Warning! Long post. Floss storage

Good Morning!

I want to start this post with a big thank you for all the wonderful comments on the craft room. I am overwhelmed by the response and touched that some want more pictures. A special thanks has to go out to Daffycat as she posted about it on her blog which led people to mine. Thank you so much!

I had a lot of requests for more pictures and a lot of the requests I had were regarding my floss storage. I have kept my DMC in those nuts and bolt containers that most people use in their garage for 13 years or so. The reason I went to this method is because I have a ton of floss. At one time Hy-Vee food stores carried DMC. One day, Hy-Vee decided they weren't going to carry it anymore. They dumped it all in a big old box and slapped a 5 cents/skein price tag on it and put it in their dollar sale. Right about then I happened by and asked how much for the entire box. I think I paid $10.00 for the whole kit and kaboodle! Then I didn't know what to do with my find so I separated out all the different colors and put them in a ziploc baggie and then into grocery bags. But that made it hard to find a color when I was looking for it. I was complaining telling Dan about my problem one day and he suggested using the nut and bolt containers. So off we went to the store where we bought 7 of them for around $10.00/piece. Later when DMC added more colors we bought a smaller version as we couldn't find the size we had used before. I kept all of these containers in a closet and was quite happy with my system except for the fact that it took up a lot of valuable closet storage space. When we started planning the re-do of the basement room my plan was to still keep it in the closet. But when I started putting everything away....I found I didn't have as much room as what I needed for storage if I did that. I had also added the DMC varigated threads to my stash by this time and needed another storage container. I searched high and low for one the same size as my other ones. I even asked for your help in locating one the same size. Apparently, when I bought the original 7, I must have bought every one they produced because NO ONE had a container with the same dimensions as what I needed. I could find taller ones, shorter ones, and ones with fewer drawers but not 14.5w x 14h x 6.5d. That beast doesn't exist in my world anymore. What you will find is this . It's 18 inches tall and the drawers when you pull them out are slightly shorter than my original ones but they still work. They are also more expensive than they used to be. I thought about buying all new cabinets but decided I didn't want to spend the money when I had 7 perfectly good cabinets already. So I bought one of the 18 inch tall cabinets and decided to make it work. And if I had kept it all in the closet it would have been fine but I wanted that storage space freed up so I decided to just stack them on the floor of the craft room. First I tried them vertically, that was a bad idea. It was very wobbly, you had to lay on your stomach on the floor to see what was in the bottom drawers and when you place them on something to raise them up, being the vertically challenged person that I am, I couldn't see the top drawers. So I stacked them on the floor horizontally. Better, more stable but still laying on the floor to get to them. Dan suggested putting boxes underneath them and that would have worked but they were still too low for my liking. Then I thought, well, they are made for hanging so I'll just hang them. There are 2 problems with that idea. One being the number of holes you would put in your wall and the other, I am a balanced kinda person and with that one 18" cabinet it wasn't going to be a nice rectangular shape on the wall. After much discussion, Dan and I decided building a box that would hang on the wall allowing the cabinets to just slide into the box made the most sense. Fewer holes in the wall, stable, easy to see and it would pretty it up too! BUT, we still have that dumb 18" cabinet throwing a wrench in the works. After much thought we came up with the idea of putting a box inside the box to raise up some of the drawers and make everything all nice and even. And this is the result.


Some of you might have died from boredom right now and I apologize for the lengthy writing but I wanted to go over the process we went through to arrive at our final design to save you from having to think it all through yourselves should you decide to try something like this.

Here is a closeup version of the drawers.

As you can see, I have labeled each drawer with it's number and each drawer holds 5-6 skeins comfortably. Here is a picture of how the floss fits in the drawer.


In the nook we built I keep my containers for Kreinik threads. They fit perfectly in the little plastic organizers which fit perfectly in the nook.



Remember earlier when I said I had a lot of floss? I only keep 5-6 skeins in the cabinets. That still left me with a ton of floss still in those baggies. I decided that I needed a better way to store the overflow that made it easy to see what I had and what I didn't should I ever use all the skeins of a particular color in the drawers. This is what I came up with. Still in baggies, but with acid free mat board added to make them stand up and now they are in numerical order also. I keep up to 10 skeins of each color in the baggies. I have 2 of these bins in the closet.




The overflow of the overflow, in other words, those colors that I just have a crap load of... is still in baggies in a grocery sack and I use it to give away to people. I'm never going to use it so I might as well help other stitcher's when they need it. I'm never sure though if they want it or not as it is older floss. Nothing wrong with it but I worry people won't want it and use it. What do you think?


Are you still with me?? I hope so! Hang in there, I'm almost done.

Now I have to confess that when it comes to my overdyed floss storage, I haven't come up with a great solution. In fact haven't come up with any solution. Yet. A couple of friends of mine have suggested a system that they use and I think I will try to find it. My only problem is it seems to be getting harder and harder to find and I don't want to spend tons right now to make sure I have plenty for the future when I don't need a lot of it at the moment. I've considered doing something similar to what I've done with my overflow DMC and I've thought about having Dan build me a spinner. Still mulling it all over. If you have any brilliant ideas for storing overdyeds please let me know. For now, this is my method.


Not a great solution as you can see. Are you horrified?? I am! I'm open to suggestions on this one folks!

That pretty much covers my floss storage and since this is so long I will leave it with just the floss storage and post more on the craft room in a day or two. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email me and I'll do my best to answer them.

I'm off to help a mother this morning whose son has just been diagnosed with Celiac disease. My daughter was diagnosed a little over a year ago and I wish I had had someone to walk me through the grocery store and point out what she could and couldn't eat, so when my sister asked me if I would mind I said I'd be happy to help. I'm not an expert but I'm better than nothing!

Thanks again everyone for all the lovely comments and stay tuned if you are interested for more of the craft room.

Have a great day!

It's done, it's done, it's done!!

Happy Tuesday Everyone!!

I am so excited to announce that my craft room is finished! Well, I guess it's not completely, absolutely finished as there are a few things I still need to get like another chair, a rug and some organization of the scrapping stuff but the actual construction stuff and getting everything back in there is finished. And it looks mahvolous darling, just mahvolous!! See....(click picture to make larger)


and....
I won't bore you with all the detailed pictures I took. I'm trying to make my posts shorter so that maybe someone will actually want to read them!

Got a bit of stitching done this weekend. Here's an update!


Thanks for stopping in. Have a great day!

I need your help, the dresser and my WIP

Good Morning!

I was looking at my blog this morning and realized it had been over a week since I last posted! Where did the time go?

I need your help. I have used all the resources at my disposal and have come up blank. You are my only hope Obi Wan. Oh wait, I got confused there for a second, I meant to say, you out there in blog land are my only hope. To finish part of my craft room I NEED to have one more 60 drawer cabinet with the clear drawers that men usually use to store nuts, bolts, screws and anything else that is lying around in the garage that they don't know what to do with. BUT, and this is the sticky wicket, it needs to be a certain size. Specifically, 14.5w x 14h x 6.5d. I can find ones that are 18" tall but that won't work. They no longer make the size I need. So in order to find one, it's going to have to be in some persons garage. I have searched ebay, craigslist, posted a message on craigslist asking for one, contacted all friends and relatives and now I'm throwing myself on your mercy. I am more than willing to pay a reasonable price for it and shipping costs to get it here. So please would you see if you have one that could be replaced with the stupid 18" tall one and let me know. And if you don't would you hound ask everyone you know to look too??? Pretty please with sugar on top? Here's a picture of one ( not the right one, mind you) that I have from my garage. Oh, and I don't mind if it's dirty, I can clean it up, it just needs to have all it's drawers and be fully functional. Thanks, I appreciate the help!


I've been pretty busy the past week. Last Tuesday I went to the dentist to get fitted for a crown and 2.5 hours later left with a partial root canal. Seems the dentist that put the original filling in cracked the tooth and drilled into the nerve or some such thing and so the pain was not going to be fixed with a crown. No siree, I needed a root canal. And because my roots extend into my sinus cavity, the dentist wasn't comfortable doing the whole thing so the next day I got to go to an endodontist and have him finish the root canal. Now, I don't know about you but I don't do the dentist well. I don't like the sounds, the smell, the taste or anything else that is involved in going to the dentist. Not even the stupid sticker or toy they offer you afterwards is enough to negate my feelings about the dentist. So you can imagine how I felt having to go 2 days in a row. BUT! Is it done after 2 days? No. It Is Not. It's now a week later and I am still surviving on pain killers and mush. I also have a canker sore on the inside of my cheek the size of Rhode Island. My eyeball hurts, my sinus' hurt, the roof of my mouth hurts, the tooth hurts, my ear hurts , well, I'm sure you're getting the idea. This happened with the last root canal they did also (different dentists) . They had to redo it twice that time. Correct me if I'm wrong but we have sent men to the moon, unmanned probes to Mars, invented the computer, the cell phone and all the other modern miracles in the last 100 years but for some reason, we can't seem to bring dentistry out of the dark ages!! That's just wrong. In so many ways. I'll keep you posted on what happens next.

Wednesday, before going to my second round of torture, I picked Amy's senior portraits up. This is another form of torture in my opinion. I have a certain amount of money I can spend on them and I am having a terrible time deciding which pictures to choose. Could be worse, there could be no good pictures to choose from but the back and forth, do I choose this picture or this picture is driving me crazy.

I've been working on the craft room this past week also. Not as much as I would have liked because I really haven't felt well but a few minutes here and few minutes there and it is starting to improve. Still a long way to go but I am hopeful that by the end of this next weekend it will be done. Dan finished up with that beautiful dresser I posted last time. Oh! That reminds me, as long as I'm complaining today, before I found this dresser at the thrift store I was looking for one on Craigslist. I was raised to believe that a dresser is a piece of furniture with drawers and is horizontal in shape and a chest of drawers was a piece of furniture with drawers and is vertical in shape. Apparently I am the only one that was raised to think this. And as I searched for a dresser I discovered a new pet peeve.....99% of people are selling what I call a chest of drawers but posting it under the title of dresser. Anyway, back to the beauty that we bought. Here she is today, all painted up purty with new hardware and placed in her new home in the craft room.


and with her new hutch installed on top she is ready for me to install all the scrapping stuff that she will hold!


Saturday was Last Saturday Stitching, held for the last time at the old shop. We're not sure where it will be next month, hopefully we will be up and running at the new shop if all goes well and will be able to have it there. We had 2 new stitchers join us Saturday, Sandy who reads my blog and her mom Jane. Very nice ladies, I didn't get to talk much to them as I was pretty busy most of the time but hopefully they had a good time and will continue to attend. I meant to take pictures of the day but in my drug induced state, I forgot.

My inlaws came down for the air show on Sunday which meant we had to clean house, sort of. More like a lick and a promise. I was somewhat embarrassed. Oh well. Life happens sometimes!

I've also been helping our son decorate his new apt. Picking paint colors, new light fixtures, curtains, art....last night Dan and I went over and hung his new blackout curtains. His TV was opposite the 8 feet of sliding glass doors which caused glare on the screen and we couldn't have that. I also rearranged a bit and hung some of his pictures. It's coming along nicely. Chose the paint color for his den last night too.

So as you can see I have been pretty busy which explains the lack of progress with my stitching. Here is the little I have managed to do. Pathetic isn't it? Any guess yet on what it is??


I need to get my day started. Breakfast so I can take more meds, phone calls need to be made, cleaning up so when Amy's piano students show up I'm not embarrassed and then the craft room. I hope you all have a great day and thanks for stopping in, commenting and hounding your friends for a cabinet. Sorry for the length of the post. I tried to be brief! :)

New wip, update and ummmm stuff

Good Monday Morning!

It was a very busy weekend. Still didn't accomplish everything that needed to be accomplished but progress was made and you can't complain too much about it. Well, you could complain but it isn't going to do you any good so why waste the time doing so?

Dan and I went over to Adams apt. both Friday and Saturday to check out the painting job he was doing, paint some for him and to discuss what was next. Adam is doing a great job with the painting for his first attempt! He is now finished with the main living areas and the hallways. I still need to pick paint for the den, bathroom, and bedroom. Just waiting on art and bedding and a shower curtain to arrive so I can get the colors picked based on those items. His blackout curtains arrived Saturday so I picked those up this morning after taking Amy to school. I think the color will work. Dan installed some new hall light fixtures also. Tonight after work he is planning to install the new kitchen light fixture. Right now it's just a big round bare bulb. Can we say yuck?!

Abby went to orientation for radiology school this morning. She was very nervous which is strange because the girl can get a brick wall to talk to her if she wants to. I think it's mostly a lack of confidence in herself. She doesn't think she's smart enough to do this. She is, but I can't convince her of it.

I want to give you all a sneak peek at the dresser we picked up at Goodwill this weekend. She's a beauty! I'll be putting a hutch on the top and it will go in the craft room that we've been working on in the basement.
Here's the front:


Another shot:

I was lucky to get these pictures, Dan was already working on the dresser by the time I got in the house, located my camera and got back out to the garage! Don't you wish you had a dresser just like this one? :)
Trust me, you won't recognize her when he's done with her!

We made some good progress on the basement this weekend too. Took a large load to the Goodwill, I started loading up the other closet in the craft room, bought some curtains for the nooks, and then some old friends decided to come out of the closet and play.

They were very happy to leave the confines of the closet after almost 5 years. These are mostly my vintage and vintage reproduction dolls, with a few glamor gals on the bottom.

Some stitching got done this weekend also. Not much though, too busy with other things. I started a shop model. I can't say that I am enjoying working on this dark brown fabric. I've had to frog quite a bit on it already. These eyes do not like dark colors anymore. I'm using my readers, my ott light and white fabric on my lap but holy moly I can't stitch for long on it before I have a headache! Anyway, can anyone guess what this is going to be? Bet ya can't!

and the chatelaine:


I guess that's all I've got to say for now. Not the most exciting of posts but that's the way it is sometimes!
Today is my last official day of work. Still not sure exactly what is going to happen. I'm praying hard and we'll see what comes of it!

Thanks for stopping in and commenting if you do! It's always appreciated!

Framed!!

I'm so excited over this finish! For a mistake, I think it turned out to be an awesome piece, even if I do say so myself! LOL!! I debated for a good couple of days on the framing of this one. At first I thought I was going to use black suede mats, a fillet and either the rusty red or the aqua for an under mat. However, while beautiful, it just wasn't really tripping my trigger. After trying a bazillion different options I pulled a frame off the wall that I can honestly say in 6 years I have never pulled off the wall before. Well, except for when I would pull it off and say, gosh, this is a pretty frame, why haven't we used this on something, and then back on the wall it would go. Now Mary Ann understands why it's so hard for me to weed out the frames. Ya just never know when you might have need of one! So as promised, I am going to display this piece on the shelf in the library.



I also have an update on my Chatelaine. I got to stitch on it both Monday night and Tuesday night while over at Margaret's house watching TV. This week was the season finale for The Closer, I sure am going to miss Brenda Lee Johnson and her gang.



Amy started school today. She was pretty excited to go and was in a fairly good mood when I picked her up.
As we were driving to school this morning, we went right past a 4 car accident. All kids from the High School. I of course had to point out to Amy that that right there was the reason I don't want her driving to school. Remarkably she had no response to that! On the way to school to pick her up this afternoon, I passed another more serious accident, again kids from the high school. Putting a high school right off a busy highway where the speed limit is 55 and most people go 65 was a very stupid idea IMO. Not that anyone is going to listen to me. What's done is done. I'll just listen to Amy complain for the next 9 months about how all her friends get to drive to school and she doesn't even have a car. Build a bridge daughter and get over it. I doubt if I change my mind no matter how much you complain. I much perfer listening to you bitch than to never hear your voice again.


Looks like we might be going to get a storm here soon. I better get off the computer and go take the umbrella down on the deck. Have a good night everyone! Thanks for stopping!

Have you seen this??

Coming to a cross stitch store near you, the cutest little Halloween hat you will ever see! When I received the email from John at Just Nan I said to Mary Ann, "we need to get this." Unfortunately, we weren't on the automatics for these particular items and they were all sold out already! I was completely bummed out but all hope was not lost. No siree. There are parts of the world where they don't celebrate Halloween you know and they have the right to say no to their automatic which they did. So we have 4 of these cuties headed our way!


I haven't had much time to stitch this past week. It's been a whirlwind trying to find clothes for Amy for school and senior pictures, getting the pictures taken, returning clothes we decided not to keep, and in between all that I still had to work, clean house, cook meals, go grocery shopping, and work on the basement. This is the last week for me to work at the frame shop. We stopped accepting new orders last Wednesday and at that time I had 11 pieces of needleart, 2 Egyptian papyrus pictures, 2 diplomas, 3 train pictures, 1 volleyball picture, 1 wheat weaving, and a couple of other items I can't remember off the top of my head. I still have 2 needlearts to stretch, 10 needleart pieces to mat if needed and frame, 1 diploma to frame, the mats are finished and the couple of other items to mat and frame yet this week. My pinning finger was smoking I tell ya! The current plan is, by Sept 1, the cross stitch part of the shop will be moved next door to the vacuum cleaner shop and Mary Ann and I will be working over there. The framing part of the shop is on hold until probably November at which time we will be either moving it into the current vacuum shop or be moving it all to a new as yet to be determined location. Dan (my hubby) suggested a new name for the store, he'd like it to be called Stitch and Suck. :) Mary Ann does not like his suggestion. I suppose I don't really blame her for that. Here's my problem though with all 3 things in one store. The Name. The name on the building should reflect what is in the store. Right? If it stays Cornhusker Vacuum, no one will know that there is cross stitch and framing available. And to be honest, Reflections Gallery doesn't do us any good either. So what name could we choose to reflect all 3???? I can't tell you the hours I have spent in the middle of the night pondering just that very thing. Not that I have any say in it, but it's just good business in my opinion. If any of you out there have a good suggestion, please feel free to throw it out there. I can't guarantee anything will come of it but who knows. Stranger things have happened!

In other stitchy news, I want to say hi to Sandy from Papillion. Sandy found our shop through my blog! This makes me very very happy. Hi Sandy!!

I also want to say Congratulations!! to Mary and Merrilyn, two of our stitching and framing customers and also 2 of the nicest ladies you ever want to meet. They entered a few things in the fair in Des Moines, Iowa and won some blue and red ribbons with their stitching. I wish I had pictures to show you all. The pieces that I framed were beautiful!! I'm sure the ones I didn't were just as beautiful. Good job ladies!

Adam is not moving to New Orleans so he signed a new lease on an apt. Dan and I went over to check it out this weekend. I do not know what that boy was thinking! It hasn't been updated since it was built in the early 70's. It's filthy and the closet doors are tin. We won't even talk about what the bathroom looked like. The upside is he is allowed to do what ever he wants as far as painting and changing doors, light fixtures, carpet etc. The downside? As far as we know he would have to pay for it!!!! In my 30 minutes of looking I made a quick list of everything that needs doing....a thorough cleaning, the carpet needs replacing or at the very least a good cleaning, the wood work needs refinishing or painting, the entire apt. needs to be painted, the bathroom needs to be updated completely, all the light fixtures need updating, those metal doors are beat to crap and need replacing also. Not sure what all will be done but we started with paint. The main areas are to be painted Sherwin Williams Latte with an accent wall in a deep rusty red. The bathroom vanity will be painted black, the walls a silvery gray to go with his black/gray/white shower curtain and I have yet to determine the colors for the bedroom and den. He's going to be painting for the next month at least!

Abby is off in Colorado. She went with Jake to a wedding. They rode the train which excited Abby a great deal. I haven't heard much from her, the wedding was lame, the train station was ghetto, she got dizzy up on the mountain and fell but not off the mountain so it's all good. The mountains are beautiful. That is the gist of what she has texted. Their return train leaves Denver tonight at 8 so I will hear more tomorrow I'm sure.

School starts for Amy on Wednesday although she has to go today for a National Honor Society meeting and tomorrow for journalism. She's starting to get excited. She has finished her summer homework, reading Beowulf and 2 science based books. I'm so glad I'm not in school. Summer homework would suck and Beowulf would put me right over the edge. Amy of course enjoyed it. She's weird that way. Loves books written in poem form.

I best get my rear in gear and get a move on. Since Amy needs to be at school by 9 I have to leave for work early. We have to share a car. She'll drop me off at work and go to school and hopefully someone will remember to come pick me up at 6 tonight. Last week they forgot me. Twice!

Have a great day everyone and thanks for stopping by and commenting!

Foggy Day and an update

Good Monday Morning! It's going to be a busy week around here. It's the last full week before school starts and we are scrambling to get last minute things done like dental appt's., shopping for senior pictures, hair appt. for senior pictures, senior pictures, school supply shopping, shopping for school clothes, etc. etc. etc....are you seeing the theme here? Yuk! I do not like this time of the year. Summer slips away so quickly these days. Guess that comes with getting older but I have to say, I don't like it. I don't like it at all!


Got up this morning to see this view outside:


I love to walk in the fog. Everything is so
muted and quiet. It's peaceful.





At least it is until you start looking a little closer.
Then you realize that the world is infested with
these:



Then you get creeped out and decide you are never going outside again. EVER! Because everywhere you look there is another one. The grass is covered in thick white webs with tunnels in them. And you know what's in the tunnels? S.P.I.D.E.R.S! And what is Julie terrified of? Yep, that's right. Spiders give me the heebie jeebies! And I know if I step into the grass, those spiders are going to attack. They're just sitting there patiently waiting before they pounce. But I've got their number. They aren't going to get me. I'm staying inside. Permanently!


Got some stitching done this weekend. Not a ton because I had to work on Saturday and then the in-laws were here the rest of the day. Sunday I worked on the basement, made some progress before I took Amy to the mall to find some school/senior portrait clothes. It's almost impossible to find clothes that look good on her body type. I was almost in tears. She was depressed and angry. It was not a good time. We found some things but not nearly enough and we still need a pretty red dress for the picture of her with her piano. I'm going to try to go out this afternoon again but I'm not sure we will have time. Anyway, here is my Chatelaine as of last night.


And with that I'm going to have to get moving. I need to pay bills before I take Amy to babysit and I head to work. I have a dentist appt. this afternoon that I'm not looking forward to. Then I'll try to shop a bit more before heading to a hair appt. for Amy this evening.

Have a great week if I don't get back to post again till the weekend! Thanks for stopping in!