A Busy Day

It seems like writing up my To Do List yesterday had the desired effect. Today has been a much more motivated and busy day than usual.

I decided to tackle sorting out my sewing/craft stuff, which has been a HUGE job. I have been collecting stuff since we got here (I'm a hopeless hoarder), and that, along with me pulling stuff at random out of my stash in the shed, has meant it has been strewn everywhere with no rhyme or reason. So here, finally, is all my material (bar the stuff still in the shed) in one place. The draws are from Ikea, and used to store all DD's clothes before we moved. Since then though, they've been sitting around filled with various homeless stuff that has, mostly, found new homes now.

This is my cotton interlock stash. Most of this is old t-shirts from the op-shops 'Fill a bag for $3' rack. There are a few bits, like the orange on the left and the duckies on the top right, that came from my existing stash. The large plain green and the larger amounts of pink and pink patterns in the middle of the bottom were a spotlight buy though.

The next drawer up is the woven cotton. (Can you tell I like cotton?) Again, mostly op-shop bargain racks, with some purchased stuff that I already own.

This is an example of a recent op-shop bargain, these three cotton nighties were on the bargain rack. Lots of large amounts of unseamed cotton! That pink floral one in the middle is just lovely, and I think I'll make a skirt for DD from it.

This drawer is all the poly/cotton and specialist materials. On the bottom left is all my PUL, a very useful breathable plastic style material used for making nappy covers (and quite hard to find in Australia, or it used to be anyway). While I won't be making any more nappies any time soon, it will have lots of other uses. I also have some hessian (orange and pink in the middle back) which I'll probably use for bag making, and some netting (top left) which will probably become vegetable bags (although I'm tossing up trying latch hook on the larger holed stuff, if only I could figure out a way to stabilise it.)

Then there's my wool/yarn. The bigger lots in bags up the back are acrylic, and most of the smaller balls down the front are cotton. The cotton is mostly op-shop buys, with a few lots from the bargain bin at Spotlight. Middle left is some string that I found at the op-shop, thinking of trying some macrame with it some time. (Yes, somewhere in all the spare time I have!)

This lot won't fit in the drawers, but deserves a mention. This is some of the fleece/wool I've acquired since getting my spinning wheel. I was very lucky, my mum rang a friend of hers who has sheep, and she was just about to have them shorn. Since she is unable to spin any more, she passed on a lot of her existing wool to me. The stuff in the bags is washed and carded, and the bit in the pillowcase is raw fleece straight from the sheep. Isn't the brown beautiful? The yellow stuff is actually white, that is all the lanolin in it making it that colour. And this is only a sample of the stuff my mum still has up at her place! I'm going to be one busy spinner!

I caught DD later on just running her hands across the material, feeling what it was like. Is this the beginnings of a crafty habit beginning? That is how it started for me. My mum made a lot of our clothes and toys when we were younger, and I still remember playing in the lounge room as she sewed. She had a foam broccoli box under the bed with her laces and ribbons on, all carefully wrapped around A4 sized bits of card, 3-4 different ones to a card. My sister and I used to love looking at them, and often asked for a piece of this or that. I only now realise how nice it was of my mum to give us bits. A collection like that takes a while to build up, and to give up pieces just to give a child the simple pleasure of playing with them, tying them in the hair of a doll, probably to end up trampled in the dirt at some later stage, is what real love is about.