handmade cord, and what you can do with it

Being a very orderly person is not one of my major strengths, although I try, try, try. It results in regular attacks when I try to establish order, and these last a while, then I drift back into creative phases, until another attack hits me. I have been suffering from such an attack lately, so my studio is transforming somewhat. Boxes have disappeared because their contents could be placed in other boxes. Scrap projects that I am consciously aware of seem to have multiplied, because they keep reappaering under some trojanic layer of fabrics and other project, and I could probably be handstitching til the end of my days.  This kind of attack, however, leaves me very vulnerable towards minor weaknesses in orderliness of other people. I have a wonderful husband, whose weaknesses in orderliness are very different from mine, and I don't want to judge them in any way, or talk about them publicly here. One weakness, however, left me screaming the other day - he went away for four days, after asking me to take goood care  of the mail box because the office, which is in the same house as we are, and the mail of which frequently gets deposited in our private mail box, is currently receiving many letters for a certain reason. Fact is, the key to the mailbox is one of those minor weaknesses he has, and usually I don't even try to find it but wait until my husband goes and empties the mail box. Then I don't have to do the search. Now he left, and the key was nowhere to be found. It doesn't make much sense to call him, then, either, because he wouldn't remember where he put it anyway, and his phone was off because he was examining students.
I searched high and low, asked the secretary, went through his desk - nothing. After quite some time I was lucky to find the replacement key. And had an idea.
Handmade cord, which I learned how to make from Kathleen Loomis, which she learned how to make from Dorothy Caldwell, who, supposedly, learned it from Australian indigenuous people, is one thing I like to be making from the narrowest cut-offs when aligning or straightening fabric.

The result has become my standard gift wrapping item, getting rid of wrapping paper, just tyeing a piece of this cord around the present. The production yields much more revenue than I can give gifts, however, this ball is just a small portion.

These stocks came to my mind when I was running around the house, still fuming, after having found the replacement key. And I decided to put that one on the leash.

It's long enough to take the key to the mail box, but it is attached to the balustrade inside our door - with any kind o fluck I will always be able to find a key to the mail box that way.
Sarahcswett has posted a little video on how to make the cord on instagram and her blog. So you can have another scrap project to work on, too.

Scrapping away

Since I returned from Ste. Marie-aux-Mines I have been scrapping away. I had meant to spend the entire week seriously working on my quilt for the SAQA "Forced to Flee", but obviously something still hasn't developed far enough yet, because I keep postponing/stalling...
I have been struck be a cleansing fit and am rummaging through boxes, sorting, throwing out, rearranging. And actually reducing the number of boxes slightly, simply by putting things in a more orderly manner, packing more densely. I had tons of boxes standing around, and there is a bit of a wish there to reduce that number considerably.
But while I am doing that, I am also finding soooooo many WIPs that I am getting overwhelmed. For one thing, with ideas of what I still want to do. And for the other part, with desperation, because after Octover 1 there will be considerably less time to do all these...
For example, these two different-sized Underground Railroad projects I am working on. The upper picture is the Dear-Jane-size - i.e. 4 1/2 inch finished. The lower picture is slightly larger, with 1 inch squares in the four patches.

And there are about 6 or 7 other unfinished scrap projects, those mostly hand stitching.

Today was the last day of openinig hours in our swimming pool. It has now closed for winter, and I am heartbroken. It is the greatest place of entertainment we have here. So now there are 7 dreary months ahead of us. But fall is here, it cannot be denied. The garden is still nice,

and we are still picking tomatoes.

 These were planted rather late, though, they might not make it anymore before the weather gets too cold.

And this plant was sold to me as an aubergine (egg-plant). The first time I was trying to grow one like that - but somehow it does not look like an egg-plant to me. On the other hand, I don't even really like to eat those, so I am not quite sure why I bought the plant to begin with...

While swimming in the pool today during the last hour before it closed, however, I had an idea how to go on with the refugee quilt, so tomorrow I will be back at the machine, not scrapping anymore, and definitely not distracting myself through trying to put things in order. I can very well live in disorder when other things are more pressing.

Searching....

The guys are watching some competition in Rio, and I have done a bit of mindless sewing to recuperate. Mindless sewing as in  Nine-patching the two differently sized 'collateral damages' that arose from the "Dear Jane"-project of the German Patchwork Guild which I foolishly committed myself to at the beginning of the year. And which has by now turned into a topic of a column I write for the Guild's magazine, reporting on my progress (or lack thereof) and emotional tangles that occur with this momentous undertaking. So there is no way I can drop out and let it be. Right now I am not quite so far behind on it as I already have been, but there is still a bit of catching up to do. The collateral damages are two who-knows-when-they-will-be-finished Double Nine Patches which I started when I had managed to forget seam allowances for one of the Dear-Jane-Blocks (not thinking far enough ahead that that size might just pop up as needed later, perhaps), and when I was unguarded enough to 'like' the size that appeared in another block and thought that might make a nice one just as well. Un-like on facebook, 'liking' something like that quickly turns into a committment, but, also, a welcome occasion for mindless sewing when recuperating.

My slowly growing stack of Dear-Jane-blocks (with liberties
taken, and a few extra-curricular items I am not allowed to write
about on the internet before publication dates of the magazine)

The growing stack of Double-Nine-Patches made from 1 1/2 inch strips...

... and the stack of Nine-Patches made from 1 1/4 inch strips,
which will eventually be turned into Nine-Patches, too.

These projects are also welcome for using up scraps from cutting yardage at the stand.
So what was I recuperating from? I spent most of the morning searching for two items. I am not a tidy person, I readily admit that, but of these two items I really knew that I could not have lost them: my passport, and an envelope with over 400 Australian Dollars. The former I had come home with from Israel only four weeks ago, but it wasn't where I usually put my passport to avoid having to search for it high and low, nor in any of the bags I had taken, not in my backpack, the fleece-jacket which I had worn only in German parts of that journey. But I wanted to use it on Wednesday, when I am going to Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. True, Brexit hasn't really happened yet, so I should still be able to travel with only my national ID, but I do prefer to know where my passport is. And the Dollars I also wanted to take to Birmingham with me because instead of trying to get them back into my banking account in New Zealand where they originated from in November - which I have tried, but is too long a story to tell - I will just use those as my travel funds and exchange them into British pounds. Should give me a good amount of spending money, I would think.
Anyway - the dollars appeared first, the envelope turned up in one of my un-filed stacks which need being taken care of, and then my mind was settled enough to forgo searching for the passport, do the last bit of ironing for the July fabric-club selection which is due to be shipped. Then I picked up my son from basketball camp (the house is indeed awfully quiet when he is not around!), and after that my passport jumped at me in the kitchen where I must have accidentally left it after returning from Israel. So everything is alright now, but I just needed to cool down a bit, because I hate searching for things. Every time it happens, I tell myself I will be better organized from now on, I will file away all slips that relate to taxes, I will not let things accumulate in growing unordered stacks... all in vain. At least I know where I can find my airplane ticket - I can always print it out again from the computer! But good intentions remain.

Knitting needle storage, budget version

A few weeks ago Rachel Biel’s comment link to the Jan-29 entry on Shetland textiles history on TAFA-group on facebook pointed me to this wonderful blog by knitting designer  Kate Davies.  As knitting has been featuring more prominently in my life again lately as a pastime for using my hand without having to think too much about design and composition, because the stitches somehow happen naturally, I bookmarked Kate's blog and get the newsfeed on my blogger account now. Browsing back a little I discovered this post on how Kate reorganized herknitting needle storage. 

That reminded me of my knitting needle storage, which at that point looked like this:

An assortment of unassorted needle sizes, stitch samples, measuring guides...

Which already is a huge improvement over how it used to look over years, when I still held on to the long needle pairs – which I never used anymore, because it felt much too strenuous on hands and wrists when handling those. I always use circular needles, no matter whether I am knitting rows or rounds, or the double ended set of five needles for socks. So when I finally got rid of the pairs I managed to downsize to this little box, but still was always searching for the right size of needles. And, as I never closed the cover, it was accumulating dust.

Kate’s idea of using a pouch for fishing gear seemed tempting – but I was hesitant for two reasons: first I did not want to spend the amount Kate mentioned on her blog, and secondly I did not want to go into the fishers’ shop here, as the whole town would probably be talking about it the next day, and no trip to a larger town with more anonymous options in sight... But I was doing an order of office supplies, leafed through the catalogue, and found another option: a number of zip-lock bags, which I tied together, and stored in a see-through zipper pouch. One bag for the crochet needles at the top, then the measuring guides, and then follow the bags for sizes of knitting needles, starting at 2 mm, up to 6 mm, sometimes two bags per size, sometimes only one.

A new sense of order is entering my knitting life!

Serves the purpose fully. The challenge is, of course, to return needles to their respective little bags when a piece is finished...

The stitch samples went into the second pouch out of the set of three that I ordered, for sentimental sake only.