Sunday, May 11, 2008

Ravelry Invite!

I got my Ravelry invite last night! I am so excited! What is Ravelry? Well it is to spinners, crocheters and knitters, what Pattern Review is to sewers! I have been waiting a week for my invite and it finally came!

On Ravelry you can post patterns, projects you are working on, log your stash- yarn, needles, books, etc, and connect with others who spin, knit and/or crochet! Right now it is in Beta so that is why you have to wait for an invite- they don't want to overload the system. But, trust me, it is worth the wait!

I didn't get a chance to go do another orphan quest in WoW so I will have to wait until next year to do it again. Right now I am trying to make money (WoW money) and get my lvl 60 mount (which is faster than the one I have now). And I am working on my mining. So that is what I have been doing in WoW the past few nights.

The sewing room project is moving right along! I just ordered Space Bags to store my fleece, fake fur and some of my yarn in. I think I can squish my stash in half! LOL
I won't be squishing the wool- am too worried about it not coming back to shape afterwards. But I have a lot of acrylic so I think I can save a ton of space. I am picking up some more wire storage cubes today at Costco- to redo the side of the closet that has Jason's clothes in it. It is weird but Jason's clothes are in my sewing room. That actually was my idea as originally his work space was in our bedroom. So I suggested he use the closet there for computer parts instead of clothes and put his clothes in my sewing room. So that is what we did. We have since moved his work space downstairs to the living room but his clothes remain in my sewing room and the computer parts closet is in the bedroom.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Sewing Room Organization: The Plan 2008

So where have I been and why have I not been posting? Well last week - last Saturday to be exact, I decided to start organizing my sewing/craft room. Well it was a mess. No, really. In fact a friend of mine, who had not even seen it had a great description of it. He said most estate sales he has been to, if there was a women who was crafty or sewed, the "sewing room" looked like the aftermath of a mudslide made of fabric, yarn and other crafty tools and supplies. Well that about covered it! I laughed because he has never even been to my house!

I DID take a 'before' picture but I won't post it until I get the 'after' pictures. I almost don't want to at all! But I am SURE that there are a lot of ladies that have the same problem- and I want to inspire you to clean up too! So I decided to post my plan here for now.

Phase 1: Remove the 'pile' of fabric into our bedroom. Go through the closet and consolidate all craft and art supplies. Sort and conquer is my basic plan here. Unfortunately my room, though I call it my Sewing Room, is used for traditional art, card making, jewelry making,spinning and MANY other crafts! So I need to be able to organize lots of different things and be able to access them when I need them. to make it even more challenging- there are tools I use for many things, like my glue guns and dremel tool.

Sort fabric into cardboard file boxes.
Move all sewing books to hall bookcase. (no real sorting yet- just sewing books together, etc)

Phase 2: Go through my patterns and get rid of some! I have way too many. LOL! Make sure the ones I want to keep are in my database and in my book I use for looking at them when planning what I want to make.

Phase 3: Go through the fabric boxes, cut swatches for my swatch book

Phase 4: Go through the bookcase and organize the books and patterns. Make sure the "free flyer" projects I pick up all over the place are in the binder for that, so I can actually find them!

That's it! Currently I am about 75% through Phase 1, which is the phase that will take the longest. I will be posting pictures and describing my organization system in more detail.

I got a Willy!

If you play World of Warcraft you already know what I am talking about. If not here is a picture.



Cute, huh? I think he is hilarious! For those that don't play- I will explain a bit. this is Children's Week, one of the many holidays in WoW. During Children's week you can take an orphan around on an adventure and when you bring them back to the orphanage, they reward you by giving you a special pet. You get the choose from three different pets (yes I CHOSE Willy!).

I wanted to get a Willy last year- but at that time I had only been playing WoW for a few months- so I didn't have a high enough character to do this orphan quest. There are two orphan quests- one for lower level characters and one for higher level characters. I did the lower level character quest. It was fun!

So why do I like Willy? I think he is hilarious. He floats around after me. He drools (you can't see that very well in the picture, but trust me, he does). He looks around. And sometimes he will get bored and fall asleep.



I have heard that if you are standing around or pass close to one of the many level 1 critters that populate WoW, Willy will zap them and go eat them too. But I have not yet seen this behavior.

Children's week only lasts one week- usually May 1 thru May 7 so I want to try something else I heard that you can do. I heard that if you do the orphan quest and don't turn in the orphan- you can call the orphan and keep them! I want to try this so I will go back and do the lower level quest and try it with the orc boy! Will post results.