Hello?

I have been busy working this summer on the Great Garage Cleanout! It seems like every summer I do the same thing and I'm not sure how exactly I end up with this task every summer. I am a stasher when I clean, meaning, when company is coming, I grab a bucket or 10 and shove things from the house into them and then shove the buckets into the garage. But where does all of the stuff come from to go into the buckets in the first place?

SO, every day this summer I have been working in the garage and getting rid of things. I have sorted, cleaned, dumped and organized thousands of items. I am finally starting to see a dent in the pile of stuff out there. I am finally starting to see the floor.

I am so thankful for Freecycle. If you haven't heard of it, go to freecycle.org and search for your city. At first, I thought of Freecycle as a place to get things for free. Just what I needed, one more place to bring un-needed things into the house. But this summer, it has really been great for helping me find homes for all of the unwanted things I have been keeping for years.

I found a great lady who has taken all of the double knit fabric and all of the bottom weight fabric that I'm never going to use. I've been keeping it for years and even went out and bought storage buckets for it and had it nicely folded in the garage and never had a plan to use it. She also took the baby weight yarn that I just don't have the time for. I have at least 10 buckets of 4 ply yarn out there, waiting for me to find the time to get to. I'm hoping to bring some to my next charity crafting meeting and pass it along to people who will have more time to work with it.

About 7 years ago I thought I wanted to spin wool into yarn. I bought a spinning wheel, took lessons and bought fleece. Now, when I start a hobby, I really jump in. I didn't just buy one fleece and spin that. Oh, no. I bought probably 5 fleece. For anyone who knows anything about spinning wool, it takes some time. Time to wash and time to card and time to spin. Some of the fleece got washed, some got carded and some got spun. Most was still out in the garage...until yesterday. It went to its new home. The lady was very happy to get these lovely fleece and I'm sure next summer I will be happy that I don't have to clean up the space again.

I have 5 weeks left of summer vacation. For some of you, this may be a long time. For me, time has gone by quickly. I don't want to spend the rest of my vacation a slave to the junk in the garage. I'm ready to finish this project and move on to having fun.

Hopefully, my sewing machine is back from the shop today and it works. If not, I'm going to buy a new machine. Either way I will be quilting before this summer is over :)