wall) we blow all the circuits in the house and smell smoke(we've determined that's not a good thing), on top of that stand is my pretty much useless modern day sewing machine and a pile of various electronic necessities, mostly iPods but also a Gameboy always charged and ready for a game of Spyro or Castlevania, oh and the Amish rocker piled with magazines, my grab and go tote, some yarn, some thread(DMC) and a couple of baggies of WIP. Yes it's as hideous as it sounds so seriously with the right furniture, some shelves and learning to put things away(or making a place for everything), maybe I could have a nice work space in the living room. Of course all this creative space creating will entail a major clean out of stuff and reorganizing my crafty storage space in my bedroom and probably cleaning the garage to make space in there if I'm actually to be able to find my stuff once it's put in there. Yes, I'm fortunate to have a husband that really doesn't care about the house, he just gets mad when I freak out when company shows up. Did I mention the four paint chips we have tacked up on the wall until we quit arguing over what color we want the living room to be? I'm all for Kilz Golden Margarita. I do worry that on a bad day I might resort to licking the wall in the hopes of getting a mellow margarita buzz going.

The construction on my version of HOHRH has stopped for a little while. I'm in the middle of a "fear of finishing" attack and have had to step away from the project to get some perspective. Oh, who am I trying to fool, I've actually got a honkin' big case of startitis and want to start some new projects and am trying to have some discipline so I'm taking a few days off from stitching so I will appreciate it a little more when I pick it up again. Hence warsh rag mania.

In all seriousness I feel bad for those projects that make us weary. It's not their fault. They don't mean to be so big, they don't mean to cause us pain(even though that pain is caused more often than not by human error), I'm reasonably certain that any project would rather be on a wall being adored than crunched up in someone's hand, stretched in a hoop or Q-snap, so as we become tired of them, resentful of them, they probably feel a little bit of that. No I'm not off my medication, I've just been spending some time with my WIP and wondering why they have been lingering for so long. They deserve better. They feed my soul, I should do something for them, like work on them occaisionally. One long ignored project is Designworks Cowboy Boots. I had forgotten about it and saw it in the new Stitchery catalog, seeing it made my fingers itch to pull this out and work on it for a while. It's colorful, happy, and I love me some cowboy boots. Good Huswife's With My Needle has been nagging at me from the workbasket too. It captured my fancy a couple of years ago. I got the chart, just a few weeks before it went out OOP, how lucky was that? Anyway, I put a few stitches in and then moved on to something else. Just that fast.

I do plan to pull out Quaker Garden and put a few stitches in it, maybe as soon as tonight. I need to harness some energy and get my focus back. Starting VOHRH is not going to happen for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. I'm saving for the NPI silks, it's a luxury to even contemplate using them, but I'd love to give them a spin and this project seems like the place to start.