I suppose there is no sense in resisting the urge to get organized and venture into 2013 with a clean slate. I'll be filming with CreativeBug again next week, so the tidying spasm I suffer is good timing. Up here in the white studio, much cleaning and organizing has been happening which is really only enjoyable once the actual mess is cleaned up and it's time to organize. I love that part. Getting sorted. Downstairs Pierrette is cleaning up the shop studio as well. We'll be filming down there no doubt too since the nice huge cutting counter is there and it's also slightly easier to move camera equipment and lighting around unlike the attic up here which quickly feels like a dollhouse the moment you try to do anything but write, draw or sew. And despite today's blue-gray light we've also been working on shooting pics of the new perle cotton palettes and the new embroidery floss palettes which will be listed in the store hopefully by the end of the day. I LOVE these new colors. The perles up there are called Sun Study. I have already been handquilting with these and relish in the light that they catch. So pretty. And the two new embroidery floss palettes are so rich and bright. Keeping it all organized can be a challenge. I know I may have a bit more thread than your average bear, but since you might be feeling all organizey too, seeing as how it's January, I thought I would share what I came up with last fall for storage. I bought some 120 yr old lengths of interior mouldings at a salvage place for just a few dollars a foot with no real plan. But loving the warmth the stained wood added to the bare studio, I decided to put them to use to store floss. My dear sweet, son (who was paid, of course) Nicolas marked out every inch with a sharpie dot along the bottom edge of one, then drill small pilot holes, then screwed in hooks for a total of about 100 hooks. His hands were quite numb afterward, but oh golly do I love this thing, and paying him helped me to feel less guilty when he complained. Anyway, I simply screwed it into the slanted wall onto the wooden ribs at a height that would have the floss hovering just above another piece of ledge moulding. Making all the holes into a moulding saves you from putting a zillion holes into the wall. The hooks are pretty deep so that I can get about 4 or 5 skeins of floss on one. I adore having the color right there in my face instead of tucked away. With the exception of a few balls of perle cotton that I tuck onto the ledge behind the floss, I mostly keep those in big clear jars. I ordered mine from Specialty Bottle, and though you have to order in multiples, I have no trouble finding uses for these all over the house. And these are particularly nice because the mouth is wide and easier to get your hand in there and dig around for the color that you want that is of course on the very bottom. We have an ultrasound on Friday and I could bust from the excitement of having a look at this little him or her. I could also bust from the butter cookies that I could probably also see on ultrsound, which reminds me to go for a walk. Running is getting silly. xoxo, AM