winter turns into spring

Since the last time I wrote, which was a snow day, winter has careened headlong into spring and back again a couple of times. But I'm finally starting to believe that spring is really here. The birds are making nests all over, and our greenhouse is loaded with little plants almost ready to go into the garden.

I've mostly been doing indoor things, like knitting and re-arranging & re-organizing the house. We moved my work/craft space from one side of the house to the other. I used to have a room all to myself, which I loved very very much. My new workspace is in the back room of the house, which is large, open and sunny, with lots of windows.

It's great, except that the big back room also contains our dining area, and my workspace is visible from lots of other places, so I feel compelled to organize it well and keep it neat, which does not come very naturally to me.

My dad helped by building some shelves, and cleaning out a ton of craft supplies and old papers helped a lot too. A paper and craft purge feels really good once in a while. And we found the funniest things. I had a decrepit cardboard box stuffed with paper and photos from high school. There were hundreds of little notes that other kids and I had passed back and forth to each other in class (why did I keep these things??). At first my sister and I found them uproariously funny, but after the third or fourth note, high school drama gets a bit monotonous.

I am going to DIE DIE DIE! Some one can't keep their mouth shut and now everyone knows who I like including Dave M, Tracey, Tom S and C.S.!!!!! And HE knows! All I did was tell one person who I thought I could trust and now everyone including my crush knows everything! My life is ending!!!!!!

...etc.

We wound up throwing out the whole box, just rescuing a few photos first. I also found all my journals since college or so (hopefully I burned all the high school journals in a previous purge), and I put them in storage boxes in the attic, along with photo albums going back to elementary school.

I think this is what they call spring cleaning. So far it hasn't involved much soap and water, but egad, so much dust! Getting rid of dusty piles of things has got to be one of the most therapeutic activities there is.

By the way, thanks to all of you who suggested knitting up some soakers with my yarn leftovers - what a great idea! I do have a lot of Cascade 220 around, so I've made a couple of wrap-style soakers and one of the Butt Knits variety, which is coming along splendidly. They are a fun quick project to work in between other knits, and they do use up the Cascade leftovers quite brilliantly. But I am on to a rather ambitious knitted toy today... it's a birthday present which I can't imagine I'll get done in time, but I'll post updates once the recipient gets his prize (finished or not). It fits into the Endangered Ugly Things category, so this toy is either going to be really cute or really weird.