Resolutions

Well, Happy New Year to everyone!

I'm just starting to feel better after a horrible headcold that has continued for three weeks. Bleh!
But, during all this down-time of being sick, I have had a lot of thoughts about things I wanted to get done in the new year.

Most importantly; I want to de-clutter my life and myself.

I have spent so much time creating things that I never know what to do with after I'm done.

As a result, I have countless plastic containers full of finished things. Collections of things. Kits to make more things. The makings, (supplies), of future things which, - when given time, some assemblance, (skilled or otherwise), and possibly the adding together of yet more things, - would surely create even more things; and, well, that's all they are really; just things.

(How's that for a run-on sentence!)

So, as my New Year's Resolution, I have decided to finally get all these things together and sell them off. (Well, most of them anyway.)

It would be embarrassing to tell you how much Harry Potter stuff I've collected.

But, good grief, I've had collecting obsessions even before all that going back to the seventies when I had an obsession for the Beatles. (I was a step behind the times. I was too young in the 60's when the Beatles were big, and didn't have the money to spend on stuff anyways, so it sort of all started in the 70s.) But that is all mostly records anyways.

Records. Oh, gosh, do you know I must have over 500 45s ???!!!!

I don't know what it is about me that causes me to collect things like this.

And since I started doing crafty things, (in the eighties), I had begun collecting things I wanted to make. I swore I would make them one day. I loved to cross stitch. And before I knew it, I'd piled up a huge amount of stitch kits, pattern books, and supplies.

Then it was crochet. I had learned to crochet as a child by my mother, but it never really took off until a few years ago.
I like to do the graphed afghans because that is sort of a cross between cross-stitch and crochet. Perfect for me.

But, oh, the finished projects I created crocheting take up a lot more room than all the cross stitched things! (Many of the cross stitched things I've finished are folded up and put into Zip Loc baggies.) Some stitched items are framed but professional framing is sooooooo expensive it's just easier to seal them away in baggies.

I guess, to me, the finished project is not as important as the making of the project.

(I don't mean to say that I don't care what it looks like when I'm done, because I'm really obsessive about that too.) What I mean is that, after it's finished, it's just put away and I'll probably never look at it again unless I get an idea in my head that I'd like to see it once more and I'll take it out and go, "Yeah. I did that." and then put it away again.

Now that's just not normal, is it?

So you may say, what about your kids? Wouldn't they like to have your things?
Well, I have three teen-aged boys. (Ok, one's 20), anyway. All of whom have no interest in ever making anything.
I swear. Their interests lie in computer games and sports.
I think the creative gene in my family must only run in the women's side.
My Mom, sisters, (well, one anyway), my Grandmas; we all made/make things.
I can't imagine myself not making anything. Not being in the middle of one project or another.
It's just what I do. It's who I am.

I am so lucky to have a husband who understands this about me.
He doesn't really say much about my obsessive need to make or collect things. (I know this is because he himself also has obsessive tendencies.) So, at least we share in these quirks of which most people would probably shake their heads and laugh.

So, where am I? Oh yes. De-cluttering.
I still plan to do some of the things I have. And I can't get rid of it all as, like I said, I must always be working on something.
But, truthfully, if I never bought another thing to make or supply to create something; I'd still never be able to finish all that I have. It's really become that bad.

I have a walk-in closet I can't even walk into. LOL!!!!

I need to simplify my life.

I need to dig through all that stuff and decide what things I am really going to work on and what things I should give up and let others complete.

This is a hard reality that I have had to think about.
I want all of you reading this to understand how difficult a thing this is for me.

Because, I feel, everything that I have thought important enough to collect or to get a hold of has some meaning for me somehow. And it's sort of like they are all small pieces of me that are still unfinished.

Also. I know me. I'm not going to suddenly be able to stop getting new things either.
If I see a kit on clearance at Hobby Lobby that looks fun, damnit, I'm going to get it! LOL!

But, for the most part, I need to claim back that space in my closet.

Because it's not really about the space, it's about the time we have in which to use it.

I keep thinking of the lyrics to a Simon and Garfunkel song called Flowers Never Bend. I think the refrain is the thing I need to work on this coming year.
Here's the lyrics:

Through the corridors of sleep
Past the shadows dark and deep
My mind dances and leaps in confusion.
I dont know what is real,
I cant touch what I feel
And I hide behind the shield of my illusion.

So Ill continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.

The mirror on my wall
Casts an image dark and small
But Im not sure at all its my reflection.
I am blinded by the light
Of God and truth and right
And I wander in the night without direction.

So Ill continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.

Its no matter if youre born
To play the king or pawn
For the line is thinly drawn tween joy and sorrow,
So my fantasy
Becomes reality,
And I must be what I must be and face tomorrow.

So Ill continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.

Gingerbread Peeps Pink Cottage Tote

I got this done just in time to fill with gifts for my folks and mail it off for Christmas...
(Click on the images for enlargements).





It's a pattern from Lily Sugar 'n Cream called Cottage Tote It's a giant tote!!! I mean HUGE!!!!!!!
And very heavy since you are using two strands of cotton yarn throughout the pattern.

The two Gingerbread people I added after it was made. They are from a plastic canvas yarn kit from Mary Maxim I got a few years ago. They have jingle bells on their bows and plastic bag wrap around their lollypops which have glitter thrown inside as well. Sooooo cute!

Anyway, both sides of the tote look like this...






See how gimungo it is? I'm filling it with their favorite candys, warm snuggly throws, candles, soaps, etc.





Here's two more shots. You can see the inside where I whip-stitched the gingerbread man to the front and back. The handle I made longer than the one in the pattern photo, (even though the pattern itself calls for one this long).
The two handles are lashed together at the top.

I know my Mom will be able to use this tote to store a project or two she is working on. (She likes to have a different project going on in every room of the house. That way she can always just reach out and pick up any one of her on-going projects without having to get up and fetch it from somewhere.