We must be having a summer inversion right now since I woke to the smell of rotting brine shrimp coming off the Great Salt Lake. Normally I wake to clean mountain air coming out of the canyon.
There are a few days each summer when the valley smells of lake stink but they are few and far between. But when we do get the odor, it reminds me to be grateful that I don’t live near the stockyards, the dump or the fish food factory. Those odors are horrendous all summer.

The annual Wasatch Front Shop Hop is on and I’ve hit my first shop. I was not going to buy anything this year except for some pale blue fabric to go with my Beautiful Swan contest fabric (yes, another Ugly Quilt contest).
However, at the first shop I hit, I found the perfect pattern for my Beautiful Swans and the gadget to make doing that pattern easy. So I grabbed a project bag (no more uncontained projects), grabbed the gadget and the pattern. So after my first shop I’ve spent $28 more than I wanted too but it was for my exception, would it really count?

It’s taken one week but the stash room is CLEAN! Over a year ago, the room looked like this:

But since I’ve been in school, the kids have decided that if they don’t know where to put it, it goes in a box and gets shoved in my room. So Thursday night it looked like this when DH left with the boys for the weekend. You can see why the kids went from calling it the sewing room to the swearing room! Thursday night I sat down and took the first step in my LIFEChange Program Get Organized workbook. I drew a plan for what I wanted the room to look like. Friday, I left work early and went to IKEA where I bought 2 shelves, a computer table and some things to help organize the shelves. I took everything out of the room in bins and put it in the garage. By 5:30 I had the computer desk put together and the computer moved. At 6:00 pm on Friday the room was ready for me to start working. By the time I went to bed, it looked like this:

By the end of the weekend we were at here:

I won’t bore you with the rest of the pictures but Monday all the stash projects went into project boxes or Poly-envelopes, Tuesday I discovered I have more 32 count linen than any other fabric, Wednesday I finished quicksorting most of the boxes, Thursday I started cataloguing and cleaning out patterns, Friday DH hung my new blinds, and here is the finished product:

Although I’m still not happy with the lack of light in the room so that trip to Home Depot is still coming! All in all, not bad for a week. I should add that the LIFEChange program believes in doing chewable chunks of time, not a major push like this one. However, it does feel great to have space of my own.

P.S. I’m also saving up to get a different chair.

As of right this moment, there are 4 unsorted boxes left in my garage. I have taken documentary photographs almost every night so that you will be able to see the progression when I’m done.
I’ve been using a modified version of the QuickSort technique that Connie Sokol teaches in Get Organized! from The LIFEChange Program. I’ve labeled my bins: “filing”, “stay in this room”, “eBay”, “not in this room”, and the black can is garbage. I’ve thrown out lots of garbage. I’m still missing 3 canvases, and a primitive muslin piece that is a drawing of my youngest son. I did find 10 extra projects that I had started.
DH says if I’m going to go on cleaning binges like this, he’ll take the kids down to classes more often! They were at:

We’re all Diamond members there.

By Sunday night, I realized that I had put everything in the room that I wanted too but I’m not ready to throw away the stuff that isn’t back in. I’m thinking that at lunch today I want to hit Office Max or Staple and get some project folders or envelopes since they’re cheaper than the zipper bags. Then I can move the WIP’s out of the closet and into the shelves. That way I can hide the stuff that I am not ready to throw out but don’t want visible. I also would like to run back to IKEA for more magazine holders (I think I have the ones I got overfull) and maybe some more of the sliding bins. I wish I could think of some way to get my large WIP’s out of the closet and still have them look good. If you were an artist, how would you stack canvases in an open area without having them look cluttered? The other problem is I can’t leave the fabric completely pinned or it stretches funny. I guess I could release the bottoms and not the tops that would look better. But having them sit in plastic bags doesn’t work when they’re going to be out in the open. I could use thoughts and suggestions for how to store these.

When my grandmother died, I was going through a crazy quilting phase. I figured I could make small, wall hanging sized quilts from her clothes or small quilts from her stash fabrics for myself and my siblings. Well, it’s become apparent that my siblings aren’t interested. I have one aunt that is somewhat interested but only if I use the leftover fabrics from her wedding items. Most of the fabric is not suitable for quilting or making anything but 1970’s polyester pantsuits (although there is a 4.5 yard piece with the reciept tucked in. She paid $2.40 in 1942 for it from Woolworths). I’m inclined to throw out everything that I wouldn’t feel comfortable mixing in with my existing fabrics. The hard part is that since I’ve stored it in airtight bins, it still smells like her house. I just need to buck up and do it.

Today, I put together my IKEA furniture and started moving things back into the room. There is still a long way to go. But DD and I took a break to use our True Colors tickets. We bought them when we found out that Cyndi Lauper, Deborah Harry, and the Dresden Dolls were all on the same ticket. We didn’t know at that time that it was a gay pride concert.

I have to say though that Margaret Cho (the emcee) had it right when she said that gay men work harder at their appearance than lesbians. The eye candy in front of us was a lot nicer to look at than the couple next to us. The music was great and I have a CD from the Dresden Dolls with the autograph giving permission for my DD to load it to her iTunes account (it’s my CD but I have the artist’s “permission for 1 compy for DD.”

I feel better about my weight after seeing Deborah Harry and Cyndi Lauper. They look really good but as close as the 2nd row was to the stage, Cyndi’s corset was larger than a 14.

I should preface this with DH hates IKEA. He sees it as cheap, overseas particle board junk stealing US jobs. He wouldn’t go there with me but as he is out of town, I took off work early and went to get the shelves I’ve been drooling over on the online site for some time.

Suz tells me that IKEA is like Disneyland. I thought it was more like walking down the sheep shoots in the pasture until it hit me, that is like Disneyland! – Long lines taking you to fun stuff and still feeling like you missed what you came to see. I did find what I came for though, and a computer table so that I could move the kids computer out of my office and into the main area where everyone can see what’s on the screen at any time. So I in trying to sort out and create an area for myself, I inadvertently created a computer center for the kids. It took under 30 minutes to put the desk together.

I am visualizing a clean stash room. One with 3 sets of shelves and a table for sewing, the shelves are divided between stitching and quilting with a few shelves for other things (paintbrushes, stamps, crochet, and some Finnish cultural items). The North wall is a riot of color as each “box” shelf holds a different color of fabric. There are clean, working window coverings on the west window which sits behind a desk with a photo printer, two sewing machines, and an ironing area. Opposite that on the East side of the room are uncluttered shelves with decorative items, the modem, and NO CRAFTING STUFF (unless it’s framed and now a decorative piece). The South wall is stitching supplies organized so that they are easily located (and catalogued). There is a sheepskin rug on the floor and maybe a stitching chair if I can get the beagle to give it back to me.

Right now, it’s Friday just before midnight. I have one shelf completed it took a lot longer than the desk did. I found vertical blinds at Depot when I went to get a plate cover to replace the broken one in my room. The room is empty except for the shelves on the East wall, the desk and printer on the west, the boxes for the shelves that I will assemble in the morning on the north and the new blind on the floor in front of the window. Yes, I can finish this during the weekend. My homework is another story…

The things people do simply defies logic. Reuters reports on a computer specialist who placed a small text ad on the Internet that read: Is Your PC Virus Free? Get It Infected Here! Luckily for the 409 dimwits who actually clicked on the ad, it was just an experiment and no virus was actually transmitted. And the purpose of the experiment? To show that text ads like this one could be used for malicious intent. Bad intentions and stupidity is a lethal combo.

Thank you Women’s Wall Street for confirming what I already suspected.