No picture post

There will be no pictures today; no photographic evidence that can be held against me.  You'll have to use your imagination, based on my words.  I'm doing that instead of a picture because only a few of you will actually be able to envision how bad it was.  The rest will see it based on your idea of bad housekeeping, and that vision won't be nearly as horrifying as it really was.

I'm a quilter.  I like to quilt.  I quilt a lot.

I don't like to clean up after my quilting.  I don't do that a lot.

We use my Grandmother's end tables on either end of our sofa.  One of them is next to my place, under the lamp.  My good sewing spot.  The other is at Sydney's end of the sofa.  Where Sydney stays.  And, she can claim her own messes on my Grandmother's tables.

Now, you have to understand what my memory of these tables is.  My Grandmother kept one next to "her chair".  Her chair was where she held court when she had guests.  Nobody else sat in her chair.  We sat in the draft, in the uncomfortable burlap covered chair across the room.  I have that chair at my house, too.

Okay, it wasn't really like that.  But, it's my story, so I get some poetic license.

I get the whole not liking to clean up after myself from this very same Grandmother.  She was NOT the one that taught my Mom how to keep house.  (At my Mom's house, dust didn't settle on the furniture.  It went straight to the dust rag to save itself some time.)  Subsequently, that table was always covered by a pile of miscellaneous and unrelated items.  Honestly, you never knew what would be there.  We won't even go into the partial list that I can remember; it's not important to the story.  Just let's say that these tables got used to an assemblage of junk, left over from multiple projects.  And, they might be a little bit haunted by my Grandmother, who causes things to migrate there when no one is watching. 

Anyway, I digress because the mess I spent 15 minutes cleaning up this morning was my own.  Made over about 4 months.  And, God love him, permitted by Rob to happen.  Even though I'm sure it ripped at his OCD like a chainsaw.

I threw away a wad of thread that was big as a baby's head.  I kid you not.  There was every kind and color of thread in that wad.  I ran my thumb across it and saw remnants of a dozen projects. 

There were pieces of at least three individual sewing kits.  There were pieces from my hexie sewing kit, and pieces from my hand quilting kit, and pieces from my general sewing kit.  The pile included at least 4 pair of scissors, two hemostats, one thimble...where are the other thimbles?, five seam rippers, at least a dozen spools of thread, 400 paper hexies that had escaped their can, an envelope with a letter that was delivered in September, and for some reason, a green alligator watch band that I just had to have, but is too flashy for me to wear. 

Did I say I love Rob for letting me be me?

Lane