Cubes of Doom

Trena very kindly pointed out that she was culprit... er, I mean, the interested blog reader looking for this tutorial on berets posted by the lovely Neighbourhood.gal.  Despite the beret trauma inflicted on me as a child, I have to admit that this is pretty dang cute.  It's a nice tutorial too, so hop on over and check it out if you're looking for beret patterns.

Whew.  Mystery solved.  Now I can sleep at night.

But that leaves me with the need to find something else to write about... oh dear.

Let's draw out the studio remodel a bit, shall we?

Storage Cubes: Brilliant Design Concept or Build-Your-Own Nightmare?

I did purchase two new storage cubes to facilitate the rearranging and creating of new storage space:

  I wish I could say that this is all of my stash, but I have this much (or, um, maybe a bit more) in the closet.

The taller stack of cubes next to the closet doors are the new purchase, which went on sale at Lowe's on the very day I had my epiphany about remodeling.  I decided I needed two.  And when I got there, they only had two left.  Yay, verily.  It was a sign.  So, despite not really having the extra cash, I dug out my Christmas Visa gift card and  home I came with two spankin' new storage cubes.  This meant that I could remove the dreaded Fabric Cover on the old storage cube.

It had been a necessity because that corner gets some sun and the fabric was suffering.  But, like Mushy, I prefer to see my fabric out in the open (I mean, gazing adoringly at it is mostly the only reason I even own it in the first place).  So I moved the fabric to the (mostly) sunless wall and therefore had a whole big storage cube free for... uh... for… hmm..... for what exactly?   Good question.

I decided it was the perfect place for Notions.  And that's what's there now. 

I'm still in the process of covering and labeling cigar boxes and collecting prettier containers and whatnot, but that will take some time because I don't have lots of funds right now to blow on totally unnecessary junk.  Plus, I want things I really like, not just whatever I find right then and there.

I’ve discovered that despite never seeming to have the tool or notion I need, I have a lot of notions and tools.  That ArtBin is full of stuff like scissors and marking tools and needles and such.  And all these boxes have stuff in them too.  Plus there are more things that I don’t use often in the closet.   Sheesh.

By the way, my walls aren’t fluorescent mustard yellow and I didn’t repaint the walls.  Our entire house is painted this color, which is actually quite a lovely shade of soft gold.  Being yellow, however, it reacts dramatically to lighting changes and also photographs unpredictably.  It’s roughly this color:

And yes, I did ban the Evil Monkeys from the studio Forever and Ever In Perpetuity Never To Return For As Long As-- um.  Right.  Well, I bought them a new industrial-strength (read "cheap-ass junk from Walmart") rug for their bedroom (so as to protect their existing cream-colored carpet) and did a storage-and-table-rearranging number on their room as well.  They have the biggest of the bedrooms by far and now have lots of room to play and draw and watch DVDs and listen to music and, uh, sleep and stuff.  It's pretty slick in there, if I do say so myself.  Plus, now all we have to do is shove some food in through the door every once in a while and they never have to come out.

Which would be fine if we could ever get them in there in the first place.

Usually, It’s Just Better Not To Know

Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved to write stories.  These stories were typically sad, sorry affairs about her inability to make anything useful.  Sometimes they were about the things she did manage to make, usually not well.  Sometimes they were simply about songs she had stuck in her sorry little head. 

Despite all this, the little girl was terribly full of herself and kept a secret tracking device on her stories, so as to be able to see which stories people liked reading the most.  Coincidentally, the secret tracking device allowed her to see what people searched for when reading her stories.  Usually it was "patterns" or "uniforms" or "music", because she usually wrote about patterns and uniforms and music.

To the best of her knowledge she had never (no, not ever) written about... berets.

And yet.

The little girl was more than a smidgen puzzled by this.  Had she written about her grandfather's lifelong penchant for hats, and berets in particular?  Had she written about her grandmother's insistence that she wear a pompommed wool beret for Saturday Boutique Shopping every week when she was seven?  Had she written about how five years ago her mother had purchased eleven (eleven) authentic red French berets towards the (rather hopeless) purpose of making everyone in the family wear one for the Family Christmas Photo?  Um.  No.  She hadn't.

 

Seriously?  If this is you and you came back, I so want to know what you were looking for.  Honest.  Because if there's one thing in this world I hate, it's a beret (you wouldn't be expected to know that, I'm just saying).  And so it's funny to me that you were looking for berets on my blog.  And intriguing. 

Honest.  This has just been puzzling me for six hours now.  Curse you, Stat Counters, and your mysterious tantalizing tidbits!

011000100110100101101110011000010111001001111001

Today is 011111. Or I suppose if you live anywhere else in the world, it's 110111.  If we fell through a swirling vortex of time and landed in the Middle Ages, it could be 11011011.  Which means "Û" in binary. 

Excellent.

This thing with the month/day/year and day/month/year is hard for me to switch back and forth on.  The Husband's birthday, according to our marriage certificate, has been irrevocably changed from August to December.  We applied for a license in Texas and the girl at the County Clerk's desk interpreted the "12/8/1970" on his New Zealand driver's license to mean December 8th.  The Husband wasn't thrilled to find out he's been downgraded (his word) from a Leo to a Sagittarius.  Frankly, as a Taurus I find both to be inferior so I don't know what he's fussing about.

Since we're already swirling through a vortex of time, I thought I'd show you what my studio used to look like:

 

And how it looked this morning:

The picture’s not really doing it justice.  It is spacious and streamlined and pleasantly clutter-free.  In fact, I was so zealous in my reorganization attempts that I actually achieved something of a miracle (two more and I get to be a saint):  I have excess storage space.

This is unheard of.  Seriously.  Throw in two more tricks like that and I'm Saint Beangirl.  Um.   Which doesn't quite have the ring of Saint Catherine or Saint Scholastica or even (a personal favorite) Saint Hilaria.  But still.  I'm impressed with myself (which clearly isn't very saintly behavior).

Did you know that Saint Clare of Assisi is the patron saint of needlework?  Actually, she's the patron saint of poor eyesight.  But I'm guessing you can see the connection.  I mention this because my mostly-finished studio needs better lighting.  I have not one clue how I will achieve this.