Un buon week-end

When you start your weekend by finding on your doorstep a J.Crew box that contains a dress in the most adorable pattern, made from the most delectable silk-wool blend, which you have eyed longingly since last summer and have recently purchased because it was on clearance *AND* THEY HAD YOUR SIZE, you know it's destined to be fairly good.

I spent most of Saturday and some of Sunday getting all the Christmas decorations packed up and put away into the attic. It's always a little sad to do, and so much work to put them up and take them down that twice a year, when I am doing just that, I wonder Why? ... Still, one year I think it would be fun to take all that crap and mix it with more crap and make a crazy still life like one of those I Spy books. I spy... three snowflakes, a pinecone, two birds and twenty-two photographers.

Sunday morning I opened up one of my two new crochet project books, and made a dishcloth. It's not a spectacular project, I know, and I didn't really need a pattern per se, but it was excellent practice on maintaining even tension throughout an entire project. And I've realized making dishcloths will be a most useful way of using up the yarn given to Keith when he took up knitting for a few months, that I will most certainly never use for anything else. It is also a good fast project for when crochet ADD strikes: I busted that shit out in an hour.

I also tried one of the flower patterns, and though it was very easy, I think it's kind of ugly. Maybe because of the color; I liked the yellow one in the book...

And it *never* would have occured to me to crochet with fabric. Holy cow! I have yards of celadon fabric that's just dying to become pillows, which really is a troubling thought considering my sewing skills are less than ideal. But *instead* I can cut it into strips and *crochet* the fabric into a pillow! Oh, what WILL they think of next?!

Accepting the fact that the shelves in the laundry closet are never going to be ripped out and replaced with a nice, new, adjustable shelving system with those little wire basket drawers--which would be a wiser use of space *and* a most efficient means of streamlining the functionality of the utility area (as well as improving the view from the dryer)--I emptied the miscellaneous contents of the closet and painted the ugly, dark-stained wood shelves a crisp white. The shelves still don't work for me, but at least they look better, and hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the laundry if I'm not dreading to stand in an ugly closet.

And I wrapped it all up by making a fresh batch of Chex Mix. Yummm.