The Last Bag

It was even hotter today than yesterday. Hot enough my MIL actually turned on the cooler about 2PM and ran it until 8PM. This gave me back my ambition, energy and IQ. I used them to unpack the last of the bags from my return home eleven days ago. The one pictured above and one other nearly the same size that looks more like a soft-sided attache case. They both held my notebooks, manuscripts and writing and reading files.

So the last of this mountain of stuff is stowed away in reasonably accessible places in our room:

There is still a lot of sorting and organizing, rearranging, tweaking, tossing out etc left to do but those tasks will follow as a consequence of using the space and materials.

My primary motivation for tackling this job today was to free up that 'heart' SF bag so I could pack it for tomorrow's excursion to the dirt track and fireworks. It will be a ten hour outing beginning with lunch at a restaurant then over six hours of racing with a finale of fireworks. This will be my first time going since fall of 2001.

I don't particularly enjoy the racing, the crowds, the dirt and noise, the extremes of weather or the cement bleachers. I'm going for the fireworks, to hang with my husband (see, I've only been back 11 days after being away 6 months) and for research for a story I'm thinking about.

I never travel light. Not even for something like this. I'm taking my crochet and the ribbons and beads for finishing the fifteen bookmarks I now have off the hook. But I couldn't take all of the ribbon...


all of the thread...


nor all of the beads...

so I sorted through the beads for a few dozen with potential and cut several dozen lengths of ribbon of 10 or 20 inches making sure I had at least one length off every one of the thirty-odd ribbon spools.

The I pulled the undressed bookmarks out of this pouch and pinned them to a board to block them because edges and corners were curling in. I sprayed a mist of water over them and set them in front of the fan for several hours.

When I took them off the board I put them in the same bag with the lengths of ribbon because it was long enough to house them once they are bedecked without smooshing the ribbons. Then I filled this pouch with sewing and crochet essentials. I packed all the makings of the bookmarks in one pouch about twice the size of this one except for the crochet thread spools which are in a sack. In an identical pouch I put the tank top which I'm planning to embroider its neckline for my sister's birthday (next week!!) with the thread for it. There is also an embrodered bookmark in progress that I put in with it because it has the same colors of thread and the needle threader.

And because I just like variety. Choices.

Also in the bag: a clipboard containing a writing tablet and a tablet of graph paper with a clicker pencil and a uni ball pen; binoculars with earpieces I can wear like glasses; camera and batteries; my white cane; my clip-on magnifying lenses; and four books.

Yes. Four. Books.

Again, its the variety. But I chose judiciously. Really.

One is The Crochet Stitch Bible with pictures and diagrams and how to for new stitches. One is a novel, Goldengrove, by Francine Prose. One is non-fiction, The Crime of Reason by Robert B. Laughlin. The forth is about fiction, How Fiction Works by James Wood. Those last two I had checked out in Longview on my sister's card and then ordered them through my library while I was still in Longview so they would be waiting for me when I got back.

But if I don't get back to it soon, I'm going to have to add the Farley novel, Seven Tears into the Sea too which I thought I would for sure have finished by now let alone before we leave at 1pm tomorrow. But its looking iffy now. But I'll probably be under fifty pages by then so I'd still want the Prose novel to go.