Annies Crazy World

All Winter I have quitly been looking forward to going North for a Holiday but it wasn’t until my plane tickets were purchased a few days ago that it has seemed real and even now it sounds almost to good to be true…I am leaving on the 2nd of October and will be away for nearly 4 weeks, going first to visit my brothers near Townsville and then to visit my son who happens to work on a tropical island, he works at Bungalow Bay Youth Hostel, on Magnetic Island which is a 30 minute ferry ride from townsville in Northern Australia…

Most of today was spent in the garden where I did gerneral cleaning up while a friend pruned the bush.

Tonight I have been stretching a friends embroideries ready to put into frames.

My Storage System has always been based largly on Boxes, partly because they are cheap, partly because I simply like the boxes, partly because I had never seen a acommercially available storage system that I liked the look of…that is until I purchased a Stationary organizer for my printer papers, and I found myself eyeing it off, thinking that it would be good to store the beads in, one day I emptied out the paper and filled the draws with beads and some charms, the image above is the first organizer on the shelf with may boxes…

I liked it, I went and bought another 4, one for the paper and another 3 for charms, kept finding different things I could store in them and bought another 2…it was some time before I went to get another one and found that they had changed the design of the draws, the new ones actually keep the paper more dust free but don’t stack well and they are bigger…I shopped around and found a store that still stocked the ones I had and bought 3 sets, which I stacked 3 across and 3 high and they have been the one spot in my studio that has been organized.

Last week when I put them on the top 3 shelves of a cupboard I thought another 3 sets of draws would be ever so handy and I headed of to the shop just hoping that they would still have the same ones…when I found that they did I bought another 6, which gives me enough to allow for uture expansion, I have put things that can be moved elsewhere, as I need them for beads, charms and threads…I will give you a peek into the draws as I get them organized.

with some serious fileing planned I purchased a box of 300 clear plastic sheet protectors and 5 pastel coloured Manilla Arch folders.

I have put my quilt portfolio stuff into the pretty coloured folders and will use the missmatched black ones for other less important paper work…

I also purchased 2 cardboard flat pack file sorting boxes…they fit on this shelf so well that they may well stay there but my primary purpose for buying them is to facilitate the sorting that I need to do.

At least for a while I will be able to find a pen, that works, when I want one…As I was moving things out of my studio I put every writing implement that I found into one box…I then went through the box sorting the contents into pens, pencils, etc…I sharpened all the colouring pencils…and then tested every pen, the box on the right are those that have been thrown out.

Last year I showed this photo of my garden under the heading watch this space.

I have been digging into the clay, little at a time, the hole where I want paveing…and have purchased the bricks that I need.

Today, with the help of a friend, top right corner of the photo, the first load of sand went into the hole.

Yesturday a friend rang to say that she was at a quilting retreat a couple of hours drive from me and that she had a free afternoon and …It was on the spur of the moment that she rang me and asked if I would be able to visit her there?…Sounded like a good idea to me and it was, we had lunch and then wandered around the quilt show and market stalls, (being a quilt market there was no beads, buttons threads or charms to distract me, I spent my money on some practical items being some very fine pins, a new rotary cutter blade and a pack of machine sewing threads), I also ran into other friends and had a lovely afternoon.

I found an old floor plan that I had done of my studio and have traced it twice and drawn in the furniture to show how it was and how it is now…The original was done on graph paper so it is to scale, the grey furniture stayed in place and I have colour coded the furniture that I moved…Strangly it wasn’t till I had moved the table that I realized a BIG Advantage of the new set up is that none of the cupboards are obscured by the table, before when I had to pull the table out, shift chairs aside and reach at awkward angles to pull the box I wanted out and because it was such an effort to get them out I tended not to put them back so the cluttered the floor until I did a clean up, now it is easy to pull them out and just as easy to slip them back into place so it should, in theory, be easier to keep the room clean.

As for the nook of shelves behind the design board and Sewing Machine, getting anything out of there is a real wrestling match as the whole floor area is piled with boxes and bags on top of which I have put anything else that I have wanted to get out of the way quickly…when my little helper below, was leaving she pointed in there and told me (with a twinkle in her eye) that it was the next room that I had to organize…My little helper is my neice and whilst she may be little in size she was a big help today, we sorted and put away the contents of several boxes of accumulated bits.

A couple of weeks ago when I showed my fabrics sorted into colour groups I said that one of my motivations was that I want the pink fabrics for an Album cover that I would like to have made by the end of September… The pink fabrcs are the only colour thus far to be ironed and put into there box, as I went through them I put everything that was a possability for the album to one side, about 50 fabrics…I took that pile of fabrics with me when i went to visit a friend and we reduced them to about 20 fabrics…This morning my sister came over and we reduced them to 10 fabics, when we were down to about 12 she was liking different fabrics to me, she liked the very pale pink lace and my first instinct was that it was to pale, she said but the sky in the photo is pale and lay the lace next to it, I looked down and said ‘it will work I can do a sort of colour wash’.

When I did a rough layout we both instictivley reached out to remove the fabric second from the bottom on the left and I think that the colour wash is going to look great…I have pixalated the image to not reveal who it is for just yet.

As for the other end of the studio…I am sorry that I forgot to take a before photo so that you could get the full impact of what I have done…basically my computer was on top of a set of draws beside my desk, beside it was another little cupboard and they both sat in front of a set of shelves and beleive me it looked cluttered…I put the computer box on a little trolly which can be pushed under the desk and be pulled out to give access for maintenance.

I have managed to get most of one side of the room in this photo…even though the stuff on the shelves is still a muddle of things that need to be sorted the overlook of the area is much improved.

I think my new studio layout is going to work…there is a set of shelves at the other end of the room that I put there temperaly so long ago that they have become permenant but have only ever been a place to put things to get them out of the way…If I empty them I can put all the not crazy quilting books there…Where to put there contents? is the question…

…I put the shelves that I moved out of the studio into the hall and have put all the boxes of stuff and piles of paper to be sorted on them…The grand plan is to take it one box or pile at a time and put everything where it belongs or throw it out…Wish me luck…

While I was moving boxes I found this puzzle and was amuzed because I always think of this type of puzzle when I am trying to reorganize the furniture in my house, I have to make a little space and then move things through it till I have it where I want it…

I am trying a new arrangement for my studio furniture….The rest may have to change again to fit everything back in….I have swapped the cupboard and shelves in the corner, they look a lot neater and will stay that way…I have also spun the table around so that it is 90 degrees to where it was, the aim of making the changes is to not block off the windows by putting furniture in front of them so that I can make better use of the natural light, the room does look lighter/less cluttered…and I hope that I can make it work, my problem is that I have moved a bookshelf from that end of the room, have nowhere else to put it and I have no idea where I am going to put the books that go in it…I will be able to make room if I can destash enough stuff but I am not good at throwing things away…