Slacker McCrafterston of the Lower West Side McCrafterstons

Wow. 16 days since my last post. That's a bit ridiculous. In my defense, I took the rest of my break and sat on my tukkus and did as close to nothing as you can without actually being dead. Which was awesome. Captain Hubby had to work most of those days so Em and I sat around in our pajamas and our own unwashed smell and watched crap on TV and ate unhealthy food for about 4 days. At one point in time, I woke up from yet another 2 hour nap on the couch to find Emeline sitting on the living room carpet, two inches from the television set, surrounded by empty pouches of applesauce, a GIANT bag of Skittles, two banana peels, and a can of Sprite she unearthed from Lord only knows where as the last time I bought Sprite, the guy from the movie "Annie" was doing the 7-Up commercials.

 Do you remember this commercial? Of course you do.

I don't know why I had to use Punjab as my time reference, but I did mostly because I couldn't remember as significant a soda promotion as "Never had it, never will." I miss Cherry 7-Up. I love that stuff. My grandfather was hooked on it. Said it tasted like the cherry phosphates he would get at the soda shop in downtown Detroit when he was a boy. I think he said he would pay 2 pebbles and a stick for one which was totally highway robbery at the time, but it was so delicious, he couldn't help it. Crap. This is not where I was going. Where was I going?

OH!  YES!! Why I haven't updated!! Because I was too lazy to transfer the photos I was taking from my phone to the email to the computer to the file to here and then be witty and shit. I was too busy sleeping, eating, and malnourishing my child. No wonder she ended up dressing herself like this:

If my mother bothered to do anything but watch Judge Judy and sleep, I would actually have pants to wear.

So, yeah. I did nothing and then I started back to school - 12 credit hours this semester - and I also started my new exercise and health routine which means I am doings things like sleeping, taking Advil, and looking for food to hoard and eat in my bed when everyone else is sleeping.

Which isn't to say I haven't been crafting. No, sir. Or ma'am. Or miss. I just haven't been posting about crafting. But I did take some pictures! And so over the next couple of days, I will present to you what I was working on while Emeline ate nothing from the food pyramid nor, indeed, anything that exists in nature. 

Empress Lovescrafts or: 

How I Learned to Stop Being a Hoarder and Actually Love Purging My Stuff

My sewing area was driving me nuts. Too many scraps and yardage that I was never going to use. A lot of it was stuff I inherited from other people (I am like the Humane Society for Lost and Stray Fabric) and so, on New Year's Day, an insect decided to perambulate into my rectum. Which, of course, meant I needed to share that insect. So, I asked Captain Hubby if he would help. And he did! In his own way. He says, "I was sleeping and was therefore out of your way and quiet." It's hard to argue with logic like that.

Robo-Dog will eat your face if you try to wake The Captain.

And so, it began. Before the Four Days of Sloth when my body still contained protein and fiber to burn for energy. The box and white garbage bag are containers to sort through. The black bin is full of the scraps from the four empty drawers you see on the floor. My goal was to get the fabric sorted by useable scraps, quilting squares/jelly-rolls/turnovers/etc, fat quarters/fat eights, and fabric larger than 1 yard. I was sick of watching The Twilight Zone marathon, so I changed the channel to "The First 48" and got to work. 

Taking a picture of the fabric I want to sort is really just putting of the actual sorting. I can haz procrastination. Lots.

I have to take a minute here and tell you about Abi. Abi is my friend. She is also my conscience, my motivation, and my voice of reason. I have ADHD (I'm also totally mental) and when I have a large project to hand, a lot of the time I get overwhelmed and then just don't do what I need to get done. Abi has been invaluable to me in getting me to not only get shit done, but she has also helped me learn how to sort through my things with a critical eye and really purge when I need to purge and to take inventory of what I have and keep it in mind when I decide I "need" something that I might not. Like purple tank tops. I have 4. I don't need another one. Anyway, it is saying something when I tell you that I had the motivation and the wherewithal to start, tackle, and complete this project ON MY OWN made me feel like a total rock star. And the results were awesome.

The black bin is yardage greater than a yard. The drawer on left holds the scraps I kept. The drawer on the right holds my quilting pieces.

Two empty drawers! Empty craft/sewing drawers are an abomination. Must fix.

 Of course I wanted to fill those two drawers with new stuff!! But alas, I made the vow that unless it is for a specific project and nothing I currently have will accomplish what I want, I am not buying fabric until I clear off my projects table that includes about 10 fleece blankets for the pedes unit at St. Joes. So instead, I decided to rearrange the drawers in the basement and ACTUALLY LABEL THEM.

No one likes to be labeled. Except craft drawers.

You will live up to your labels. If not, you will be re-labeled. Once I get more labeling tape.

This used up all my drawers and I rearranged my shelving, too. I don't have a picture of that. I think my phone died. After all that, here is the glorious pile of garbage:

"I've never seen anybody drive their garbage down to the street and bang the hell out of it with a stick. I-I've never seen that."

So that was the cleaning project. And between picking up Em from school, welcoming Captain Hubby home from work, and a drop-in guest (our friend, Peter who came over to pick up some nerd books so Peter knows what role to play and what to do when he, Captain Hubby, and some of our other friends get together to do their series of plays called "Shadowrun" which will only play in our dining room) it has taken me almost as long to post this as it took me to sort through all that fabric. So I'm gonna leave it here, my dears, and go find something gluten-free, low fat, high fiber, and low calorie to eat. And then later, I'll go get a donut. And then post more pictures.

Love to you all -
The Empress