It's Not Much, But It Is A Start for 2019 Finally!

This afternoon I did a little review reading on my new project.  I had a busy day yesterday with my GS's 24th birthday celebration, and didn't have time to get into the quilting mode at all until this afternoon, and after church this morning, I needed to rest a bit before I got into the idea of quilting.

I think you may remember over last year I bought lots of vintage embroidery pieces at estate and garage sales.  Today I read over the information I had received from the lady who made the quilt that I saw at a quilt show in October, I think, 2017.  Hers was absolutely beautiful, and I still get excited just thinking about it. 

I didn't make much headway today, but I did get my plastic templates drawn and cut so that I can begin digging through all that embroidery work and crocheted doilies, and see what I can come up with.  I'm sure I'm the only that would try to do it "my way" (as usual, right?).  Her instructions didn't say cut the templates from plastic, but I decided that would be easier for me in selecting the portions of the embroidery I want to use.    So here's what I accomplished this afternoon:  (not very much)

The drawing on the left is what she sent me.  I copied it and cut the nine sections, used my Add a Quarter ruler to add 1/4" seam allowances on the heavy template plastic, and cut  the sections out and numbered them like her drawing.  Of course, I'll remove the white paper from the templates so I can see the embroidery better.  It should fit together just fine I think.  I'll make a test run for a block from scraps in my stash, just to be sure it will work.  Then I can start laying those templates over sections of embroidery and get started.  I'm really looking forward to getting started.  It will be a slow go for sure, but hey, it's a start for 2019!  I just hope I can make it work for me just half as well as the lady whose quilt inspired me to try!  It was so nice of her to share her information with me, a nobody she had never heard of, from several miles away from where she lives. 

I still have not even plugged in my Janome since I got it home from the shop, but will do that tomorrow.

Just have to tell you I got rid of a few more things (that belonged to my grandson) that I had removed from the closet,  As we were eating his birthday cake, I asked if he wanted the Lincoln Logs he had played with as a child.  I almost fainted, but he said he would like to have them!  (He's single; lives  alone in his own little apartment.)  I immediately went and got a big can and another box of them, and put them in a big sack and said "Take them; they can't stay here any longer!"  I also showed him four pair of size 6&8 shorts (underwear) that he wore when he stayed with me one summer; one pair had monsters on them.  I said, "If you want them, take them!  If not, I'm going to donate them!"  He immediately said to donate them all!   He also took a large metal high school mascot emblem that had been made in his Shop class; it was heavy.  So that got rid of a few more things that had come out of that closet!  When his brother comes who will be 26 in March, he's going to have to pack up his model car collection that he put together as a little boy!  That will be really good!

If my sewing goes well this week, I may try to clean a small closet a bit; it has lots of stuff that needs to go too!  I am determined to slowly go through everything!  (I just hope I get it all done before I die!  Otherwise, my son and his wife may hate me forever!)  Oh well, I AM going to work on my quilt(s) a bit each week too!

Hope all is going well with all my quilting buddies, and that you are staying warm.  It's supposed to be down in the teens here Wednesday, windchill anyway.  I don't like that, but my calendar shows nothing that I have to leave the house for this week, except get the mail at the street, and feed the birds, thank goodness!   I'm sure some of you wish it would be that warm where you live!

I'll be watching to see what all of you are working on!

---"Love"

The Closet is Finished, & Some Interesting Items There!

I declared the sunroom closet organized enough to suit me, for now anyway!  Seems like all I've done all of January is work on that mess!  It wouldn't please most of my readers and friends, but I've called it DONE!  No, I'm not showing any more pictures since I've put the vacuum cleaner, a couple of boxes of quilt magazines still to be gone through, my traveling Viking machine in its carrying case, the two small Christmas tree boxes, and a few other things back onto the floor space.  But at least I can now see almost all of what's in there, and get to it!  I'm ready to move on to something else, and/or another part of the house after a break from the like!

I went back to the doctor Wednesday morning for two more spinal steroid injections, and then rested that afternoon.  Thursday morning I woke up feeling great and decided to vacuum and dust the entire house, and do a few more little things in the sunroom;  I was dog tired by the time I finished, but it felt so good having the house looking like someone could actually live here!

I had received a notice a few days ago that it was time to renew my driver's license, and because this old lady is 80 years old, they had a list of documents I had to bring to the office; I could not renew by mail or online.  That made me a little nervous, so I started digging through to find everything this morning.  I got to the office about 2:15 PM, took a number, filled out the paperwork handed to me, and sat down to wait.....and wait......and wait!  My number was finally called about 4:15, and it took only five minutes for the clerk to complete the procedure and hand me my renewal papers, certifying me licensed to drive through 2025 ----- if I'm still alive then, but she never even asked to see any of the documents I had been instructed by mail to bring!  Drats!  But it was a relief to get that over!  I rarely drive outside the town where I live, and if so, usually no more than 20 miles.  If I need to go to Fort Worth, a friend or my son takes me.  But if I had to, at least I'd be licensed to do so!

Let's go back to the closet for a few minutes.  I fearlessly got rid of so many things from the past; some donated, some given away to friends or family, and lots simply trashed!  On the top shelf of the closet was a beautiful teapot that came from my mother's.  I was having a difficult time parting with it, especially when I read a note that my sister had written and placed inside the teapot.  She said Mother was using that teapot in 1928, the year my sister was born.

Isn't it lovely?

 Mother died in 1966; the teapot was in my sister's home until 2006 when she died; then it had been on that top closet shelf at my home until this week.  I made a tough decision to trash it, and here's the reason why!

The spout is broken and has been ever since I've had it, perhaps even as long as my sister had it!

So it's going away in the trash this week!  And I'm a little tearful!

Also in that closet for the same amount of time, and also same time at my sister's, has been my mother's sewing machine.  I tried in 2006 to thread it, but couldn't figure it out at that time, and just stored it in that big closet all these years.  I had to get it out of there!  The cabinet is very stable, but also the wood top is disfigured by time.  I have searched the internet and have found only one other machine by the same name, Lenco Deluxe, and it is a much newer one than Mother's.  Of course, after all those years, the electric wiring is not safe to even plug in.  My DIL doesn't want me to get rid of it, and said it might be worth checking into more, but I really doubt it.  I think it was made in Japan, perhaps sometimes in the 1940's or 50's.  Mother used to make my clothes on it.  I have a friend who buys really antique machines and works on repairing them for a hobby.  I may give it to him since his parents knew Mother.  Haven't decided yet just what I'll do with it, but it can't stay here!  I have enough machines!  Do you have any info on Lenco machines?  Any other ideas what to do with it?

What to do with it ---- that is the question!   What would you do?

Just one more thing to show from the closet:

My Keepsakes from Childhood and High School

Those four boxes are full of high school newsletters and annuals, and a variety of other things!  One says it has my childhood stamp collection, (remember my daddy was a postman), my scrapbook, and even my "paperdolls"!   Remember those,anybody?  I have not yet opened any of those four boxes, but I will probably start going through them some next week.  I'm pretty sure I'll scrap most of it, but I may want to keep some of our class reunion programs, etc., and of course, my school annuals.  My kids will not at all be interested in all that "stuff", or better named, "junk"!  But I'll have fun going through it slowly for as long as it takes, and I'll keep very little of it probably.  However, like the teapot and machine, some of it may bring a tear to my eyes as I put it through the shredder.

I'm enjoying watching the ice skating on TV tonight!  I used to tell my friends if I ever came back to life after death, I was coming back as a long legged ice skater!  They just laughed!  Of course, I could barely roller skate when I was a kid, but I always wanted to learn to ice skate, but never had the opportunity, and my short legs would never have been able to do it, and they surely couldn't do it now!  I do still love to watch it and listen to the music, so I'm out of here so I can do just that!

Happy quilting!

---"Love"

Lots of Closet Progress, But Not Finished Yet!

I've worked on the sunroom closet a bit every day this week, some days more than others because of other activities, and I'm still not finished!  But I have made LOTS of progress!  I probably could have finished today, but guess what!  Another vertigo attack this morning put me back in bed all day!  This blog post, if I get it finished, is all I will have accomplished today!  (But there's always tomorrow, or next week, right?)

Katie had asked if I took pictures before I began, but I did not!  I just could NOT let you see that mess!  It was bad enough to allow my friend and her husband come to get the Christmas tree I gave him.  My neighbor next door has also been cleaning closets, and I told her I'd let her see mine if she would let me see hers; she didn't agree, but I did invite her and her twin sister that lives down the street, to come and see my new cabinets that my son got together and in the closet on Thursday.  He worked hard all day, with my help, and I am so proud of those little cubby cabinets!  Why didn't I get those years ago?!

I did take one picture of the 'before' in one corner so you could see the difference.

I literally stripped the bottom two original shelves of the sheer junk (mostly) that I had crammed in there!  A lot of it went into the trash immediately, and some will be donated; the rest is, or soon will be, on a different shelf.

You see those cookbooks stacked up there?  Well, I added more from a box on another shelf, and put them all together here.

This, of course, will not be the final arrangement!  I just wanted to see how far they would go down the shelf; I have some more I want to add to them from another closet (yes, really!), but first I'll have to remove all of them in order to put some new shelf liner under them.  I also will sort them, probably by subjects as much as possible, or some other way, who knows?  Anyway, you can imagine what an improvement that shelf will have, and just look at that empty space, (so far).

The clutter on the shelf above now can  better show and store the big soup bowls with handles and the two big bowls that match my everyday rose dishes in the kitchen, where I don't have room for those pieces!

I gained so much space in just those to shelves, it's hard for me to believe!

The first thing I had to do to even begin working on the closet was to drag out off the Tupperware and other plastic things from the center of the closet --- just piled on whatever would hold it.  Now it is neatly organized in the new shelves below the original built-in shelves.  I should be able to see and get just the piece I want!

In one corner of the closet (past the Tupperware) now is a cabinet you can't see well.  It is full of  the few Christmas related things (bowls or other decorations left over from Christmas packing).  If it was leftover Christmas stuff, it is in that cabinet, and the card tables I want to keep are in front of it.  I can easily slide the tables out should I need in there!

Then on the other side original shelves, you couldn't begin to imagine that mess!  There was a wire rack, make that a wire box!) full of metal muffin pans, cake pans (with those old sliders that could  be slid around under the cake layers; remember those?), etc.  I never could get the piece I wanted out of that wire 'cage', so I just used my pyrex or other pans.  Now I can find the exact thing I want to use!

I even organized all the foil pans with plastic lids for funeral dinners, etc.  I shouldn't have to buy any more of those, because now I can find and get to them!!

In the opposite corner cabinet is what I'm designating as my "Family Memories" cabinet.  It holds a variety of things (that aren't stuffed somewhere else!), from my brother's WWII Soldier's basic training handbook and binoculars, and a box of my daddy's songbooks with only songs written by him and published in Stamps Baxter song books, also a big box with a book I put together with Daddy's original handwriting and music manuscripts of almost every one of his 63 songs; I also wrote a little about each composition and how it  came to be as far as I  could determine.  I'll tell you more about that box sometime maybe; it is very special!   There are several other little tidbits of family keepsakes in that corner also.  (Sorry; I didn't get a picture of this corner.)

Here's a look at the back of the closet, with the new cubby cabinet under the original shelves.  Just look at that empty space on the original bottom shelf above the cubby.  I'm sure there's some things still sitting around in the sunroom that will fill that space!

Yes, that's 2 old rotary dial phones; they still work with electricity when the power goes off!

I will be forever grateful to my son for putting those four cabinets together, plus one more last Thursday!

Of course, before I'm totally finished with this closet, some changes may occur in the arrangement, and certainly more things will be addedl  Also when I'm finished with the shelves, into the floor space  will have to be the vacuum cleaner, a few boxes that I still have to go through and declutter, and my traveling sewing machine and its case; probably some other things too.  After all, the space was crammed full when I began this process!

I sent about 50 or more old quilt magazines home with my DIL, and will send more later; didn't want to overburden her right now.  I still have to go through the lower part of that side of the closet, but I'm pleased with my progress so far.

This vertigo mess is really hampering my progress because I can't turn my head around or bend down without turning to jelly!  So I'll just have to wait a day or two, and then I should be able to finish up next week for sure!   I'll be so glad!  Then maybe I can sew a little bit before starting on cleaning my quilting closet, which is a big mess too!   (but more fun!).

It was 70 degrees yesterday, and freezing cold here today, and Sunday morning will be dreadful with stronger winds predicted than we had today.   I've already notified my SS teacher I won't be able to be there tomorrow to play the piano.

I'm getting jealous of all of you who have been quilting!  Guess I better get back in bed for tonight!

---"Love"

10 Days Later & I'm Still Working on that Big Closet!

This has been an interesting and not really very productive ten days since my last post.  Well, maybe it has been more productive than it looks, but it certainly has been, and still is, a slow go!

I told you on the 5th that I was declaring war on the big sunroom closet, and I did.  Only problem is that most of the stuff that was stored on the floor (not the shelves above) is now piled all over my sunroom.  You just cannot imagine how much stuff is everywhere, but tomorrow, if I'm able, I'll  be able to mop the closet floor!

Since last post I went to Big Lots and bought four little cube storage units to put around the walls and under the built-in shelves.  My son got one put together last Friday, but at that point, there was no room to put it in the closet, so I put it in my master bath to replace a different one that was beginning to show some wear.  The older one can go in the closet with the other new ones.  Next problem:  my son can't come to put the other new ones together until Thursday of this week!  So all that 'stuff' will just have to stay in the sunroom until then.  I hope I don't have any company, but they will just have to deal with it if  anyone comes! 

I got rid of a lot of stuff as I got it out of the closet.  Some of it will be donated, and a few things will go to my son and his wife (if she will take it! :)  )   My 7.5' Christmas tree, that needs new lights in the top section, will be given to a friend who will take it to his booth at a flea market.  I got the new lights, and he can fix it.  It still is a beautiful tree, but I got by just fine this past Christmas without it, and I know I'll never put it up again, so why keep it?   If I ever put a tree again in the sunroom, it will be no more than a five footer!

His wife, who is my best quilting buddy still in Texas, took me and my Janome  to Sewing World in Fort Worth for the machine's annual checkup and cleaning, and also her Bernina to her shop also.  Today we went back and brought both machines home.  She went home to start sewing; my machine was placed in its cabinet, and the door and top closed.  I had to work on that big closet again!  (but I did find the floor!)   Small success I guess.

On Jan. 10, last Thursday, my son took me to the surgical clinic in my town where I received my first steroid spinal injections, one on each side of my lower back.  I have felt better since, and I think I stand straighter, but my legs still do not want to work.  I'm scheduled for another series on the 23rd, if all goes well.   It is hoped the injections will help release the nerves to my legs from my spine where I have a bulging disc and spinal stenosis.  I hope it works!

But through it all, I've not had it as bad as my son and his wife.  Just before Christmas, his car was totaled by a woman who ran a stop sign.  Just last Friday, they finally got a replacement car.  The next week after his wreck, his wife fell at work, almost broke her ankle, and was on crutches a week.  Then they had a major water leak in their main line from the meter; had a big repair bill.   Yet the worst news of all, my DIL's father died last night!  I hope that's the end of their problems for a while; that's almost more that they can bear, yet they remain calm and civil!

I'll work on the closet again tomorrow and the rest of the week until I get that one closet finished. Then I may play at sewing a little bit before starting on my sewing closet.  At least that one will be more fun than the big one!  I'd show you pictures of the mess I've made in the sunroom, but I'm too embarrassed to do that!  It won't be perfect when I finish, but it will be a lot better for sure!

Hope all of you are getting more quilting done than I am!

---"Love"

January 5, 2019, and Christmas 2018 is Packed Away!

Well, it is almost packed away.  There are a few packed boxes still not in the sunroom closet so that I will have room to de-clutter a couple of shelves tomorrow, and four plastic tubs are stacked in the kitchen waiting for my son to move them to the garage.  Also the Christmas Stack and Whack quilt that hung in the back bedroom is waiting for me to hand stitch a piece of the original fabric on the back, to show what it was before it was stacked and whacked.  :)  I didn't have time to do that before my son was here to hang it, but I want to finish that before I pack it away!  All other quilts, wall hangings, stockings, etc., are in their place until next November!  I've worked as fast as I could each day this week, but I'm just so slow moving around, and particularly when carrying something.   Also every room has been restored to normal with the usual things back in place, which makes me very happy!

I almost failed to mention that my son and DIL and my two grandsons were here for Christmas Day Lunch.  My DIL was on crutches after falling off a curb at work, so I prepared the GS's favorites:  Chicken spaghetti, English pea salad, candied sweet potatoes, baked corn, and chocolate pie.  Of course, I also had lots of divinity, fudge, peanut butter balls dipped in white chocolate, peanut patties, and pecan pralines which they loaded up on as they all went home, even though I had a hard time making pretty divinity and fudge this year for some reason.   I've never had trouble like I had this year;  I blamed it on the Karo! 

This afternoon I decided to get rid of some sheer junk out of the sunroom closet to make space for other things that are so stacked up it is difficult to even want to use them.  There were lots of little boxes left over from small gifts from others, old boxes from phones and cameras that have been long out of use; you just wouldn't believe what a pack rat I am!  But I'm hoping to change that this year!  With the stuff I removed from my bedroom last week, I had two trash bags almost full.  Getting rid of all that made me feel almost better than getting Christmas packed away! 

I'm really a tired puppy tonight, but I've also done three loads of laundry, and have had my shower, and the bed is turned down ready for me to climb in as soon as the Cowboy game is over.  If they don't get to playing better, I may go to bed before the game is over.  :( 

I'm not sure what quilting project I'll work on first, maybe next week.  I have several I need to finish, but I'm so wanting to start my new project.  It won't be easy for me; it may be a trial and error sort of thing, but I'll just take it slow when I do get started on it.  I need to do some more studying about it too!

I've really enjoyed reading about everyone's plans for 2019, and I'm looking forward to seeing your accomplishments.  Have fun with each project, okay?  Maybe I'll have at least a block to show you next post.

---"Love"