Unanticipated Motivation and Inspiration

A few weeks ago, I ordered a new chair and ottoman for the craft room. It was a beautiful oversized chair in a warm neutral color with a big squishy ottoman that had a storage compartment. When it arrived, the color looked great in the room but it was waaaay too big. We moved the cabinets to different locations to try and make the chair fit, we tried different angles, but it was just no use. So a call was made and back to the store went the chair and ottoman.

The craft room looked much better without the giant chair taking up so much room, but the craft room was also a mild disaster since the large cabinet had to be emptied in order to move it. It had contained a significant mess behind those closed doors - books and patterns and yarn, plus some other crafty items, in unorganized stacks and piles. That mess was strewn about the room for over a week as I tried to find the motivation to tackle it. That motivation kicked in on Sunday.

I went through everything, putting like items together, like all the sock yarns in one place. It was great to go through everything, reminding myself of the beautiful yarns I've purchased these past few years and that I still have not done a darn thing with them. Then I got to the many remnants of yarn I had. Mainly acrylics from baby blankets made years ago as well as a substantial amount of Homespun for which the labels were gone and I couldn't even begin to guess at the color's name. There was also some really cheap yarn I had bought for a dollar, hoping to make a blanket for charity.

Looking at all this yarn, I said to myself - even if you made more baby blankets with this same kind and color of yarn, it's so old, would the dye lot even be the same when you bought more? And when are you going to make all this charity stuff? You've got a project list long enough for the next few years with some fantastic yarns already in your stash.

Well, when I'm right, I'm right.

I filled up a sizeable bag of yarn for donation. There is no sense keeping good, quality yarn in my stash for some future charity work when I'm sure there is some group locally or nationally that would love to get this yarn for their projects. So once I find a group that will take this bag of yarn, it will be sent on its way.

The craft room clean up is not completely done - the 3 ring binders of patterns and magazines as well as all my pattern books need to be organized and put back inside. That was the part I least wanted to do - so when I came upon some extra curtain material and the wonderful Mr. Burns, I immediately pulled out the sewing machine and got to work.



No pattern, no pinning, no ironing. I just folded the fabric, took out the scissors, then sewed it up where it needed sewing. It's not pretty close up - the sleeves are really wonky and the seams are sloppy - but it's supposed to be a hospital gown, which I think it resembles. This also counts toward my Year of Lovely Things as my small sewing project.

What inspired you this weekend?