Weekly craft check-in

Sunday! That means it's time to talk about what got made over the past week. (Woo, Craft or Bust!)

At first, on reviewing the past week, I thought I'd hadn't done anything creative or made anything at all. That'd be a great start to the new crafty year, right? ;) I did do a lot of cleaning, though; the Great Craft Room Rescue I've been blathering about for a while appears to finally be under way. (I'm not going to say it definitely is, though, as that might psych me out. ;) Let's just pretend it's like the economy. I won't officially declare the state of the craft room at a high or low point until enough time has passed that I can get a good perspective.)

So I thought I was going to have to say, "What'd I make this week? A mess! And then I cleaned it up."


Part of the aforementioned mess: Some of the tissue paper and wrapping paper I've collected over the years, spread out over the dining room floor so I can sort it and put it back into the craft room in some semblance of order.


A lot of my yarn is actually (gasp!) in fabric boxes now. No, not homemade ones like I wanted to make last year (and still want to make), but at least they're an improvement on random sizes of cardboard boxes. ;)
Then I realized that I took some photos of a vase of roses we have in the house at the moment, and according to my own rules, that counts as doing something creative. Ta-da! So I "made" photos. Win.


I also got my Very First roll of Swedish tracing paper in the mail this past week, which will hopefully encourage more crafty goodness to ensue. I've been wanting some of this stuff for years, as I've developed an aversion to cutting out paper pattern pieces: For one thing, pattern paper is generally wimpy and easy to tear, and for another thing, sewing patterns cost enough that I don't like the idea of only being able to use them once, in one size.

I also like to draft my own patterns, and while I don't mind doing the initial drafting on paper (usually newsprint, since it comes in large sheet sizes and is readily available at the craft store), I still don't like storing patterns permanently on normal paper, which insects like to chew on and which is more fragile than fabric-like Swedish tracing paper.

Plus, you can sew Swedish tracing paper. Like. How cool is it that you could theoretically use Swedish tracing paper for draping an item of clothing, then take it apart and use it as your permanent master pattern without having to transfer marks or cut anything else?

Anyway, now I'll be able to use the patterns that came with some of my sewing books without actually cutting the printed paper that came with the books. Ha-HA! Not that I really ever get rid of books, but it's nice to have the option of doing it ... and I'm probably not the only one who hates it when used craft books are missing crucial things like, oh, the patterns that you need to actually complete the projects inside the book. ;)


Yay! My first roll of Swedish tracing paper!
So that's what I did this week. What did you make this week, my cohorts in crafting? :D

A craft room clean for spring seems like a wondrous thing

So. I have not been crafting up a storm since my last update, but I have been decluttering the crap out of the craft room. I've never noticed that I have much of an internal clock for spring cleaning, but I guess it was time, and goshdarn if it doesn't feel something like spring here, so maybe my internal clock just took a really, really long time to set itself properly. Or maybe this is a coincidence.

And ha — "it was time," I say. Considering that I tried to tackle the Craft Room Rescue project in May of last year, maybe it's long past time.

See, I shared a teeny weeny photo of a shelf last year. That was all I was brave enough to share — the secret horrors of the rest of the craft room will remain known only to those of us who lived through it. ;)

About a day after my last blog post (or maybe that same day; I can't remember now), I got it into my head to crochet something. I can't remember what now, because instead, I ended up literally cleaning and reorganizing that entire bookcase.

Perversely, it looks just as cluttered now as it did last year. See?


Though this shelf doesn't look so bad — and all the pretty colors lined up so neatly inspired me to keep organizing:


The important difference between this bookcase last year and this bookcase Right Now is that it (and a small space on the floor in front of it) now holds all of my non-handspun yarn, and it is sorted by fiber type and weight, with an entire shelf just for projects in progress. There are no longer stray irons, knitting looms, or arbitrary plastic bags haunting said shelf. Last year there were just a bunch of disorganized bags full of assorted bits and scraps of projects and balls of yarn and notions and who knows what shoved onto all the shelves just to keep stuff off the floor. Then the floor got taken over by boxes and piles of fabric and such anyway.

Now, I can see the floor.

And that's only the beginning. In the past week and a half or so, I've also pretty much organized all my fiber tools, cleaned off my craft table so there's actual space on it (...a little...), and done a pretty thorough inventory of the slightly horrifying amount of raw fleece and random wool I have sitting and waiting for me to spin it.

I even excavated (and that is a technical term! ;)) my long-suffering serger from the double-decker fabric sandwich in which it has been waiting patiently (in its original box) all these ... mumblemumble — let's just say it's been a while since I tried to watch the video and it got stuck in the VCR, leaving me clueless about exactly where to start with this tiny-seeming sewing-machine-type-thing with teeth and multiple spools of thread. Lest you think it's been in hiding for even longer than it has, though, I'll say this much: The VHS format was absolutely not in vogue when I got the serger. I would have much preferred a DVD ... not least because it wouldn't have gotten stuck in the crappy VHS/TV combo I tried to watch it on, and then I might have actually used the thing right away. ;)

Anyway, being able to actually see the serger box suddenly made me want to peek at it. Upon opening the box, these thoughts passed rapidly through my mind: 1) Wow. It's a lot smaller than I thought it was. 2) Holy crap this thing is much heavier than it looks. 3) Why does the inside of this box smell like wool?

Bearing item #1 in mind, after wiping off the strange thin layer of woolly-smelling dust from the serger, I installed it happily on my vintage Singer sewing machine/table.


It seems to make more sense to have it taking up less space in a vaguely usable position than to have it inside a space-hogging box between a stack of thrift store fabric and a pile of clothing that needs various modifications. I haven't dared to plug it in or turn it on yet, much less applied foot to pedal, but maybe when no one is looking, I'll sneak in there and see whether it'll stitch for me. As long as no one watches me too closely — a watched crafter never serges, or something like that.

Besides, now there's fabric on the floor and — again, if nobody looks at me too hard or expects too much ;) — having the serger and the sewing machine both patiently waiting for me in plain sight may prompt me to spontaneously sit down and turn fabric into objects shaped like things that would be useful outside of a pile. There are tons of things in this little condo that would improve with judicious application of textiles ... and I've just realized that the massive amounts of questionable-for-spinning wool I have might make good pillow stuffing. Which means I need to make some pillow forms to stuff.

Just go ahead and have a cup of tea and read a book and pretend you're not watching me for a moment, will you? Of course I'll take pictures of any sneaky craft attacks that happen, I promise. I just don't want to frighten away my delicate, re-budding seamstress self, so I have to go quietly and carefully for a little bit. ;)

On the relationship of physical and emotional clutter; and on loving both

Last year I tried to clean the craft room. It was an abortive attempt.

Does that make the craft room sound like a hopeless wreck? (Are you thinking, Holy cow, she didn't clean it at all last year?)

Hold those horses! ;) It's not exactly a hopeless wreck, and I didn't not-clean it at all last year. I did have a few spastic bouts of rearranging and occasional miniature spasms of actual cleaning. Realistically, though, I didn't get much organization done, and, okay ... it is kind of a wreck. But I promise it's far too lame of a wreck to show up on a reality TV show about messes or hoarding. ;)

Last year I also bought myself a tiny little copy of the Love That Room clutter-clearing workshop from Lisa at Zen at Play. I made it about as far into the workshop as I made it into "fixing" the craft room: not terribly far.

(By the way, the above link to Zen at Play is an affiliate link, just in case you love Lisa's philosophy so much you feel compelled to buy her current offering ... but Love That Room doesn't appear to be available any more. So feel safe in the knowledge that this isn't a sales pitch. ;) Moving on...)

My failure to organize the craft room probably meant I wasn't ready. Ready for what? Frankly, for a lot, and I'll talk about that in a bit, because maybe I'm ready now, or getting close to it. I hope so, because I'm going to try again to clean the craft room this year. Decluttering in an honest and non-judgemental way seems to go hand in hand with casting off the negative self-bindings that were keeping me from truly expressing myself, don't you think? One is emotional decluttering, and the other is a physical decluttering ... but they're both related to creativity and safe space and letting myself be me.

And here's a funny thing. I know that's all true. But it's nice to have someone else say it independently of my prompting, which Lisa does in Love That Room. Some of the points she makes on the very first page:

There will be no declaring war, attacking, or whipping into shape. If that worked for me, it would have worked already.

Clutter clearing is an act of self-care: It means creating an environment that supports me and contains space for me to be me, to express what I want to express.

Clutter clearing is letting go of what doesn't serve me any more and making way for what brings me joy. In terms of emotional decluttering, like I mentioned in my last post, I am letting go of self-denial and making room for being honest. I like how she puts it: "You're clearing away everything that obscures your view of what matters most to you." I totally know that my half-abandoned, messy craft room is a direct reflection of my neglected self-expression and the repression of my self.

Another quote I like: "Clutter clearing is a journey of self-discovery because you learn about yourself through the decisions you make, and explore your past, present and future through your possessions. Your history, your hopes, your struggles — they're all expressed through the things around you." So my objective when I organize the craft room isn't just "to have a clean space." It's also to reflect on my identity and my journey, and that helps me feel like I don't have to rush it to get to an end result. Reflection takes time and reflection is an objective of its own; there is no Big Thing at the end of reflection that I need to rush toward.

"Clearing can be an opportunity to practice kindness and mindfulness." I have been very, very neglectful of self-kindness and mindfulness for the past few years. If cleaning the craft room is an opportunity to get better at those things, then it's worth doing for the practice of those things alone.

"Rather than just chucking stuff out, you can be interacting consciously with your physical environment, your belongings, and the stories behind them." This is something I've felt is missing from other approaches to decluttering — the respect for your past decisions to keep these things that have now become clutter and blockage, and the respect for the stories behind the things you have kept.

Tossing things indiscriminately, to me, is like performing surgery without respect for how you affect the bits and pieces around the piece you're taking out, or fixing. Uhh ... I wouldn't do that to my physical body, so why the crap would I do that to my emotional self? Maybe that suits other people out there, but the fact that I can tolerate the pain doesn't mean I should inflict it.

And I know that most of the things I've acquired have emotional value to me. If they didn't, they'd be gone already. Duh. If I just had a problem throwing anything out I'd have every single cereal box I've ever emptied still sitting around the house. Sure, I have some things that some people would consider trash, but they're not — they're things that have at some point had emotional value (an idea Lisa also addressed in a blog post at one point). To treat those things like they have the same value as a piece of junk mail is disrespectful of myself. That's part of why it was so traumatic last year when someone came in and threw out a bunch of my belongings while I was on vacation.

So here's to treating myself, my things, and the stories behind everything with respect. No wonder I haven't been able to write effectively for years. I've been ignoring and devaluing stories left and right. How silly of me. ;)

Wouldn't it be funny if cleaning the craft room made me a better writer again? ;)

One thing it probably will do is bring me closer to being a happy, comfortable, self-aware person again.

So hey! If anyone else out there is trying to declutter their own space and you're thinking along the same lines as I am, feel free to clean along with me and post comments on your own progress! As is pretty obvious from the success of the Craft or Bust project, it does help me to have like-minded people along with me for the journey, even if there's baton-swapping and tagging in and out. ;)

New art for the craft room, a tiny craft mess reveal, and more triloomy goodness

It's been mildly busy for the past couple of days, in a sort of ramp-up-ish way — like if I keep going, I might build up enough momentum to re-earn the name of the blog.

Pretty stuff first, so my ugly pictures don't scare anyone off. A while ago, I started knitting a "Tinker shawl" for someone's Wheel of Time costume. That didn't end up panning out, but I wanted to finish it anyway, in hopes that maybe someone else would want a really loud bright blue, red, and green shawl. Hey, weirder things have happened. ;)


But I needed red cotton yarn for this week's themed project(s) — I haven't mentioned it yet, but I'm doing a themed collaboration with Megan of Late Night Design. This week's theme is "pirates." So I ripped out the red part of the shawl in the above photo, and with the aid of my trusty new triloom, I whipped out another triloomed triangle and crocheted an edging on. Voila! A piratey new head scarf for the Etsy shop! I don't have good photos of it yet, so it's not up yet — it's hard to photograph your own head. ;)


New piratey cotton head scarf on the triloom.


I warned you that it's hard to photograph one's own head. Please kindly ignore the open medicine cabinet. ;)
Then I dashed off another quick cotton triangle in variegated ocean colors, just to see what it would look like.


Piratey head scarf + ocean-colored triangle, yet without purpose. Maybe it'll be a head scarf for me.
Then today I popped onto Twitter and got a hint from Darrah of Darrah Parker Photography that Something Special was up with her blog post today — her first vlog, by the way! I went on over and saw that today she did the drawing for her birthday/blogiversary giveaway. There was a drumroll from the invisible man as she picked a number out of a hipster hat. Ta-da!


Commenter #15 is the one!
And guess what? I won! Look, here she is, announcing me as the winner — see my blog address down there at the bottom?


What you can't see, because this is a still shot, is that she's doing a cute little eyebrow-quirk with her former-actress self. You should go watch the vlog so you can see it in all its glory, and hear her talk about the crafty business owner's journey, too.
So now I get to pick a photo print from her Etsy shop, to go up with the other bits of art that will decorate the craft room, helping to inspire my creativity and remind me to keep dreaming and all that. Of course, first, I need to get off my butt and clean the craft room so there's a nice place to put up said art.

And finally, because some people have been threatening to clean their rooms before I can see their crafty mess to compare it to mine (I'm talking to you, Jackie!), I'm posting a very sneaky peek at part of my craft room mess here. Yes, I suffer from crafty mess syndrome (something I'll probably go into more in a future post), but I've recently embarked on a compassionate decluttering journey to recreate my craft room in the image of — er, the image of Creativity Embodied, I guess. ;) So this is a "before" shot — I'm being brave by posting this, so be nice to me, if you can bring yourself to!


The first shelf I'm tackling in the craft room! The mission: to replace the plastic bags and cardboard boxes so that my yarn and projects reside in hand-sewn washable fabric storage boxes. This will also help reduce my obscene fabric stash.
And that's all for now, folks. More soon in the crafty adventures of the Quicksilver Crafter. I'll let you know which of Darrah's lovely photos I pick to adorn my up-and-coming crafty studio space!