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Yesterday The Apple Pie Gal did an excellent post on her quilt/sewing room which actually isn't a room at all, but rather a corner of a room. Her point was that even though you don't have a whole room in which to set up shop, you can still find an area to make your own.
She indicated she'd like to have a look-see at my quilting area. I am lucky enough to have a whole room to call my own. But this certainly wasn't always the case. In forty-plus years of living in various houses, this is the first time I've had a room (yes, a WHOLE room!) that is strictly mine. Maybe hubby just got tired of eating on the kitchen table amidst rotary cutters and seam rippers. Because it was on the kitchen table that I quilted for many, many years using three shelves in a small cabinet for all of my storage. Well, the cabinet and boxes stashed under the bed, in closets, wherever I could smoosh them in. (And where I sometimes forgot I put them.)
My room is 12' x 16'. The door to it opens off what will be my new kitchen when our remodeling is done. As you step in the door, this is what you see.
Directly across the room is a wall of storage. (More of that later.)
If I shut the door and look to my left, this is what you will see. Storage of my Big Board (which hubby made for me) and a storage chest with TV (that does work occasionally) on top of it.
Also on the wall a little farther down is my cutting table. The shelves under the table hold boxes of fabric and other sewing supplies.
A closer look at the top of the cutting table.
Back to the storage wall.
The left side contains more fabric and general storage areas. I have back copies of quilting magazines in containers on the floor.
The right side is for storage of wall hanging and quilts I use for seasonal decorations in the house and projects in progress.
If you keep going clockwise around the room, next comes a wall with thread racks, calendar, clock, etc.
This is my work table where I keep my two machines permanently set up. I use each machine for specific sewing jobs. I do all my piecing on the machine on the left. My chairs are swivel chairs on wheels so when I'm piecing, I swivel around to the ironing board to press without having to get up.
When I planned this room, I made the choice to sacrifice storage space in order to have two design walls. You see the smaller one above (with the applique on it) with a glimpse of the other one that covers nearly a whole wall.
My big design wall goes floor to ceiling and will hold a full-sized quilt (queen or king size if I really squeeze it) for layout before piecing. I can't tell you how often these design walls have proved themselves out. Sometimes I have to leave a project there for days to decide if I have color combinations right or make a decision as how to quilt a piece. Love my design walls.
Then we are right back to the door again.
Although I've never yet done it, I have this burning desire to hole up in my quilting room for three or four days straight, coming out only to grab something to eat, make a bathroom stop or sleep a few hours. It is such a wonderful, cozy, well-set up room (for me anyway) that do you see why I'm so frustrated I'm not finding more time to spend in there?
We are closing in on the middle of January. You know . . . January. The long, slow month of the year.
Whose long, slow month of the year, I ask?? Is it just me or is anyone else also feeling as if the days are flying by and as much as you try to pack into them, there's still a lot that doesn't fit.
In the summer time when I'm outside most of the daylight hours, I long for winter time when my responsibilities out-of-doors are down to bare minimum and I will have ample time indoors to do whatever needs to be done and then finally get at those things I want to do.
This winter I'm trying very hard to learn to be laid-back, to relax, take time for reading, maybe watch a movie or two, get enough sleep and, oh yeah, GET INTO MY QUILT STUDIO.
My life is not complicated. I do not work outside the home. My husband is not demanding. I don't have children or dependent relatives to care for. (Well, there is the dog and that aforementioned undemanding guy I live with . . . )
I had papers spread out all day yesterday trying to balance the check book, but did I manage to get it done? Nope. My husband is starting to look like Jeremiah Jones because his hair is so long. He's been asking for a hair and beard trim for a week now. Simple tasks such as these fill my To Do List every day and seem to get carried over for three or four or more days before I manage to get them done and crossed off. I haven't found (taken) the time today to make my morning latte. And it is now 3 p.m.
I know I have many interests and choices of pursuits I want to follow. Maybe that's part of the problem; these days we do have more choices and opportunities than ever before. I know I spend time each day blogging and corresponding with fellow bloggers. But that is a fulfilling, relaxing if you will, part of my life that I don't wish to give up in order to spend that time doing something else.
I'm sitting here thinking of all the things I could/should be doing rather than blathering on to you. About 99% of them are things I really want to do and would gain great satisfaction from. But I can't fit them all into my day. Or the next or the next.
Call me maladjusted but I'm actually getting panicky about the long, slow winter being over.
Okay. Prioritize. I need to prioritize and be happy with what I do accomplish. If the clock would just stop going around for about an hour, I'd take the time to lay everything out and do just that. Right after I go make my latte, that is.
P.S. A warning: The next person who says anything about winter dragging on or how much winter is still left or how they are suffering from being cooped up may get punched out. I'm just sayin'.
Our good friend/lady carpenter, B, was here today to discuss plans for our big remodeling/finishing the house project.
My now kitchen/living room is going to become all living room and the room next to it that we added on will become my new kitchen. (Got that straight?)
The three of us had been in the unfinished to-be kitchen room discussing venting the gas kitchen range. Made some decisions and were all walking through the present kitchen/living room when for some reason, my hubby happened to glance at the wall that one of my present overhead kitchen cabinets is hung on.
It's a good sized cabinet in which I store all my glasses, mugs, and a couple other things.
This is what he saw. The whole box frame of the cabinet was coming unattached from the wall! All three of us stood there with a "what the . . . ??" look on our faces.
I opened the cabinet doors and immediately could see that the shelves were all slanting downward toward me and some of the glassware had slipped a half inch or so off the shelf surface. Panic!
Do you know how fast we unloaded that cabinet?
This is the bulk of what was in there.
Plus this.
B asked if we wanted a quick fix or should she take the whole thing off the wall and do a little reconstruction surgery. Since all the cabinets will be torn out with the remodeling, I told her to go with a quick and dirty. I really didn't care what she did as long as it held for a few more months.
And here is everything put back into place. I had been meaning to clean out that particular cabinet for a while anyway. Now it's clean.
But can you imagine the disaster if hubby hadn't spotted it pulling away from the framing when he did? I'm guessing every single piece of glass in there would have shattered . . . and we'd both probably have had heart attacks when it fell!
An aside: At about the same time we saw the potential cabinet disaster, our good neighbor, D, stopped by with some fresh fish for us. He stayed for a mug of coffee and when B saw me snapping pictures, she suggested I get a shot of her working with Papa Pea and D sitting at the table supervising her work while drinking coffee. Shoulda done it, I shoulda!
Back near the end of December Jane over at Hard Work Homestead wrote a post on how the size of coffee cups or mugs has been changing over the years.
Just like so many other things, our cups and mugs have been being progressively super-sized. They've gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. Jane illustrated her point by showing two coffee cups made by the same manufacturer, in the same style, but put out a couple of decades apart.
We've gone from a standard 6 ounce cup to ones that now hold no less than 12 ounces. (Kinda makes sense that a purchased cup of coffee today costs one heckuva lot more than it used to. Even discounting the cost in the rise of products and inflation, you're getting twice as much coffee poured into your cup!)
A couple of years ago I got it into my head that I'd like to have a set of plain white dishes. My brother-in-law, who owned a ceramics company at the time, sent me a set of white Bauer dishes. (Yeah, he is a very nice guy.)
The dinner plates to this set are a huge 11" across. Biggest dinner plates I've ever seen. They look like turkey platters.
The other plates (either salad plates or dessert plates, I'm not sure of the correct name for them) are 8-1/2" across.
The official "dinner" plates have always seemed so overly large to me that I started using (and still do) the smaller plates for our meals.
I read somewhere that if you're trying to lose weight, you should serve your meal on a smaller sized plate, thereby effectively limiting the size of your portions. (Doesn't seem like it's helped us, does it? But we won't get back on the attempt-to-lose-weight kick again here. I promise.)
Now what I'm wondering, as I'm stopping to think about it, are all dinner plates in sets being manufactured these days super-sized . . . much like coffee cups and mugs are?
Both hubby and I are currently carrying around about twenty excess pounds. Well, if I were truthful (and what the heck, I'll do just that), I'd have to admit it's more than twenty for me, but I'll lose the first twenty with him and see how it goes from there.
My present fat face pictured above.
Before the holidays, we had talked about going a bit radical after the first of the year and cutting out all grains, sugars (both manufactured and natural), and all carbohydrates including veggies such as peas, squash, potatoes, carrots, and corn that are high in starches. We even considered cutting out all dairy. Then we came to our senses. (Whew!) With the plan we're starting, we won't lose the weight as fast but cooking sure will be easier by being a little less restrictive.
We are cutting out any and all desserts and breads. (Waaah!) No eating in between meals except if we're extremely shakey, feeling faint and starting to go into shock. Then we can have fresh, raw veggies (all prepped and ready in the refrig) or fresh fruit or some cheese. We've always been good at drinking a lot of water but even a glass of that does help trick your tummy into feeling full when you think you're hungry.
No beer or glass of wine while sitting in front of the fire last thing at night. No popcorn. (I'm feeling a little teary.)
Our portions are going to be much smaller. (For some reason cooking less than what would serve several people has always been hard for me. But that's okay. I'll freeze the excess or use it within a couple of days.) What goes on our plate is all there is for that meal. Absolutely no large portions or seconds.
This is the hollow-cheeked look I'm going for. (Can you tell these photos haven't been edited?)
We're going to stick to this religiously for only one month. So even if we hate it, we know the end is in sight. It's our hope that by the end of the month's time, we'll each have seen enough lessening of our girth (and a couple of other places) that we'll want to continue on in some way.
So here goes. January 10th through February 9th. More than half the battle will be in training our minds to stop thinking about special tasty tidbits to pop into our mouths for instant gratification all through the day. (My bad for having same special tasty tidbits available. No more!)
Wish us luck. A couple of years back I lost close to thirty pounds in three months while eating only healthy foods, but trying to find enough food with the restrictions at that time was hard. Our present plan shouldn't be nearly as difficult as that. We can do it!
Out the front door looking across the deck.
Deer trail into the woods. We saw a gazillion deer tracks in the snow this morning.
Snow piled up against the mailboxes out on the road.
Hubby shoveling on roof where we get a built-up of melting snow which forms an ice dam if we don't keep it cleared. He stopped short of shoveling all he usually does because he encountered "black ice" on the south side of the roof and fell on his posterior. Luckily, he didn't slide at all (whew!) but stayed firmly attached to where he went down.
