Tricotomania and more

My friend Susan-Marie Swanson, who wrote the text for the 2009 Caldecott prize-winning book, has informed me that the Art Institute of Chicago has an exhibition of art from Caldecott winning books on until November 2010.

The American Library Association conference is there this weekend, so if you want your books signed, now is the time to go see if you can nab authors. But the exhibition looks pretty cool and if you want to miss the hordes of librarians you might wait until next week when they go home.

Okay, I really shouldn’t be quote Monty Python but the Englishman with the chainsaw kind of brings it to mind.

That is a dead pine that is in front of the house. Very dead.

Mat did the fancy Pythagorean theorem stuff with a ruler and arm and so on to figure how tall it was and where it might fall. Moved the car and then got to work.

It was harder to get it to actually fall over than we thought. Wedges needed. More than we thought.

But it fell exactly where he wanted it to, which is a good thing.

As I write this he is chopping it up so there is a space to park the car.

I admit that I spent most of today sitting here in front of the computer. My big accomplishment was my quarterly GST return, a job made more difficult by the recent breakdown of my bookkeeping system. And one that made me realize that I owed my graphic designer quite a bit of money. Oops. All sorted now. Phew.

But at the end of the day I decided to tackle the other end of the room again. One of the first things I found was a box of Freya’s stuff. Including her elusive clock/radio. So I set that up and moved the boom box in here. Went and got me some Robbie Williams CDs from downstairs and a cold beer…

Here is the result (do click for bigger; it gets cropped oddly for the thumbnail):

you can almost imagine sewing here…

that’s the corner of the “look there’s floor” photo from yesterday. Lots more floor. A bunch of boxes that were there didn’t even belong in this room. 2 small boxes of Freya’s books and another large box of her stuff.

I had been contemplating putting the sewing machine behind the door next to the closet. And then I thought about putting it in that corner you see in the photo. But when it was in the space it occured to me that looking out the window is at least as important for sewing as it is for working (my computer faces a window).

Those boxes stacked up next to the sewing machine table all contain related supplies. Fabric, a really cool thing with lots of spools of thread on it (wrapped in paper for moving), that sort of thing. There are more boxes of fabric in the closet. Sorting the fabric will be a whole other project.

I figure that if the cubic foot issue really is problematic, I could get some low trofast for that corner and still have space for a quilt design wall above it. Maybe the spool holder thingamy will go on the wall between the window and closet. It doesn’t stick out very far so wouldn’t impede access to the closet.

As you can see, along the wall there are a lot of plastic boxes. Mostly yarn and fibre. Two contain stuff for junk modelling, building miniatures etc. I’m not sure F does enough of that to justify the space taken up with boxes of toilet roll tubes, plastic caps, etc.

There are now only 3 carboard boxes remaining and they are the smaller ones used for books. On top of that, they are almost empty.

Those have bits of stuff I’m not sure what to do with. I’m going to have to take Jen’s advice and just do it one piece at a time. (That pile of stuff to the left is for the recycling.)

There is still an orphan pile of jigsaw puzzles in the middle of the floor. Not idea where those want to live nor if they really need to live in here. And some random craft supplies. And all the knitting and spinning stuff.

BUT the important thing is that I can now imagine actually moving this table I’m using as a temporary desk over to that side of the room to be a worktable for crafts and homeschooling.

Which is what feels like real progress.

As always I have been remiss with the photos so there isn’t really a “before” shot of this. Too depressing to contemplate anyway.

This is the view from my desk after todays contribution to the effort.

The craft room 2 July 09

When we moved in, those boxes were at least 2 high. You couldn’t really see the windows. And there wasn’t anywhere near as much visible floor.

Those bookshelves on the left were bought in an earlier phase of getting unpacked. I decided we needed to have bookshelves that left wall space to hang art on. IKEA afficionadoes will recognize that they are Billy. I’m seriously considering whether to squeeze another narrow one in at the end there.

Look, there is more floor today…

newly cleared floor

I know, it doesn’t look like much. But it is. Believe me.

Today, I did a couple of things to move this project along. I took a bunch of stuff the movers put in this room down to the basement or to other rooms.

Shelves we aren’t going to put up in here. Games that we play downstairs so they need to be downstairs. That sort of thing.

But mostly, I just plodded on with unpacking and organizing the craft supplies.

When we first moved I got stuck on the best “storage solution”. And I know that sometimes the urge to go out and buy a solution is just displacement from other things. But in this case, I knew we needed something.

In the old house, the craft supplies were stored on regular shelves. Yes, there were plastic bins but somehow it didn’t really work. No one could get at anything. When something got taken off the shelf, the stuff next to it shuffled over so it was never clear where it needed to go back to. Ick.

I had some idea in my head of what might work, but I was really struggling to find it in a real shop. And I didn’t want to build it myself.

Then, when I was in IKEA buying all that Billy, I noticed that they did tall Trofast units. I bought one for inside Freya’s closet so she could have drawers for her underwear and socks and shelves for t-shirts, sweaters and things. And no chest of drawers in the main part of the room. And I started to think ….

So I went back and got 2 more tall ones. And lots of shallow tubs and shelves. The closet in this room will fit 4 but I only have 2. I want to make sure this is right before spending even more money. Here’s how it’s working:

craft supply storage

Some of the old plastic bins have just been put on a shelf. The beading stuff on the left there, for example. And some things are more organized. The two bins at the top right contain drawing and painting supplies, with 2 shelves of sketchbooks, pastel paper, etc. underneath. I need to figure out what to do with the large pads of newsprint but that’s a minor detail (and the major thing still in the box nearest the closet in the first photo).

There is a lot of fabric, yarn, and fibre in the remaining boxes. And I have no clue what I’m going to do with them. There are several plastic boxes of fabric in the other side of that closet already. And half a dozen boxes of yarn stacked up under the window. Oy vey.

It is slowly coming together. I think the next priority is to get the sewing machine (that white piece of furniture under the end window in the first photo) into a useable place.

But now, I have to stop procrastinating about organizing by blogging about organizing and go eat my dinner.