Thursday Round Up

I have spent a few days at my mothers house going through some of me and my brother's childhood things and then Mister M came with the car and we stuffed it to the brim...

When we got home I did a second look through most of the stuff and threw away things that were broken and put some in the donate-pile, which have been growing around here lately. I have looked through my books and the ones I will never read again was put in the donate-pile and before we knew it we had filled the car to the brim and went to the thrift shop and skip with it.

Mister M's dad asked if the car curtain thing should stay home and Mister M claimed he was only going to my mother to pick up a few boxes because he had heard me saying I had halved the children's books I owned but little did he know about the rest. Like my four boxes of teddies or the two boxes of old baby clothes. Then there is all my craft supplies from school I need to go through and works I did in school, I have thrown some away, but since our storage is full more throwing out is in order....

And I found my Barbie stuff, but since we couldn't fit all my childhood things in the car I haven't gone through that yet...

But I will keep my mother's doll cradle, maybe I can put yarn in it? But I do think it might need a coat of paint, it is looking a bit shabby in places, I will ask my mom if she thinks I can pick a new colour or if we should paint it again with the same colour. And I did keep my mother's doll and mine, Jonas and Johannes, I just put them in a plastic bin and sat them in the storage. But I will not keep everything, my goal is to half everything either by donating, gifting or throwing away because I can' keep everything, I must be strict, I will not become a hoarder.

In crafting news I picked back up my kitties in a row afghan, yes I am crocheting a blanket in wool in  25 degrees, I am a little crazy but I thought you knew that already? I have doubled it in size since last time I left it and it now weighs 504 grams and I am on my 20th repeat. And I think I have made about a third of the needed size. But it does look good in my grandmother chair next to Mimle? I was a bit scared to put Valmin in it, I might not find him again as the colours are a lot like his. Speaking of the colours Mister M commented the palette was not at all like me, all neutral with lots of browns, but I did say it was kitty colours and kitties are rarely pink, purple or blue are they? So I had no choice in the matter and it did help all the colours were on sale that time. So there.

A-Z challenge M

M is for magazines

I have lots of magazines, in fact so many that I realised I would probably never stitch them all, so I have started to declutter a bit. 

But I did love to open my mailbox and receive a magazine and flipping through it's pages looking for a design I would like to stitch was the highlight of my week.

The stitching magazines I liked all came from the UK and they were a lot cheaper to subscribe to than buying one now and then. So I have subscribed to The World of Cross-stitching, Cross-stitch crazy, Cross-Stitch Card Shop (now not made anymore) and bought the occasional other magazines like CrossStitcher, Cross Stitch Gold (which has big designs). I have made lots of small cards with the patterns, learnt new techniques, saw new design to add to my to-do-list and found their forum. And on that forum I found some friends more new designers and patterns to do. And I lost my Cross Stitch mojo.

I might subscribe again someday or I might not. But all these magazines were quite good depending on what you might find interesting.

 I could start a new subscription via their app, but there is something so satisfying about a real magazine, I have lots of crochet magazines on my pad and I flip trough them regularly, unfortunately I have had a lot of trouble with the app and am at that point were I would rather just print out all the patterns I might want to do. But I am more an analog than digital girl so you should decide if E-magazines or paper magazines are best for you.

 But I do have almost all of the Simply Crochet magazines on my pad and they do have lots of good patterns, if you crochet I would recommend buying a few magazines. Especially when they are on sale, that is how I got mine^^
I also share some Norwegian magazines with my mother with knitting patterns, crochet patterns and the odd sewing bit, they are sold around holidays and we usually buy them, they are great value for your money and we often make something from them or at least put it on our  ever-growing to-do-lists.

Mimle is helping me destash

This box contains all the patterns I know I would like to do and some I might do for cards for like weddings and birthdays and baby showers or something like that and five magazines where I loved most of the patterns so it seemed like a waste to rip it to pieces. 

My de-stashing was a success I think and now I might actually have a chance at finishing more of these designs.