I'm not dead!

Just slacked off a bit there :)

Tomorrow is the church sale! So not only do I not have that as inspiration anymore, but tomorrow afternoon we'll be coming home with lots of stuff. Oh well it's only once a year and it's a ton of fun :)

Of course, this weekend is also my daughter's birthday so I fully expect the house to turn into clutter central soon. That's ok, we've made so much progress and it's looking so good the church sale and birthday will only be a little speed bump :)

So yesterday a friend came over who we hadn't seen in awhile. Just before she left I reminded dh to give her something. It's sort of odd. It was a homemade box my dh made to put a tape player in at medieval events so you can't see it. I hope that makes sense to y'all cuz I can't describe it better (and I didn't think to take a picture). Dh made it with plans to make a bunch and sell them but never did (he used to be a merchant in the SCA). The friend we gave it to is still heavily in the SCA and knows plenty of dance instructors who might be able to use something like this.

UGH! Ok, I will post the picture for this tomorrow, but I also got rid of a lot of stuff on freecycle today. Yesterday, after the box went, I was inspired to go through my yarn stash. Most of it is inherited from my Grandma so, for sentimental reasons, it's taken awhile (years) to get to the point where I can let it go. I got rid of some a few months ago but there were still things that could leave. I went through it and pulled out anything that I couldn't see myself using (didn't like the color, didn't like the yarn, couldn't think of anything to do with it - whatever). I ended up with 14 skeins of yarn. I've decided that my "stash" should only fit one laundry basket type container and that's it. I do want to have stuff on hand for the kids to use and for sudden bursts of inspiration, but in general, I'm not going to buy new yarn unless I have a *specific* project in mind. No more "oh, that's cute, I could do *something* with it" purchases. Basically, my "stash" is going to be very small and well managed. Not much of a stash really, but that's the way I want it.

To that I added 22 crochet hooks. I inherited all of Grandma's hooks but here's the thing, I only like the Boye or Hero ones. She had a ton of Susan Bates brand ones I don't like. Ok, you don't need to know anything about crochet, just understand, these were 22 hooks that I *don't like to use* so I pulled them aside and put them away and KEPT them. For no apparent reason. It finally hit me how stupid that was. So I gave them away today and still have about 20 of Grandma's hooks that I *do* like. Duh.

And finally, I added a bag of embroidery floss. I used these in the SCA to make favors for the Queen one year. She and I were friends until I broke up with my boyfriend of the time and found out that - oops! - she and her husband were HIS friends, not mine. They were lovely people, not mean at all and still nice whenever I meet them, but they were his friends and the breakup drove that home to me. So the floss just makes me think of that boyfriend (aka Loser Boy) the friends, and just in general has bad associations. Out it went. There was a lot of it but I'm only counting it as 1 bag because that's the way I thought of it.

I put it on freecycle last night and holy crap, you wouldn't believe how many emails I got! I gave it all to a woman who is teaching others to crochet and could use the extra hooks and yarn. I think my Grandma would have liked that :)