So... crafting stash. Wow. I have A LOT of stuff. There are three main areas: quilting/sewing, yarn, and needlepoint/cross stitch/embroidery. The yarn and knitting stuff is pretty much under control, as that is what I have been messing with the most these days. Though, honestly, "these days" really means a "last touched a few months ago." Sad. I really need to get back to making stuff.

So, the yarn! It's basically contained in four areas. I have a nifty knitting basket that has all my works in progress, stitch holders, needles, and assorted fiddly bits. I have a mess of large plastic bins that I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond. The kind that are pull-out drawers. One of those is full of wool and another is full of non-wool yarns. I keep them separate so if I make something for a friend allergic to wool they won't have any lanolin that has rubbed off onto their yarn. Not sure if that is an actual issue or not, but it's an easy thing to do and I'd rather be safe than them itchy. There's also a three-ring binder of patterns.

There are eight more of the large pull-out bins, and six small pull-outs. Plus a little tower of three drawers. One of the large bins is now all needlepoint kits, canvases, Aida cloth, special embroidery yarn (that isn't in the floss packs), that kind of stuff. I found the unicorn needlepoint that I've been "working on" since I was in middle school. I swear to cod I will finish that thing before I die!

All the other bins are full of fabric. Yes, that's a lot of fabric. But if you had ever been to my mother's house, you would understand where I get this from and know that I'm Really Not That Bad. Two bins are for large pieces of left over fabric from costume making and other sewing projects, and some bits and pieces that I think would be great stash pieces/recycling.

There's one official stash drawer, that has all the fat quarters, and the smaller pieces from past projects that can be used for future projects that need random little bits. There's also a small drawer of medium-sized (e.g., half-yard or so) fabric pieces. I have three small bins of quilts in process, which contain all the cut out pieces and in various stages of sewn parts of four quilts. Then there is the bin of unfinished projects. These are quilt tops that need to be basted and quilted, and another quilt in process (yes, that makes five). There is a small bin of finished items. A small bin for mending. Two small bins for random tools and miscellaneous bits.

And one drawer has not been put away yet. It's still sitting in the middle of the office floor. This is the bin with all the old T-shirts. Having pack rat tendencies myself, and marrying a pack rat, we have this thing where we are semi-mentally attached to old T-shirts. There's a vague plan of cutting them up and making a quilt out of them. So far that hasn't happened, but no quilting has happened of any kind in almost two years, so it's nothing personal to that project. I think we need to do a culling of the T-shirts though, because that is going to be quilt big enough to cover the whole living room if we use all of them. Which is why they are sitting on the floor, so E can go through them with me.

The other piece of the crafting stash is all the patterns and smaller kits. These are also in plastic bins. But when I moved all my patterns to these bins I did a pretty good job of organizing them, so I didn't feel the need to go through them again.

I was surprised that I didn't have very much feline supervision. Ripley did wander though and sit in some of the boxes. But mostly they all just slept. They got into the garage today and I think that pretty much exhausted all of them. All three of them were covered in cobwebs when I finally wrangled them back upstairs.

Now I just have to go through the boxes of papers and do the filing. There are still 6 moving boxes that I need to go through, plus surface piles of filing. That part is harder since a lot of it is E's stuff and he has to go through it too. But the room is getting there. It's certainly better than it was.

There are a number of projects that are almost done. I have two more bridesmaids scarves to finish knitting and a baby sweater that is almost done (I gave IOUs to all three recipients).

Today I made a nectarine golden cake, which looked more like a tart than a cake, to take to our visit to E's Great Uncle Joe.

The nectarines were very ripe, so the cake was very sweet. It was quite good, though would have benefited from a dollop of whipped cream. We have a few more nectarines left and a number of peaches. I might try making a peach cobbler next.

We decided fairly early on that we wanted to give favors, and we wanted them to be local to San Francisco, and ideally chocolate. Then came the ideas for what to put said chocolates in. Originally we were going to fold fabric into origami boxes, but that quickly was ruled out to the amount of work. We're still going with the origami box idea, but now we are doing them in paper.

Finding the right paper has turned out to be a lot more difficult than originally thought. We've spent a lot of time at Flax, going through their paper books. We tried all different sizes to figure out how much and how many.

We finally ended up going with a paper we found online at PaperMojo. One of the things we loved about them is that they will cut the paper for us. We still have to cut the 336 pieces for the little liner boxes, but that's better than having to do all the cutting. We also have to find a ribbon that we like to make the bow on the box.

Now the fun starts: the folding! I have a feeling we are going to become experts in peak folds.