A Work in Progress

Nancy, Piecemeal and Patchwork Penguin have all made recent posts about the state of their sewing rooms.  I was in a similar position earlier this week with a myriad of projects and wannabe projects covering my cutting table.  I wasn't able to focus on anything as far as quilting goes.  My solution?  I got a couple of shopping bags and put everything that is not related to my current project into them.  My cutting table is clear and I can move ahead with that Thimbleberries block-of-the-month quilt I'm determined to finish this summer.  And yes, I know that I've only put a band-aid on the whole issue of reorganizing the sewing room as I now have a number of bags and boxes sitting around the room.  But with my hisband and two of my kids around most of the time, I don't want to do a full clean-out .  That would be scary!!  So the cleaning process will happen one quilt at a time.

Aaah. . . That deep sigh you hear is my house thanking me for staying home and cleaning this weeked. Honestly, with all the traveling we did in October, things were getting a mite grimy around here. I spent nearly all of yesterday at home scrubbing, dusting and vacumming and now we can pass the health inspection. I was the lector at the early church service this morning and had to go back to help count the money after the late service (I find it highly amusing that I'm tapped to do anything remotely connected with math, but the chairman of the finance committee begged me). In between, I attacked the mountain of ironing that was on the back of the chair next to my sewing machine. Of course, I had an ulterior motive for doing so since it was geting difficult to actually sit on the chair to sew. Then my afternoon was free to work on the quilt I'm planning to give my daughter for Christmas. Made good progress on it and should have a finished top by the end of the week. I ...

"Polishing my halo" is what my mother used to say to congratulate herself when she had finished a large or tedious household task. I've been taking advantage of the uninterrupted time I have with my husband at work and all of the kids away to do some serious cleaning. The using a toothbrush to scrub the tiles kind of cleaning. My house is thanking me and my halo will be shining brightly by the end of this week. When I take a break, I've been reading Stuff by Randy Frost. It's about compulsive hoarders, a disorder that has fascinated me since I saw a TV show or two about it. The book is extremely readable even though it presents Frost's research about the basis of hoarding. I think one of the things that makes it so good is that he really seems to like the people he studied. Reading their stories makes it a lot easier to clean out the closets.