Open letter to The Fly Lady

Dear Fly Lady,

     I have considered myself a "fly baby" since 2004. I've never set your routines and zones into place.  To me, making a cleaning routine and sticking to it is perfection and I am a perfectionist who is easily overwhelmed.  So overwhelmed that I give up and decide that it's to hard to do it right, might as well not do it at all.  I know, I need to learn baby steps. . .  But that doesn't mean that I haven't felt the effects of your cleaning missions and email reminders.
     Today is July 21, we are in zone 4: Master bedroom.  Today's mission was simple; get everything out from under your bed and only put back what belongs.  Here's what happened:

1. Sheets needed to be washed anyway, so the bed got stripped and everything is washing now.
2. Only two storage boxes go under my bed, a winter clothes box (mostly my husbands stuff) and a box with gift tags, bows, and wrapping paper.  After moving those, I decided to move the bed away from the wall, knowing that a few things had fallen from the night stands onto the floor.
3. What else did I find: 2 pens, 9 hair clips, 4 hair bands, a pair of winter boots, a pair of slippers, two socks that were not mates, two hair balls (a lovely gift from my cat), and enough cat hair to support a litter of kittens among the dust bunnies.  The carpet is suppose to be a coffee brown, this carpet was gray.
4. Picked up everything, and everything that I was keeping was put in its proper home.  Then a major vacuuming was needed.  

     I have no idea when the last time the floor was cleaned under my bed.  But after this experience I felt a bit confused but happy. . Confused because no one but my husband or I will ever actually LOOK under our bed, so I can't feel embarrassed by that mess if people come over.  Your original task was just to get rid of stuff that doesn't belong, not a deep cleaning.  But, under the bed is where my cat likes to hide/hang out when people he doesn't know come to the house.  It's where he likes to hide when things get scary or when we go out of town over night.  It is where he would develop an upper respiratory infection if it wasn't kept clean.  You just saved me a few hundred dollars in vet bills.  So thank you!

Love,
Sarah the "fly baby"
P.S.  It only took me about 20 minuets to do all of this.

If you are reading this most and are not the Fly Lady and want to know more about who she is, please visit her website http://www.flylady.net/

Crawling out from under my rock. . .

Wow, where have I been?  Not here, sharing my thoughts on my blog. . .  Work and personal life has been kinda bumpy.  So I haven't been doing the things I love very often.  Like knitting.  (I'll wait right here while you pick yourself back up off the floor)  So, no.  No knitting in the past four months or so.  I also haven't bought any yarn or patterns or needles.  Creatively speaking, I haven't purchased craft supplies in a very long time.  At least it feels like a long time.  So what have I been doing?  Well, last summer my Grandmother moved into a small apartment.  Which meant that a lot of her belongings had to go.  Along with some very pretty glass knickknacks, I inherited her cross stitch DMC floss.  My mother-in-law gave me most of her collection a few years back and I already had a lot of my own.  So I started sorting though them this past February, mixing Grandma's into my collection.  It got me thinking about how I don't really cross stitch very often, so why was I going through the trouble of keeping it?  Why spend so much time when I may never ever use it?  At this point I had already set aside my knitting.  So I went through my cross stitch stuff and found a project I'd started but hadn't come close to finishing.  So that's what I've been working on:

When I pulled this project out, it was just the pointe shoes.  So, from February until early May, I did the roses and leaves and some back stitching.  It's only about 45% done.  Here is what it should look like when it's all done, sorry for the blurry picture:

I originally started this because I wanted to decorate my bathroom with a ballet theme.  Light pinks, black, grey, and chrome.   Since my husband and I still rent, it's not really in my best interest to go out and spend money decorating our house the way I want my dream home to look.  But that doesn't mean that I can prepare for it now.  So ballet inspired cross stitch it is. 

Flying

I'm not sure if I've mentioned the FlyLady before, if I have, sorry for the repeat.  

The FlyLady is one of my heroes.  In preparing to organize my stash, I've started getting rid of things.  Not anything craft related, not yet anyway.  But following the FlyLady's cleaning routines has made a difference is just a short amount of time.  So, here's my FLYing story: 

FLYing refers to Finally Loving Yourself.  By taking the focus off of what I couldn't or didn't get done in a day to allowing only 5-15 min per task on my to do list has made life less stressful.  Yes, the to do list is still long and a bit overwhelming when you look at the whole thing.  But, when I give myself a time limit to work on a specific project, knowing that if I don't finish the project, that I can go at it again tomorrow, has made things less stressful.  It has made me feel productive with less negative self-talk.  I have defined deadlines at work, I don't need to do that to myself with my personal life.  One point she makes is that procrastination is a form of perfectionism.  If something can't be done perfectly, then we put it off, making the job much harder when we do have to deal with it.  I see that in myself, in the way I clean, get my car fixed, even in my knitting.  If a job seems to hard, then I don't do it right away.  That's what the book is about, though, it appears to be a cleaning book. . . 

I first read the book in 2004.  I signed up for daily emails and reminders.  At first it was totally awesome.  I'd come home from work and then look up what tasks had been emailed to me.  It got hectic really quickly.  I lived with my husband and a roommate, who had her own boyfriend who semi lived with us.  I was working two jobs, about 60 hrs or more a week.  I soon lost focus, decided that since I couldn't do it perfectly every day, that I wasn't going to do it at all.  And no, I do not blame the FlyLady for this, she said that my house didn't get dirty in a day, that it wasn't going to get clean overnight.  I expected miracles that involved cleaning fairies and magical spaces that would hold all my stuff.  Once my husband and I moved into our own place I realized what the problem was.  We had to much stuff for the amount of space we had.  Well, we couldn't afford a bigger place so the other option is to get rid of things.  In comes the FlyLady again.  One of her first bits of cleaning advise is to just focus on de-cluttering.  Get rid of the things you don't love and cherish, all the extra stuff is just junk that you have to keep clean and store somewhere.  

Ten years later and I still consider myself a "fly Baby".  I don't have a daily routine down, but what I do have is a good understanding of the work involved in keeping myself sane.  

Check out her website and maybe read her book (though the info you'll need is all on the sight). 

The Dishcloth Distraction

I recently went to Wichita Ks, to visit my sister and her family.  It was also my niece's birthday. .   We did go to Heritage Hut, a lovely yarn store, where I found this:

A friend of mine made Stephen West's Boneyard shawl out of this yarn, and ever since I wore her finished shawl, I've wanted some of this yarn.  It was in the clearance section, so I bought all that they had.

I also acquired these:

Thanks to my little sister, whom I blame for the dishcloth distraction, my stash has grown.  She had recently laid out her stash, end to end, and it covered her entire basement floor.  I guess seeing how much yarn she had made her decide that she really didn't need so much of it. . so she gave me a bag of dishcloth cotton.  At first she told me to go through it and just pick out what I wanted.  I picked out two balls, then told her that if she wanted to give me some of it, that she should pick out what to give me.  That's when she went to go get a bag to put it all in. .   When I got back home, I combined my new cotton collection with my current stash.  I started going though the yarn, sorting out full balls from leftovers.  Next thing you know, I knitted these:

Why didn't I think of that?

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my SnB Peeps?  Well I do. . .  

I was talking with one of the other Evenstar knit-a-long participants about my problems with the cast on.  Her suggestion was to just cast on nine stitches and join in the round, the hole would be small AND I could use my tail to sew it closed once the shawl was done. .   

The solution was so simple and right in front of me. . .  

Thank God for my knitting support group!

Planning, but no progress

The Evenstar cast-on still alludes me.  I'm going to meet up with my SnB friends tonight, so hopefully I'll have the shawl started tonight.  Since I've had a bit of the "startitus" since attempting to cast-on this shawl, I've made a few dishcloths.  Dishcloths were my way of distracting me from working on my scarf (see previous post).  I have discovered a black hole in my scarf pattern.  I can see the ball of yarn getting smaller and smaller but the scarf seems to be never ending.  I feel as if I'm just knitting and knitting and the thing will never come to an end.  It has all the makings of a non-boring pattern, but this project has become boring. .  My plan, at first, was to keep going until all the yarn was used up, but now I'm thinking that I'll stop once I get to the same place in the color changes as to where the scarf started.  I really want to just give up on this project.  But prevail I must, at least to the next color change.  The scarf is already long enough and planning to cast-off where the color changes, I think, will make it look more uniform and planned out.  

Aside from dishcloths and black holes, I've been focusing on my organization skills.  I still haven't found the right shelving for my stash.  But I have found several options that won't be to expensive.  I've chosen against wire shelving because I'd like my books to be organized with my yarn.  I'd also like to get some nice baskets to hold small balls of yarn, leftovers, and projects that need to have the finishing touches done.  The rest of the yarn, I want to be able to see.  But most importantly, I want to get rid of the dresser and table.  I'd rather have a small desk for the sewing machine (that I never use) and a comfy chair to knit in.  More shelf space, less boxes and baskets of stuff on the floor, overall cleaner crafting area.  The scary thing about this is that I might have to get rid of some of my craft supplies to make this happen.  I'm not sure if I'm ready to do that yet. 

Circular cast on = Ugh!

My knitting skills are being tested. . seriously.  I can't get the hang of the cast on needed for the Evenstar shawl. 

During knit night, I started using some spare lace wt. and size 3.25 double points, using some written instructions. . and it wasn't happening.  So when I got home I started looking though videos and I found this:

Emily Ocker's Circular Cast-On

I then decided that I'd try it with sock weight, making it a bit easier until I got the hang of it.  WRONG!  For some reason, after I finish the first row, my knitting us upside down.  So, I'm going to have to wait until I can sit next one of my SnB peeps, show them what I'm doing, and maybe I'll have a shawl cast on by next week.

This is really bothering me, mostly because I've been playing in my stash and I now have that itchy feeling of startitous, where I really want to start a new project.  But I keep telling myself. . you have a shawl you want to make, evently you will get the cast on and all will be ok.  Also, I'm still working on my foreign correspondents scarf.

So calm down!