Thursday, August 02, 2012

The End is in Sight

We are still mired in the process of moving, but we can see a bit of daylight through the trees. In effect, we have until August 23rd to clear our stuff from the old place, but our goal is to get shet of it by the 12th.
This will allow our friend and nephew to dispose of the big things of worth in the remaining weeks of the month, with a share of the proceeds as his payment. He will be selling among other, smaller things our 'fridge, stove, dishwasher, dryer and washer so it will be a decent chunk of money for us all.
Being in the new apartment has improved my health to the point I am able to go back to the old house and help there for an hour or so at a stretch. In my first visit yesterday evening I was able to completely clear and sweep the room that had been my studio. Now it will contain the smaller items we are leaving for Tucker to sell as we work through the rest of the house.
Tomorrow night I will go through the stack of things we initially decided to keep, because I know some of that stuff will be more useful to a friend of mine who is a painter and bead artist. She has a young daughter who I think will enjoy the polymer clay, too.
Until we won the SSD case, I didn't realize I had been hoarding crafting materials. Now that I know I can afford to get the items should I choose to pick up a craft again lots of the stuff I kept now seems pretty silly.
I also had a reality check. Yes my life is lots better here in our new home, but it did not magically erase all my difficulties. I still need to limit my sitting-up time and although I have more energy, I doubt I will do everything I have been waiting on. It has also interfered with my ability to knit for long. Since I use my manual chair every day now my hands are not as willing to make the fine motions knitting and crocheting need.
 I will be reducing my crafty stores and focusing on just a few things for now. I doubt I will ever paint with my oils. I am more likely to use the fabric paints on silk to create unique textiles for my art quilting. I will use some beads as embellishments on knits and the art quilts, but my idea about spending hours making collages of bits and bobs doesn't seem as interesting for some reason. I will keep a small supply of miscellaneous stuff, but at least 75% of it can and should go to someone who will use it to make some money to raise her daughter, I think.
I also am thinking long and hard about writing seriously. It has been a dream of mine for decades. Perhaps it is time to see if I have enough talent to make it work. I'll be 50 in October. It's not likely I have another 50 years to dilly dally!
Another thing that got put on the back burner was my pursuit of the Master Knitters Program with TKGA, a gift from my mom-in-law. I will be establishing one day a week again to work on that. Or maybe spend 3 days for a few weeks in a row when it gets close to the end.
I will probably continue to publish knitting and crochet patterns, but I think I want to slow that down and add something like the writing and the art quilting to my life again. I will still spend time knitting for Wool-Aid and other things, but not all day every day. My hands won't allow it. I'd much rather use them for getting around the house!


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to see you follow these knitterly and writerly dreams. (And stay tuned to some writerly news from me!) Love watching your journey...

Don Meyer said...

Good thinking! It took me a while (about a week) to realize I couldn't do everything I used to do. I still have many things going -- my blog, the park magazine, making music cd's and slideshow dvd's. I get behind on my reading for our book club.

So you are headed in the right direction.

AlisonH said...

You're moving on. Go Diana and Oscar!