I almost forgot I had a blog...
Life has been busy in the last year! I went on a trip to England, and added an extra class this school year, which changed my schedule and the amount of time I had on campus to do school work dramatically. Dad had some health problems, I've been working on getting my sewing room reestablished, and then the Coronavirus dive-bombed the world.
So...I live in Washington State, and our governor has pretty much shut the state down. "Stay Safe, Stay Home" has been the rule. School was closed on March 16, and we are not returning back to the classroom for the rest of the school year. I've been doing a lot of Google Hangout meetings, and today tried Zoom, which was much easier. Now we're doing online instruction, which is interesting and has its own challenges.
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Itty-bitty bunnies and bear...
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What has this crafty girl been doing while on "house arrest" (as my daughter puts it)? I have been resting a bit, as teaching is exhausting, and cumulated lack of sleep and overwork had me barely making it, energy-wise, to the end of the week. What can I do on the couch while resting? Stuff with yarn! So I have been trying new patterns, discovered a new favorite yarn (and then got it in every color), learned to do some new stitches, and knitted up several doll dresses. I knitted some tiny bunnies and bears as accessories for dolls, and then had to shop for more yarn (I had one skein of brownish-gray sock yarn...needed some real brown for bears).
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| This one has correct colors. |
Since my niece moved to my dad's house in Idaho, I've been cleaning and getting my sewing room reestablished, but it is a challenge. My mom passed two years ago, and I inherited her enormous sewing room. It took a year of back-and-forth travel and a lot of patience to condense what I wanted to keep and then donate the rest, plus catalog her dolls, and box up the ones on display, and as a result, I have a supply of fabric, trims, and etc. that far exceeds my ability to store it in my considerably smaller sewing room. So I'm having to go through the bins (the big plastic ones from Costco with the interlocking lids) and cull from them what I am and am not going to be able to use.
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| That's a lot of bins! |
For example, there are TWO bins full of velveteen in a rainbow of colors. There was one bin entirely filled with vintage cotton organdy in a variety of colors--more organdy than any human could use in a lifetime of doll dresses!
There was another bin full of dimity, skip-dent, voile, and organdy. Another one entirely composed of Swiss batiste and embroideries. Some bins have an amalgam of things doll-related, like furniture, accessories, etc. that my dad packed as we cleaned up. One bin was full of nothing but Ginny clothes, accessories, and a few dolls (most need re-stringing). And the list goes on.
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| This area is now cleaned up. |
All of this is far more than I can use, so I've got a huge box of fabric donations (to my school's Home Ec department--the instructor for the sewing classes is a friend, and we've discussed what I have and what she can use), and a box of things to sell, and a bin of fabric that I'm going to sell as doll dress sewing kits (I'll be putting together lace, trims, etc. with the fabric).
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| Donations and trash (in bags) |
Sigh. I have organized about half my sewing room, but have the other half to complete. All this free time on my hands, I've been developing ideas, and am dying to get in there and just create!! But I don't have creation space yet. My work table is in my husband's office, and my accumulation of "stuff" over three years needs to be cleared out of there, as well as move the table.
At times this is very overwhelming. And a lot of work. Dusty work. But it needs to be done,
because I'm psychologically in need of creation time, and it's almost a physical need, as well. I can only function in creative limbo for so long, and knitting and crocheting is not cutting it, so to speak.
It doesn't help that my favorite bead emporiums have been having sales, so I've also been accumulating beads that need to be organized, fondled, and drooled over. I think this weekend, I need to do a major effort to get this all done!
So... guess I'd better get to work! :) Take care!
