Homesick a Bit

My sister-friend Jamie took this picture of bluebells in my Mom's yard in Longview WA this week and posted it on her blog along with more. She has a knack for taking pictures of flowers. None of the ones I took last year turned out as nice as these. Her's have triggered a touch of homesick in me.

Thinking about taking those pictures last spring reminded me that a year ago this week i was still at Mom's house with (unbeknownst to me) another two months to go on my six month stay.

And I realized too that the anniversary of the day I started learning to crochet the bookmarks passed unnoticed by me sometime in the last ten days. So I've been at this a year and am still obsessed. Hmmm. It's lasting longer than some. I've crocheted something like 25 since the wee hours of Friday. Three more yesterday in a new pattern that was a variation on one of the others.

Meanwhile, I spent this afternoon sorting through and reorganizing my sewing and craft stuff, making some items more accessible and gathering pieces of targeted projects together in 'kits' to make them easier to get out and work on on an impulse or portable enough to take out to the porch or back yard when the weather turns sunny again. I had the whole bed piled a foot or more deep with the stuff. It amazes me it all came from somewhere in the room.

I cleaned out the bottom drawer of my sewing chest (the drawer below the one holding my collection of crochet thread) and distributed its contents to other places to make room for my yarn collection that was still in the Ziplock bag meant for storing winter coats or blankets in which it traveled to Longview and back for that six month stay at Mom's last year. Ever since last July I've had to wrestle it down off a shelf and back again while standing on the bed. Now it is directly behind my desk.

The next major project or should I say sub-project of this sort project is to sort and redistribute the items in the top drawer of that chest, which has become a 'junk' drawer for sewing and craft related items that are in a jumble and so stuffed that getting any one thing out is a formidable chore. I hope to dedicate it to the most accessed items for currently targeted projects.

I also put most of the finished bookmarks into the 8x11 inch sheet protectors I have for protecting the hardcopies of my best manuscript drafts. I say 'most' because a few were too long and those with beads on them wouldn't stay in place. If I'd taken pictures as I worked I wouldn't have had to steal one off my sister's blog for this post. [Thanx Sis :) ]

We're having a stormy week. Wind and rain and hail. We've had several power outages--lasting only a second or three but still annoying as clocks have to be reset and the DSL and satellite TV have to reset. The dirt track races have already been canceled for Saturday.