Moving Melancholies

I've had a placemarker on my blog for today for a couple of weeks. My goal was to finish SOMETHING I could share today.

I secretly hoped to creatively patch my good pair of jeans because I experienced the biggest RRRRRRIP I've ever heard in any of my clothing as I was lifting one of the crates I've filled with files at the office where I make an appearance two or three hours a week. We are moving out off our 20-year location at the end of this month, and due to permitting delays, we can't move into the new space until July or August. So everyone is going virtual again for a while, and moving is NOT fun! But, we do get to wear jeans. Hence, new and unplanned built-in air conditioning.

I'm so lucky I was wearing a long, long T-shirt (actually one of Lizard's) that day.

I'd patched my other pair of jeans about a year or so ago, and I still have a few prepared hexagons I can use on the new rip so I can be decently covered if I have to go back in to the old office. I likely will not be able to wear jeans to the new office; we'll go back to our office/professional dress code once we get moved.

Alas, the move, medical appointments (check-ups for Lizard), gardening, flooding window well (yes, again!!!) and downsizing contents of our house (more on that in a future blog post) forced me to wear my old patched jeans to work this week. The newly ripped pair is still waiting for some TLC. The knees on this pair are still in remarkably awesome condition.

Even the inseams are perfectly soft but untorn.

I guess the goal now is to have the jeans finished in time for next week's tiny trip to the old office. But for now, the only thing I can claim finishing is my stack of purple "totes" provided by the moving company. I should have taken a photo!!! Here's one from our last move 11 years ago (onto a different floor in the same building), before our new file cabinets were installed. Kind of cool that I'm down to five boxes now, and purple, to boot. It's so awesome to have gone nearly completely paperless!

Here's my desk back in 2016. Now it's completely empty. Although I did have to unpack and hook up my computer all by myself for two hours' of use this week. All by myself! Amazing how we've each kind of become our own personal IT professional during lockdown!

For fiber satisfaction, I guess you'll have to enjoy the latest photo of my 2023 crochet temperature project instead. It does have a lot of purple in it these days!

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WIP it Good

I vowed last month to participate in the Devoted Quilter's 100-day WIP challenge. I've been participating in a Ravelry quilt WIP challenge for years, and sometimes I've even successfully completed quilts on my list. Many summers, however, have passed without fnishing a single thing.

I also participated for several years in Ravelry's Starfleet Academy, which also had regular WIP challenges. I was much more successful in meeting those goals, possibly because the crafts I was trying to finish were smaller than quilts, and I typically had to finish just one each month. The real challenge was tying my finishes into the monthly outer space themes...

I still have stacks of projects hidden in every nook and cranny, crying out to be finished. I'm excited to start searching for them and to hopefully start whacking a few of them into the light of day and more appropriate lifestyles. Finished lifestyles. Giftable lifestyles. Useful lifestyles. Anything but hiding in a brown paper bag beneath the bed or in the corner of a closet!!!

I didn't have to hunt far and wide for one of my first finishes. This flimsy basket has been in my crochet project bag for at least three years. I'd set a goal back when I whipped up this "Flower Girl Basket", literally in about two train commutes, to use up some of my hand-dyed thread so I could justify dyeing more. It's funny to remember now that back then, I wanted to make similar baskets from each of the six colors of the rainbow. I'm not sure I've touched my hand-dyed thread since I finished the handle of this basket.

I also didn't have to look far to find the single-serving cereal cup I'd used to shape my previous baskets. It was in the basement, in a box of unfinished snowflakes I've wanted to bring upstairs for several years now. Gosh, since perhaps 2013!!! That's when I wrote the basket pattern!!!

The Honey Nut Cheerios container had a surprise for me, though. I did not remember that I had another unfinished another basket from the same pattern. This one is not my hand-dyed thread. It's Lizbeth, which I collected quite a stash of back before I became addicted to thread-dyeing.

If I finished the basket handle to go with the unexpected WIP, I didn't put it in the same box. I had to make another one. I searched my old Lizbeth stash to see if I even had any more of that pink and purple thread.

Turning to the stash was not a pleasant task. I've long avoided organizing my Lizbeth thread. Lizard has accidentally knocked down a ball or two from time to time, as have I, and the unraveled messes often got tossed back onto the pile. The stash literally was a tangled mess. A tangled mess I wasn't using anymore, so why bother, right???

I'm probably going to have to dive into that stash to finish more of the WIPs lurking in that crochet box from the basement. So I might as well clean it up before I get started.

The variegated threads look so much better now! I didn't organize the solid colors yet. I'll try to do that in conjuction with my next crochet WIP. Maybe. Thankfully, I did have a tiny bit of the Girly Girl thread left, so I set right to work making a handle for the Girly Girl basket.

Both handles had to be stiffened, and then I got side-tracked by work and by a Boss Day project I needed to finish in time to mail. Oh, and a couple of baby quilts... But that's another WIP story.

The blue basket had to be stiffened, too. I apparently crocheted tighter three years ago than I did back in 2013. The blue basket wouldn't fit over the Cheerios container. I ended up using a regular plastic drinking cup, which was square on the bottom. Before I set the school glue-covered basket aside to dry, I twisted it around on the cup, and that evented out the corners the cup formed. Now dry (and finished), the blue basket gives no clue it was dryed on a square-bottom form.

Finally, I got to sit down and finish my baskets. I wove a ribbon through each handle, then stitched the handle ends in place. I don't know yet what I will do with the baskets. But they are done, and that feels so blasted awesome!!!

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No! More! T-shirts!

Because my dear, sweet Lizard husband has been working weekends for about three months now, I have tons of Saturday time to work on quilts, work on snowflakes, work on the garden (weather accommodating, of course), or do that most beloved task of all... clean!

On this particular Saturday, I had decided it was time to clean up the snowflake work station, also known as The Office. It's where the computers are set up. Too small for a bedroom, too small for bookcases, and too small for bikes.

The Office was home to three stacks of pizza boxes converted into snowflake stiffening stations, plus eight stacking sealable plastic containers of snowflakes and probably enough for a whole bookshelf full of rust-proof pins, paintbrushes, beads, jewelry parts, googly eyes, glitter, fingernail polish and various stiffening agents. I started working on this project when one of the relocation trips took me to a stack of T-shirts in the main bedroom that had not been able to fit into the guest bathroom closet, which is where I've been keeping an unbelievably large stack of T-shirts, as well as towels, dish towels and hot pads.

Beneath the stack of T-shirts in the bedroom was the stack of joined but unfinished snowflake motif projects. I had found three in the snowflake work station that needed to join the stack. The stack bothered me, but so did the stack of T-shirts. This was going to be another of those days when I moved from cleaning project to cleaning project because so many cleaning projects lurk in every single space in the house.

I decided I should go ahead and find a real place for both the unfinished motif projects as well as the T-shirts. I went to the guest bathroom closet to begin sorting T-shirts. The Office wasn't done yet, and the bedroom stacks were not done yet, but the closet was more important, in my mind.

I've long had a collection of T-shirts and jerseys from bike rides I've wanted to one day convert into a quilt. Well, in reality, it's now going to be something like ten quilts, but you get the idea. It has been way too many years (at least five) since I weeded through the T-shirts in the closet, so it was time.

For the record, I'm keeping 16 T-shirts in the closet for wearing when T-shirt weather returns. I'm also keeping five long-sleeved T-shirts because you can almost always wear long-sleeved T-shirts in Colorado. Too bad more rides don't give long-sleeved T-shirts instead of short-sleeved T-shirts. I'm also keeping five tank tops for workouts and riding the trainer.

Before I get to the point of this entire blog post, I have to share a favorite of each, because, well, you know, memories. Some T-shirts never die, no matter what, because of the memories they hold.

First, the very best tank top in the whole world. It's from my very first Ride the Rockies. I guess you could say it's my first official purchased Ride the Rockies souvenir. I wore it to run when I could still run. I've worn it on my trainer more times than I can count. I don't wear tank tops too much anymore, except on the trainer. And it's likely this one won't be making an appearance there anymore because I want it to stay the crisp white it's managed to stay even though I sweat like crazy. This top is 14 years old this year. It's still one of my favorite shirts of all time because of the logo on the front. And because of the most memorable Ride the Rockies logo of the ride's 37-year history. I love this shirt.


My favorite long-sleeved T-shirt also is Ride the Rockies, same year, same emotions. I still proudly wear this to work on casual Fridays when the weather is cool. It's a great shirt to wear the day before the new year's route is announced, too. (Which means I'll be wearing it this Friday!)


Now come the T-shirts. Quite a bit more difficult to pick a favorite. Too many!!! (And that's pretty much why I'm writing this blog post anyway...)

You'll notice there is a bit of a theme. I probably don't have to explain three of these are Ride the Rockies T-shirts.

In addition to my Sleepless in Seattle T-shirt and my Eagles concert T-shirt are my first Ride the Rockies T-shirt with that incredible logo, my last Ride the Rockies T-shirt, which celebrated my fifth tour with my husband as well as the tour's 30th anniversary, and my favorite T-shirt of all time, the Ride the Rockies T-shirt I won on the top of Independence Pass (not for singing the national anthem as I'd hoped, but for having the right digit on the end of my credit card).


Good times! I can hardly wait for the next Ride the Rockies route announcement!

But this brings me back to the reason I'm writing this. I finally got done cleaning out that closet, and I couldn't believe the number of T-shirts from rides, donating blood, volunteering for charities, Race for the Cure, Snowshoe for the Cure, The Lion King, Super Bowls and Stanley Cups! My heavens, I could clothe a village.

Down in the basement lurks a big plastic bin of Race for the Cure T-shirts I've collected from friends and co-workers for the last decade. They will be made into quilts at some point.

This day of organizing and trying to make the house more presentable while my beloved is working away resulted in the donation of 58 more T-shirts to the pre-quilt collection!!! Along with six long-sleeved T-shirts and seven tank tops. Heavens to Betsy! I can't even get them all to fit!!!

We are signed up for one more ride this year, and we hope to be participants in Ride the Rockies, if the stars align. But I'm putting these rides on notice right here and right now.

We don't need any more T-shirts!!!

Please, do not give us any more T-shirts!

And now, I can get back to organizing The Office, which was the original day's goal...

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