Seek and you might not find

It's the morning of the first full day of quilting I have had for several weeks. I pick up the project I'm working on, grab the thread, reach for the scissors--where are they? Now I have lost scissors and other small necessary quilting tools enough to have spent some time trying to remedy this situation so I don't end up with an hour to spend working and then use ten or fifteen minutes of that precious time looking for something I need. I have made a little organizer for my sewing machine table that has reduced my frustration level quite a bit, but for this to work I have to remember to put things into their appropriate pockets. Being realistic about the way my life goes, I know the schedule--or lack thereof--gets full enough that things don't get put back in their places.  So I had planned for that eventuality by buying, with the help of Joanne's 50 percent off coupons, FOUR pairs of little orange (should be easily visible) Fiskars.

This way I could have one upstairs near my working wall, one downstairs in my sewing machine room, one in a travel kit of hand work I can do in the car, and one floating around in case any of the others don't show up where they are supposed to be. 

But on this morning none of the scissors were in their designated spots. I could not even find my little curved scissors that are wonderful for cutting both upper and lower threads on a machine sewn seam. Fifteen minutes later I finally spied a bit of orange peeking out from under a book on the coffee table and I settled down to work. But my early morning enthusiasm was a bit dampened by all the grumbling I had done and the increasing force with which I returned piles to their places as I searched. 

"People don't change," a friend had intoned last weekend as she described an acquaintance who had made yet another ill-considered choice. Don't we? Am I going to be still wasting time in my disorganized workspace in ten years? I was doing better and I could plead exceptional circumstances with the number of colliding responsibilities that I have been dealing with in the past weeks. But then there's that authority figure from the past saying that challenging times separate the men from the boys. (Why was it never the women from the girls?--Oops, wrong tangent)  And are we, as a species, condemned to continue to make the same stupid decisions that we have been making for centuries based on greed and selfishness and short-sightedness that hurt so many people and other living beings? I don't want to think so.  I hope not.. . .but possibly I will be able to come up with a more certain answer if I ever find those other three pairs of scissors.

And if you're still reading, thanks for the company while I ranted.

Getting organized

About a week ago, after knocking my seam ripper off my sewing machine table for the third time and then taking ten minutes to find my chalk wheel that I had put down somewhere on my way to answer the phone, I decided I needed to get organized.  Not my whole life--or even, God forbid, my fabric, but just that small space to the right of my sewing machine, the only space where the long tail of a large wall hanging does not sweep errant scissors and spools of thread to the floor and the place where I pile my necessary gadgets and periodically knock them off with my elbow.  

I got the idea of hanging my tools from the edge of the table and went about quilting some fabric, folding it up to form custom-sized pockets for my seam ripper, scissors, ruler, and so on.  Now the only problem was attaching it to the table.  Since I liked none of the options I came up with, I put it aside--in one of my many disorganized piles.

Today, housebound by a beautiful snowfall, I picked it up again.  My ever ingenious husband, home on a Thursday since even the university was closed, suggested first Velcro, which I had already dismissed since I didn't want to put gummy glue on the my table, and then suggested I try to find something thin to slide between the front support and the table top and then find a way to attach it to the pockets.  I knew I had some very thin acrylic sheets I had used for templates at one time.  I cut two to the proper size since I wanted it to turn the corner, sewed them to the back of the quilted pockets, Tom removed a couple of screws, we slid the plastic in, screwed through the plastic to hold it in place and there it was:

Now I just have to remember to put things back in their pockets when I use them.  But I am savoring the feeling of having a small portion of my world under control, at least for a little while.