Loose Ends

While resting between spurts of effort on the cleanup discussed below I watched videos, including tutorials like the one heading this post for the Crocodile Stitch.  I'm really psyched to try some of the things I learned today but I know I shouldn't.  At least not until I've made up for the missed days on the tote.  And it would be wiser to wait until after Christmas.

With ROW80 being on hiatus this week I've been scrambling for those two extra posts per week to replace the check-ins.  I wish I could report that I've kept up all the goals since Round 3 ended but I haven't kept up any of them.  I switched the intensity of my focus to the huge crafter's tote I'm crocheting for my Secret Santa giftee.  I knew I was falling behind the ideal pace and still needed to solidify plans. So I spent one day calculating time estimates for various segments of the project and establishing a average pace.  Then I spent two days experimenting with stitches for the strips until I'd settled on all 9 and started the first square for each strip.

I discussed all of that last Thursday and hope to have pictures of my progress for tomorrows post so I won't go into any more details about it here.

I had to take a two day break from work on it after spending one day with nausea and headache and then today deciding I needed to put order back into my office before I continued as clutter was getting out of control in here and my upcoming week is full with blogging tasks--Bloggiesta this weekend and Banned Book Week all next week for which I'm going to be adding a giveaway of one of my crocheted bookmarks to my review of a Judy Blume book and then the following weekend is Dewey's 24 hour Read-a-Thon and the week after that I've got a blog tour review, interview and giveaway.  So it was imperative I get a grip on the mess.

After four hours of effort though I've only got one of the four corners in shape.  The desk area where I spent most of my time.  That's how bad it had gotten

The desk area was a conglomeration of crochet, writing, snacking, medicines, books and electronics.  The messes in the other three corners are all craft related and caused when I was looking for something and pulled stuff out of bags and boxes, shelves and drawers, still packed from either our move lost December or my trip to my Mom's last spring.