Don't worry, be happy...

When that song came out for the first time, I thought it was just such a stupid song. But I have since come to appreciate it's message. Which is well illustrated in my experiences yesterday and today. 

Yesterday morning I had a terrible time. I had to sort and organize my papers and receipts for today’s appointment with the tax advisor, and for me that is definitely an item very far towards the bottom of the list of preferable activities. Worse than going to the dentist, I would say. Especially because there is always one slip of paper from the health insurance company which must be presented and somehow is never there where it should be – because, I admit, I am not good at filing things properly. Despite my good intentions, which get rekindled every year afther this particular painful and heart-rending situation. “This year I will file properly...” is what I say when I come out of the tax advisor’s office. I was lucky, because after I had been out in the afternoon, taking a ride on the bike on a wonderfully sunny and pleasant autumn-day, to get away from it all, 

I found that slip of paper yesterday, and even before I had sat down to request a second copy from the health insurance company! After that it all was just a piece of cake.

During the search I also found something which I had been looking for since I began teaching the refugees in September: a bag full of dice, which is good for a few minutes of relaxation in class to practice numbers. So I could use that in class today, very handy.

The real good news of the day, however, was, that the tax advisor could relieve my worries about how the teaching, for which I am indeed getting paid, and the fabric club go together in terms of taxation. Of course it would have made a lot of sense to find out about that before I agreed to the teaching, or at least before it started. Certainly would have saved me a few weeks of gnawing doubt whether I was doing the right thing. In any case, we solved the problem, getting paid and having to pay taxes for the teaching does not interfere with the particular set-up of the fabric club and fabric dyeing business, and all is well. I might go down into the basement tonight and dye some black and browns in celebration of this good outcome of the day!

Seek and ye shall find...

September and also the beginning of October have been very busy. Not only all the teaching and traveling that has been going on, but also suddenly quite a bit of computer work for SAQA in my function as co-rep for the region Europe/Middle East. First an e-mail discussion whether the next exhibition "Wide Horizons" (coming up soon) should be accompanied by a catalogue, and then a lot of preparations of blog posts for SAQA as there is going to be a giveaway on the regional blog. It's going to happen any time now - why don't you check it out and take your chance on being the winner of a box of the brandnew SAQA Signature Thread Collection, which was kindly donated for this purpose by Alex Veronelli of Aurifil.

In the midst of all of this it sometimes felt as if I was losing my head. I spent much more time on the computer than I really care for, much less time at the sewing machine than I would have liked - and I have several dealines breathing down my neck. Which I might meet. Or not, but better should...
The situation went wild this past weekend/Monday. In order to start living up to my own good intentions of clearing out some of my stuff in the studio I had started a bit and tried to get stuff off the floor, including putting boxes back into the shelves. Yet after that I could not find the box which contained all the teaching materials for my weekly Log Cabin class at Landshut Community College. Spent several hours looking for that. It did turn up in the shelf, after all. But I swear it wasn't there when I first looked...
Next day my husband disappeared - he had said he was going to walk our son to school. Which is a ten minute walk. When he hadn't returned after one hour I was beginning to get worried - was this a case of "Honey, I am only going out to get some cigarettes..."-disappearance, or would I have to expect some policeman at the door soon? No kidding, I was really getting nervous, checking out the house whether he had returned unnoticed, but he hadn't. After two and a half hours he returned, he had stopped by at the doctors to arrange for an appointment and they had kept him there right away. And in the afternoon I was searching for "Yellow Line", the quilt I had retrieved from customs a little while ago and which I had left all packed because it was going to be shipped to appear at OEQC as part of the German contribution. But the box wasn't there anymore where I am dead certain I left it, now that I had received the address to which it should have been posted. Several hours of nervous running around the house, checking out various places. Parallel to this my son started crying because he had left one text book at school which he needed for his homework, and I should have been getting ready to go and teach. I managed to organize a copy of my son's exercise for his homework, and I finally did find that quilt in a place where I can't remember putting it. But nobody else in the family remembers either. (It has since been shipped.)
There is a saying in German "The house doesn't lose anything." I just wish sometimes it would tell me where it was hiding things...

Buttons, baskets, boxes

I have a weakness for buttons, as I have mentioned before. Right now I try to refrain from new acquisitions, telling me that I need to use some first. But I cannot guarantee that I will be strong when temptation strikes. I keep my buttons in a shoe box. Practical, cheap. But not exactly stylish.

Of course, I have other weaknesses as well. One is for baskets, and this my most beautiful example, a palmwood basket I once acquired on the island of Lanzarote. Originally I had intended it as sleeping place for my cat, but as the cat disappeared a long time ago, it has by now found a new purpose.

The other weakness, far less under control than the one for basekts, is wooden boxes/containers.

This has resulted in me owning three different sized beautiful wooden backgammon games

wine crates being refurbished as additional storage space under my working table

a former cigar box that contains photos of the special people in my life

and this little treasury for postcards.

And of course wooden boxes have entered my attempts at maintaining some kind of order in quilting. This box is the nicest gift I ever received from my younger brother and holds my handquilting threads.

Slightly more prosaic, another former solid wine crate is my treasury of embroidery threads.

And the last annual flea market, a traditional outing for my son and me, has presented me with this little beauty, a bread box, according to the former owner.

Now it is the container for my larger spools of machine quilting thread.

Perhaps some day I’ll be able to find a suitable wooden box for buttons. Let’s find the next flea market!