Supply frustration

The last week has left me frustrated beyond belief. I went to dye a bunch of felt to find that I was mostly out of the color I wanted. Although it didn't matter because I was out of felt. What the eff?

So I went through and did a little inventory check and went on a supply ordering binge. I was a happy little bunny after that. Or so I thought. I then realized I forgot to add things to some of my orders. Grrr.

Via Dharma Trading

Talk about adding salt to the wound! When ordering ready-to-dye supplies, I could have sworn I had included some doggie hoodies. Yeah, go ahead make fun. EXCEPT EVERYONE LOVES THEM. Who can resist a dog in a hoody? It's ridiculous. Ridiculously cute, that is.

Guess I have to go make another order.... Rough! Ruf.

Floss. Not the teeth kind...

Oh. Sigh. Most days are fleeting because I get to actually make something. And some days? They're spent organizing. That yarn book I made? I use it all the time. So I'm hoping that what I spent a solid amount of time doing today will pay off in the end.

I've been doing a bit of embroidering lately, something my mother taught me how to do when I was young - maybe 10-ish? I've been using this floss to do some basic embroidery for the notebook style holders, and pillows I've been making (more on those later), and sewing in my tags into scarves and what not.

Except this is how I've been storing my floss.

Yikes, right? It's been in that bag since I was 10 - double yikes. Today I wanted to start another pillow, but when I reached for my "bag o' fun", I couldn't figure out how to get a certain color thread out. [Explitve here.] It's essentially a big Rat King, as you can see above, and although I can untangle everything without cutting, I really needed to do something to reduce the amount of time that takes.

What's funny, is that I had two fixes that I implemented when I was 11 or so (it took me a year to realize that this rat king was going to happen with my new precious floss).

First was the tee solution. My dad is an avid golfer and I'm pretty sure I stole a bunch of his old tees:

Except that there was no where to attach the other end and they would ultimately unravel. The other solution was cardboard, except it was missing the crucial cut in the cardboard to hold the loose end. Yes, both are original solutions from 20 years ago. I was so close. Oy.

I was at Michael's today and found a handy little solution (I really didn't feel like making my own) for a couple of bucks. Winder + cards:

Don't you worry, I'll be making cardboard cards when I run out of those. It's a little ridiculous to be paying for some plastic thing that won't degrade, and cardboard is sturdy enough to reuse in the future. I was just in a rush to get things organized. (Boo, I know.)

Oh, just looking at that picture makes me feel so much better, no?

Space - Desk Space - the Final Frontier

As I get older, I have discovered a few things about myself. When I get sort of irritable, there is a definite reason for it and although this seems obvious to most, I now make a purpose of trying to figure out what the irritant is and then fixing it. The latter - the fixing it - is something I never really bothered to do when I was "younger" because usually the irritant just went away. Now that I live with my boyfriend and two cats, I have three entities that are always in my immediate vicinity and we occupy a one bedroom in Manhattan. I feel like that is enough said, but if you need any more clarification, 'it be cramped, yo'.

My boyfriend was kind enough to let me use his old desk as my desk. But it was a little too small to be a working desk:

(Little Socks in the corner is wondering where her favorite fireside chair went. In the living room, Socks!)

 As you can see, it's a bit cramped overall - all my weaving yarn was shoved into a couple shelves on the bookcase. And can you see the two bins under my desk? Those are full of fabric and other stuff. For me, out of sight is out of mind and I won't use it because I won't remember I have it. Not to mention it's hard to even use my laptop considering there's no where to put my legs! So in my ridiculous efforts to organize and rearrange, I decided to do a little IKEA hunting and came up with this configuration:

(I love that Fiona is trying to figure out the best place to rest her bum on the bed.)

Definitely less cluttered and I can actually see all the stuff I have! Oh joy! The table looks a little small in the picture due to the 360 stitching app I used (which is an awesome app, btw), but it's a good size (~30" x ~60"). And there's even a little space between the desk and wall to put the ironing board when it's not in use. 

Love, love, love! Time to start makin'!!

Organize, organize, organize!!!

Is there something in the air? Am I just too hyped up on coffee? Why do I feel the need to organize and clean everything in sight? So this weekend, along with the curtains and windows, I felt the need to organize and take stock of my yarn collection. Oy.

In my ridiculous stash of "random things that can't go into the trash" I found an address book. An address book. Do you even remember what one looks like? Yeah, me neither. So if you need a refresher, here it is:

I think I purchased this at a Hallmark store in the mid 90's - thus the ridiculous cover and color scheme.  And the fact it has seen it's way through college and, um like, 6 different moves is baffling to me. I might recover it with some sort of fabric, but we'll see how ambitious I'm feeling....

Anyway, I cut up white card stock that was laying around into quarters, made a quick hole template and punched holes through all of the sheets:

 Then I took all of my yarn, made 6 strand samples of it and wrote down everything I knew about the fiber onto the cards, including random notes like the EPI pre and post scour (yikes!). Since I really didn't want to precisely cut and affix sticky labels, I took the lazy way out and flipped the dividers over, labeling them with basic categories: cellulose, cellulose blends, proteins, protein blends, synthetics, etc:

When I was done, I thought, "When am I ever going to use this? Was I just procrastinating?" But over the course of the weekend, I've actually referenced it several times. And it's been quite helpful. Score one for me!