I have decided I'm going to knit myself a new jumper - and it will be red! Not that wishy washy orangey red of British post boxes, but a rich, glowing blood red (it would look great on Ianto
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First off, I am green with envy!! Where are you that you've been blessed with rain -- pouring rain, no less, you braggart!!! I'm in the middle of the desert, and even tho it's our 'monsoon' season, so far, we've stayed very dry. For us, 'monsoon' season usually means torrential thunderstorms in the mountains to the west, followed by torrential flash flooding, since every little raindrop knows that Las Vegas was dumb enough to build great big car parks and casions right in the middle of the natural washes that should carry the flood waters safely from the mtns right down to Lake Mead and the Colorado River. So now, the landscape of the valley has these great ugly concrete scars and attached pock mark craters that are supposed to contain the water. Didn't help much about maybe ten yrs ago when we had our 'flood of the century', which very successfully wiped out over a mile of everything, including an entire caravan park.
Enough blithering on about the weather. Second, I am so envious that you a) have a box room full of junk and b) in that, great swaths of wool, and c) that you can knit an actual sweater!!! My knitting consists of afghan blocks. So, I wish you all the luck in the world, and I can't wait to hear how it goes! Keep me apprised, yeah?
I grew up in New England, in New Hampshire, and every fall I'd start crocheting an enormous afghan, and by the time it was freezing in the house (300+ yrs old, no heating except a kitchen cook stove and a small parlour stove in the lounge -- no heat in the bedrooms or bath -- I'd sleep with my clothes in my bed and in the morning, I'd change under my covers, cause it was way, way too cold to risk any form of nakididity out in my bedroom!!!) my afghan would be big enough to start covering my lap & legs while I worked on it. I always got thru at least one, somethings two a winter, really just to keep warm!!! Kind of miss those days -- winter here lasts about a week, maybe ten days if I'm lucky. That's why I've had the same winter coat for the bast 19 years -- it hasn't even had the equivalent of a full winter's wear yet!!!!!
Kisses to your poor arthritic fingers; wish I could be there to help hold your yarn! Melinda
The box room, as we call it, used to be my sister's bedroom. Since she moved our eons ago, we've piled everything in there and until a few weeks ago you couldn't get further than the doorway. It's a tiny room anyway, about 6ft by 10ft (English houses are really tiny - I live in the English midlands, Nottinghamshire). Anyway, like I said, everything got bunged in there - bags of fabric, cones of knitting machine wool, all my knitting wool, boxes of my books, piles of magazines... you name it, it's probably in there. I even found some plant pots! What they were doing in there, I don't have a clue! Clearing out the junk is going to take a while.
On the bright side, it's got me knitting again. 20 rows last night, another 10 tonight. I'm doing the front first, the pattern is a 24 row repeat and I've done 44 rows so far. I've altered it a bit from the pattern, but then, I always do. I've been knitting for over 30 years!
I can crochet squares, but that's about it, really I prefer knitting. Maybe I should be giving internet knitting lessons!
The last few years, we haven't really had much summer weather, mostly pouring rain and floods. Thankfully, where I live the only flooding we get is when our lawn gets waterlogged, but there are places over here where people regularly get flooded out of their homes, it's terrible. The weather this year's been better than for the last 4 or 5 - it's still rained a fair bit, but we've had more sunshine and it hasn't been as cold. The cold and damp plays havoc with arthitis, so I haven't enjoyed it. Our heating isn't very good, it's all run off one coal fire, which doesn't work well so in the winter I take my clothes to bed too! We need a new heating system, but we're too cluttered to get it done, hence the massive clear out. Problem is, mum's 79, very slow and reluctant to get rid of things and I have health problems plus 3-day migraines every 2 weeks, so I'm slow at getting things done. I'm facing another winter dealing with the coal fire which takes an hour a day to clean out, every day. Not fun when you have to do that with a migraine! Without the fire, we have no heat, and if it goes out it can take up to 3 hours to clear everything out and relight it! If it goes out, it's usually because it's got too clogged up with ash. It's a nightmare!
I don't think I'll ever complain about having to chop and stack firewood or chop up the kindling, and then haul everything from the back shed into the kitchen, and clean out the ashes and all the rest of the survival stuff I used to have to do as a kid. At least it sounds like you have a relatively small home to heat -- that damn farmhouse was massive -- the kitchen took up half of the downstairs, then there was the lounge area and two big bedrooms and the only bathroom; up stairs there was five more bedrooms, with a full attic on top of that, and a cellar that was the size of the kitchen and lounge area. Plus, there were always animals in the barn that needed feeding and care, and I'd have to break the ice from their water buckets, even tho the stables area where they were all kept in the winter was actually warmer than that house.
PLUS I had to walk to school thru the snow, up hill both ways, naked!!!!!
I am never leaving the gloriously snow and ice and humidity free desert again!!!! Bless the man who invented balanced power and gas heat and lovely, beloved air conditioning!!!
My heart goes out to your mum -- mine is I think about 72, and my gran is 92, and they both live where it snows and freezes and is miserable most of the year for one reason or another!!
Hugs!! and, great progress on the jumper! I could never get the hang of the patterns for some reason, don't know why, I have no trouble doing different stitches and patterns in crochet. Huh.....
Now if we had a house that big, we might even have room for all our stuff! Seriously though, English houses are ridiculously small, our kitchen is hardly bigger than the box room, we have no storage space, over 30 years' worth of clutter and I can't belive 4 of us used to live here. Now there doesn't even seem room for 2. Part of the problem is our love of books - we have thousands, although the number has probably dropped by nearly 1000 since I started trying to get rid of some. Trouble is, many of them I haven't read yet and I can't read fast enough, especially as I mostly read fanfiction at the moment. Eventually we will clear out all the junk, I just need to persuade mum that some things have to go! She does not persuade easily, yet she's the one always complaining about the mess we're in...
Your mum's a hoot!!!!! My grandmother is the same way -- for her, it's a deeply rooted fear of deprivation caused by surviving the Great Depression here in the US. What's the phrase = something like
use it up wear it out make it do or do without
she's 92 and she still lives by that credo. Maybe your mum's got the same pre-wired gene caused by surviving the rationing and whatnot that she went thru during the War -- we're so extraordinarily lucky to be able to just plunge in head first and luxuriate in the concept of "TOO MUCH STUFF".
I have seven book cases, packed with books, half not read, like you, my eyes are only focused on the computer fanfic, and there are still boxes of books unpacked for two years, and some from nine years before that, the last time I moved.
There are plastic tubs upon tubs upon tubs of fabrics, sewing threads, quilting materials, yarns, patterns, sewing projects, ideas, pictures of ideas -- I can't get to any of it because I never bothered to fix up my work room, and now it's more like your box room.
Think maybe that packrat gene that my grandmother and your mum have was passed on down the line, yeah??????
Very likely! Unfortunately, it's not helping our predicament. Mum no longer sews at all, I,ve never been good at sewing, and we just can't keep piles of fabric that no one's going to use.
I think mum's hoarding stems from the fact that dad was always throwing things out - once he left, she started keeping everything. Most of mine is books, cross stitch magazines, records, DVDs and craft supplies for the crafts I actually do. Mum spends all her time bemoaning the fact that she never gets to do any of the things she wants to do - like sketching, watercolour painting and embroidery - but spends all day sitting watching TV. I caught her the other day watching a programme she hates and when I asked her why, she said there was nothing else on! I'm bust throwing out things I'd like to keep, while she watches TV, complains about the mess and won't let anyone else sort out her stuff. My sister is finally starting to understand what I'm trying to deal with, but she lives 50 odd miles away and works full time, so we hardly ever see her, and I'm left trying to cope. It's no wonder I'm so stressed!
Honestly, I'm your sister. I live 3000 miles away, so I don't have to face it all the way she does. A few years ago, my mum broke her ankle badly and had to spend months in rehab -- the social services people refused to let her return to her house because it was so filled with "stuff" that she could barely move -- ironically, none of it caused her to break her ankle, she just tried to pivot on her foot, and one part moved and the other didn't!
Unfortunately, my sister is one of these rather sterile environment people -- every single room MUST look like it's really just a pretty photo from a glossy magazine. So when she went into clean up my mother's house, she simply cleaned it out. She didn't give a rat's ass what it was, who it had been inhererited from or even who it belonged to. Straight into the tip.
Now you tell me, if you opened up a dresser drawer and found a shirt-box, tied with a pretty ribbon, tissue-lined, and containing very carefully preserved hand-embroidered and hand-edged in picot lace hankies, and intricately crocheted doilies and antimassacers (that's not the right spelling -- back in Victorian days, when men wore such pomades in the hair and the chairs all had high backs, these were the pieces of decourative linens that protected the chair fabrics themselves from the hair pomades when the men rested their heads back)
Anyway, if you found such a box, so obviously lovingly preserved, what would YOU do with it? Would you ask your mum about it? Would you put it back where you found it -- after all, it's in a drawer in a dresser, out of the way, not collecting any dust, etc.
Or, would you simply TOSS IT OUT INTO THE F*ING TIP LIKE IT WAS A PIECE OF DOG SH*TE?????????
Geez, even after what three years or so? I'm still so angry about that little event that I'm pounding the living crap out of my keyboard!!!!! Ha ha haa!!!! I am such an idiot!!!!!
I know I shouldn't be upset, I wasn't there to help -- it literally was not possible for me to take time off work -- we were already running below minimum shifts at the jail, which made for safety nightmares, let me tell you -- so in her eyes, I have no say and no opinion on her actions. But still -- common sense or an act of revenge because she had to take care of things.
Anyway, my heart goes out to you, because I do understand how you feel and what you're facing. When my youngest sister passed away, I was left to deal with the majority of her estate, and I did have help from my older sister, but still, it wasn't the same.
I found myself holding on to everything I could -- stupid stuff, even -- which I then had to go back thru a few months later when I decided I had to move, and even now, two years later, I'm still unpacking things from the garage and finding stuff I shouldn't have kept in the first place.
George Carlin once said that our stuff defines us -- whether it's the stuff we treasure or the stuff we put in our dumps and land-fills. Can you imagine what alien researchers are going to think of the stuff they come across in the land-fills 5000 years from now???? Wouldn't you just love to be a fly on the wall as they sort thru it all????? I sure would!!!!
I do often wonder what future archaeologists will make of our society! I've been interested in archaeology for a long time, so I can't help myself!
My aunt, my mum's sister who died 2 years ago, was a lot like your sister - never kept much, everything had to be just so. She got a cabinet full of treasures when another relative died, but wouldn't let mum have any of it, then sold the whole lot. Mum and I were both appalled at her selfishness. There were several small items that held memories for mum that she would've loved to have, but no, it was all got rid of.
I'd never throw anything out of mum's that meant something to her, but keeping stacks of puzzle magazines going back to 2003 is not on. The puzzles have been done! Plus she has tons of clothes that don't fit her... Other things I've come across, I've asked her - some she's kept, some she hasn't. It's the same with books (the non-fiction ones) Mum sorts out those she doesn't want, then I check she hasn't thrown out something of mine, since they're all mixed up. It's easy to tell who the novels belong to - mum's are Catherine Cookson and similar authors, mine are S.F., horror and fantasy! There's no confusion there...!
Still, mum's room is piled high with stuff and you can't get near the window without climbing over her bed... not that there's anywhere to stand on the other side! My room's not quite so bad, although 7 boxes of books are getting in the way. It's a slow process deciding which ones to get rid of.
Enough blithering on about the weather. Second, I am so envious that you a) have a box room full of junk and b) in that, great swaths of wool, and c) that you can knit an actual sweater!!! My knitting consists of afghan blocks. So, I wish you all the luck in the world, and I can't wait to hear how it goes! Keep me apprised, yeah?
I grew up in New England, in New Hampshire, and every fall I'd start crocheting an enormous afghan, and by the time it was freezing in the house (300+ yrs old, no heating except a kitchen cook stove and a small parlour stove in the lounge -- no heat in the bedrooms or bath -- I'd sleep with my clothes in my bed and in the morning, I'd change under my covers, cause it was way, way too cold to risk any form of nakididity out in my bedroom!!!) my afghan would be big enough to start covering my lap & legs while I worked on it. I always got thru at least one, somethings two a winter, really just to keep warm!!! Kind of miss those days -- winter here lasts about a week, maybe ten days if I'm lucky. That's why I've had the same winter coat for the bast 19 years -- it hasn't even had the equivalent of a full winter's wear yet!!!!!
Kisses to your poor arthritic fingers; wish I could be there to help hold your yarn! Melinda
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On the bright side, it's got me knitting again. 20 rows last night, another 10 tonight. I'm doing the front first, the pattern is a 24 row repeat and I've done 44 rows so far. I've altered it a bit from the pattern, but then, I always do. I've been knitting for over 30 years!
I can crochet squares, but that's about it, really I prefer knitting. Maybe I should be giving internet knitting lessons!
The last few years, we haven't really had much summer weather, mostly pouring rain and floods. Thankfully, where I live the only flooding we get is when our lawn gets waterlogged, but there are places over here where people regularly get flooded out of their homes, it's terrible. The weather this year's been better than for the last 4 or 5 - it's still rained a fair bit, but we've had more sunshine and it hasn't been as cold. The cold and damp plays havoc with arthitis, so I haven't enjoyed it. Our heating isn't very good, it's all run off one coal fire, which doesn't work well so in the winter I take my clothes to bed too! We need a new heating system, but we're too cluttered to get it done, hence the massive clear out. Problem is, mum's 79, very slow and reluctant to get rid of things and I have health problems plus 3-day migraines every 2 weeks, so I'm slow at getting things done. I'm facing another winter dealing with the coal fire which takes an hour a day to clean out, every day. Not fun when you have to do that with a migraine! Without the fire, we have no heat, and if it goes out it can take up to 3 hours to clear everything out and relight it! If it goes out, it's usually because it's got too clogged up with ash. It's a nightmare!
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PLUS I had to walk to school thru the snow, up hill both ways, naked!!!!!
I am never leaving the gloriously snow and ice and humidity free desert again!!!! Bless the man who invented balanced power and gas heat and lovely, beloved air conditioning!!!
My heart goes out to your mum -- mine is I think about 72, and my gran is 92, and they both live where it snows and freezes and is miserable most of the year for one reason or another!!
Hugs!! and, great progress on the jumper! I could never get the hang of the patterns for some reason, don't know why, I have no trouble doing different stitches and patterns in crochet. Huh.....
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use it up
wear it out
make it do
or do without
she's 92 and she still lives by that credo. Maybe your mum's got the same pre-wired gene caused by surviving the rationing and whatnot that she went thru during the War -- we're so extraordinarily lucky to be able to just plunge in head first and luxuriate in the concept of "TOO MUCH STUFF".
I have seven book cases, packed with books, half not read, like you, my eyes are only focused on the computer fanfic, and there are still boxes of books unpacked for two years, and some from nine years before that, the last time I moved.
There are plastic tubs upon tubs upon tubs of fabrics, sewing threads, quilting materials, yarns, patterns, sewing projects, ideas, pictures of ideas -- I can't get to any of it because I never bothered to fix up my work room, and now it's more like your box room.
Think maybe that packrat gene that my grandmother and your mum have was passed on down the line, yeah??????
Reply
I think mum's hoarding stems from the fact that dad was always throwing things out - once he left, she started keeping everything. Most of mine is books, cross stitch magazines, records, DVDs and craft supplies for the crafts I actually do. Mum spends all her time bemoaning the fact that she never gets to do any of the things she wants to do - like sketching, watercolour painting and embroidery - but spends all day sitting watching TV. I caught her the other day watching a programme she hates and when I asked her why, she said there was nothing else on! I'm bust throwing out things I'd like to keep, while she watches TV, complains about the mess and won't let anyone else sort out her stuff. My sister is finally starting to understand what I'm trying to deal with, but she lives 50 odd miles away and works full time, so we hardly ever see her, and I'm left trying to cope. It's no wonder I'm so stressed!
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Unfortunately, my sister is one of these rather sterile environment people -- every single room MUST look like it's really just a pretty photo from a glossy magazine. So when she went into clean up my mother's house, she simply cleaned it out. She didn't give a rat's ass what it was, who it had been inhererited from or even who it belonged to. Straight into the tip.
Now you tell me, if you opened up a dresser drawer and found a shirt-box, tied with a pretty ribbon, tissue-lined, and containing very carefully preserved hand-embroidered and hand-edged in picot lace hankies, and intricately crocheted doilies and antimassacers (that's not the right spelling -- back in Victorian days, when men wore such pomades in the hair and the chairs all had high backs, these were the pieces of decourative linens that protected the chair fabrics themselves from the hair pomades when the men rested their heads back)
Anyway, if you found such a box, so obviously lovingly preserved, what would YOU do with it? Would you ask your mum about it? Would you put it back where you found it -- after all, it's in a drawer in a dresser, out of the way, not collecting any dust, etc.
Or, would you simply TOSS IT OUT INTO THE F*ING TIP LIKE IT WAS A PIECE OF DOG SH*TE?????????
Geez, even after what three years or so? I'm still so angry about that little event that I'm pounding the living crap out of my keyboard!!!!! Ha ha haa!!!! I am such an idiot!!!!!
I know I shouldn't be upset, I wasn't there to help -- it literally was not possible for me to take time off work -- we were already running below minimum shifts at the jail, which made for safety nightmares, let me tell you -- so in her eyes, I have no say and no opinion on her actions. But still -- common sense or an act of revenge because she had to take care of things.
Anyway, my heart goes out to you, because I do understand how you feel and what you're facing. When my youngest sister passed away, I was left to deal with the majority of her estate, and I did have help from my older sister, but still, it wasn't the same.
I found myself holding on to everything I could -- stupid stuff, even -- which I then had to go back thru a few months later when I decided I had to move, and even now, two years later, I'm still unpacking things from the garage and finding stuff I shouldn't have kept in the first place.
George Carlin once said that our stuff defines us -- whether it's the stuff we treasure or the stuff we put in our dumps and land-fills. Can you imagine what alien researchers are going to think of the stuff they come across in the land-fills 5000 years from now???? Wouldn't you just love to be a fly on the wall as they sort thru it all????? I sure would!!!!
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My aunt, my mum's sister who died 2 years ago, was a lot like your sister - never kept much, everything had to be just so. She got a cabinet full of treasures when another relative died, but wouldn't let mum have any of it, then sold the whole lot. Mum and I were both appalled at her selfishness. There were several small items that held memories for mum that she would've loved to have, but no, it was all got rid of.
I'd never throw anything out of mum's that meant something to her, but keeping stacks of puzzle magazines going back to 2003 is not on. The puzzles have been done! Plus she has tons of clothes that don't fit her... Other things I've come across, I've asked her - some she's kept, some she hasn't. It's the same with books (the non-fiction ones) Mum sorts out those she doesn't want, then I check she hasn't thrown out something of mine, since they're all mixed up. It's easy to tell who the novels belong to - mum's are Catherine Cookson and similar authors, mine are S.F., horror and fantasy! There's no confusion there...!
Still, mum's room is piled high with stuff and you can't get near the window without climbing over her bed... not that there's anywhere to stand on the other side! My room's not quite so bad, although 7 boxes of books are getting in the way. It's a slow process deciding which ones to get rid of.
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