Writing books, publishing them myself and selling them at art fairs, that's what I've been doing with all my free time! Actually, it's not my free time any more it's now my career! So take that! This is a picture I took of my booth at the Elk Rapids Art fair last spring. I've done four events now and I have three more this fall. The goal is to not only get my books into readers hands, but also to get my name into the public as well. So it's working!
In the mean time, I've also been cleaning out the stash of fabric, the stash of unfinished projects, especially piecing projects which I am no longer in love with. Sitting there for hours just feeding tiny pieces of fabric endlessly through a sewing machine. No thanks, not me any more! I'm also getting rid of all my embroidery projects, especially cross stitch, and all of my basketry supplies although I still have about 10-15 baskets I still want to do.
Same goes for the Scrap booking projects. I have about fifty pages that I still need to fill and the stuff for about three times that amount to make pages with. No more. I'm going to plan out the pages that I still want to do and put them in the page sleeves and then finish them a page or two at a time as the mood hits. Then all of the rest of the stuff is going to get donated. There is a cool place in town now where you can donate crafty things, It's called Scraps, and they will take anything craft related. They are going to get a lot of my stuff. And I'm going to buy yarn there! They sell things for a fraction of retail!
So, between Scraps and finishing projects, I will soon be down to one basket of yarn next to my chair from which I will make continuous endless socks. And maybe the odd afghan. And all of the storage problems in my house will be solved.
This week I cleaned out my white cabinet in the back room to remove all unwanted items for the Scraps box. Now the only things in there are tools and glues and some odd pieces of stuff that I felt I could keep for a while longer.
I am putting together "gift boxes" with cut pieces, scraps, old projects, and odd stuff that won't sell at my craft sales. These gift boxes are going to be giveaways at the Dixboro retreat in October. We will make it into a game of steal the gift you want. Then for sure I will be rid of all of it, except for one thing, and I will be forced to keep that one thing, project or whatever. Which is why I added one of my books to the mix. I can keep stealing that back and if I end up with it, I can always sell it later. It's actually a no lose situation for me because if I end up with one of the other gifts I will give it away anyway, and someone else has my book to read. It's all Good!
Most of the gift boxes will have projects that I had planned for the block of the month project at the guild, so it all works out after all. I'll be rid of it all and won't have to think about it again.
That's all that's new on this juncture. I'll post again after the retreat to show pictures of the quilt tops I finished while I was there.
