Last Thursday night I sewed together Thomas' birthday gift - a blizzard fleece blanket. He had picked out the fabrics he wanted but didn't know I'd bought them.
First I looked up the size of a twin bed blanket. It is suggested to be 66" x 90". Two and a half yards is 90". The blizzard fleece is only 60" wide, but it is close enough for the way that Thomas sleeps. If it is a problem I'll add some sort of boarder later. So with coupons in hand I went to the store (at two different times) and picked up the fabric.
Are you blind yet? Yes, Thomas' favorite color is highlighter pink. For my own personal safety I
sewed with the Pokemon fabric side up. lol Using my queen-sized futon couch I layed out the fabrics wrong side out, lined them up as well as I could, and pinned them together. I sewed most of the way around, leaving about a one foot space not sewn. I trimmed off the excess fabric bits (the selvege and parts where the two fabrics didn't align) and turned the blanket right side out. I laid it out again, pinned it, then sewed a 1/2" top stitching, giving it that finishing touch and closing up the part where I turned it.
I folded his blanket up neatly and tied it up with one of the scraps of pink fabric for a cute bow. When he found it in the morning he was so happy! He also declared that the highlighter pink scrap was a scarf and wore it to school! hahaha That's my boy! I "finished" the piece by cutting fringe and tying it together to make it look like a scarf on purpose. :)
23 Friday
Downtown Portland is home to an awesome store named Scrap PDX. It is like an upcycled Joann's craft store. They have lots of fabric, yarn, wood, papers, stamps, buttons, beads, and a slew of other random items that can be used for upcycling crafting. It is their mission to keep perfectly good things out of the dump. I love this store so much! Many of the fabrics for my bags come from here. Also all of the buttons, and some of the zippers, too.
On occasion Scrap has a sale on their fabric. When they announced that they were having a $2 / pound fabric sale I knew I needed to go! So I called up a friend and we made a day of it. First we went Rocket Fizz, a bizarre soda and candy shop. I was on the hunt for bug-shaped candy for my Royal Rangers group. They had real bug candy, but no bug shapes. I couldn't bring myself to carry home larva and cricket candies so I went with the Bug Barf soda. lol
Then we headed over to Scrap. We got there just a few minutes after it opened so we got some really great stuff! In addition to all these gorgeous thick fabrics, I found a GIANT bundle of fleece! It isn't fusible fleece, but I have a can of fabric spray glue so this will easily work for my bags. It was roughly 3 lbs so it cost me only $6. SCORE!
24 Saturday
While the Peanut Purge was dragging on seemingly forever I figured it was a good time to rearrange some of my cupboards. Half of them were empty anyway. So I started planning some things that just made more sense. I posted up yellow sticky notes back and forth as I went. I was interrupted a lot as I was babysitting all day so not much more than planning was accomplished. Blur also invited a friend over so I had six kids in the house!
25 Sunday
As always, I took my travel knitting with me to church. I made good progress on my sock sitting in the back of children's church. Thomas' is growing more mature and I don't have to watch him quite as closely as I did last year, so I get more knitting progress. I told the children's pastor that if she wanted to give me some duties I could do some extra things on Sunday mornings now. I still have to be there in case Thomas has an bad morning anyway, but I typically only have to give him 1 or 2 reminders now.
When I got home, I got to work on those cupboards. I pulled out the last things that needed to be washed and put them in the sink. Then I started moving everything around. Because I'd made my plans the day before it actually didn't take too long. Then as stuff came out of the dishwasher I just put them away in the new cupboard! It went smoothly and I am very happy with the results!
Next I had the kids working on picking up the house and getting their chores done. Since I was working so hard on the kitchen the floors had been neglected and we had company coming over. We got everything up, and vacuumed and mopped. Our comany came over after dinner, and we played dice games for a bit. First was Zombie Dice, a request from Anna. :) It is a fun game of chance and stratagy, but its easy enough to learn that she's been playing it since she was two years old. Next was Quarriors. Its only 4 playres so I sat out and just knitted while chatting.
After the kids went to bed, we left Blur in charge and went out and played Pokemon Go. We battled a few gyms, then went driving downtown to refill on pokeballs and healing potions. (Did I mention that I'm a huge geek?) It was a lot of fun! I even got a second Snorlax!
26 Monday
YES! Hallelujah! The Peanut Purge is finally complete! It took a week but *everything* is clean in my kitchen. All the dishes are clean, many of the cupboards are wiped out, everything is tidy, and rearranged. I don't have to crawl on my head to grab commonly used items anymore! I'm leaving up the reorganizing stickies for a bit so everyone can get used to the new locations. My hand are very dry and hurting but it was SO worth it. I have my good lotion that I use when my hands get dry from spinning so they'll be right as rain after a few days of treating them.
28 Wednesday
NOOooo! One of my friends is planning on moving so she was giving me some things. I went to put away some things in my pantry where I put the random things. I moved something and I found a bug.
So I pulled out more things from that cupboard and found more bugs. So I emptied the entire cupboard. They were all over.
I have a problem with reoccurring depression, possibly dysthymia. I hadn't had a problem for quite a while but over this week I'd slowly felt it coming on. To further the difficulty, the weather is changing and often the overcast sky of Oregon leads to seasonal depression. I've also been overwhelmed by things that I don't talk about here. I don't wish to hide serious health conditions, but I also don't want to bring low the environment of my blog. This is why I didn't write on Thursday; I was feeling very low and didn't have a happy outlook to share.
Today I am doing a lot better. I've done some of the routines that I find help me; be creative, even if I don't feel like it, and get something cleaned, even if my lack of energy makes this hard. I sewed two bags that I had cut out during the summer so I covered the creative and cleaning with one project! Those bags will be up for sale. I've also been using Blur's S.A.D. light and getting outside some. Eating a lot of veggies for good vitamins helps, too. Yes, the bags will be for sale. ;)
29 Thursday
So when I was able to function again I researched exactly what the bugs were and how to effectively get rid of them. They were Confused Flour Beetles and the cleaning regimen was to vacuum thoroughly and toss out infested (or suspected) products. I'd already done this, but I wanted to make sure that I got everything so I took everything out of the cupboard again, vacuumed again, threw out a few more things, and then wiped down everything that was left.
So once again I cleaned in my kitchen, reorganized one of my cupboards, just the pantry now. Now my kitchen is once again clean.
Then I went and fixed my broken drawer. I went down to the Home Depot and bought the 13" x 3 1/2" piece of wood I needed to replace. I ripped off the broken piece, removed the staples and hammered in the new piece. It was thicker than the previous one so I counter sunk the screws so they secured the cosmetic front on well. Yes, I'm the "handyman" in my home. Occasionally I'll ask my husband for help if it takes more strength than I have, but usually I do most of it myself.
Over the years that I have lived in this apartment I have noticed a direct correlation between the cleanliness of my kitchen and the state of my own mental / physical well being. When I'm mentally and/or physically worn down my kitchen often doesn't get taken care of and gets pretty messy. Oddly, the reverse seems true, too. When I give my kitchen a good cleaning my mind feels clearer and my mood brighter.
As soon as those bugs were gone and the cans and boxes were off of my counter and put back into the cupboard, the weight on my mind seemed so might lighter.
Now on to bigger and brighter things! With any luck, that'll translate to LOTS of bags being sewn! :D
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