There has been no sewing taking place here for more than a week. There has been mindless knitting of socks late at night, but no sewing.

I have been packing away books, magazines and extraneous things that we don't use, trying to get the house presentable enough to put it on the market. I have shifted every stick of furniture we posess, washed every corner of every floor, washed windows and curtains, polished and scrubbed and sorted till I wonder why on earth all this stuff is even necessary. I can feel a minimalist bout coming on, but I know it will pass. I love my junk, but there is far too much of it.

I am trying to be methodical, making inventories of each box of books and numbering the boxes, and I have every intention of making a spreadsheet so that I can find what I want in future. I'm always full of good intentions, but I haven't run out of enthusiasm yet, so I may just be able to see it through this time. I've always wanted to have an inventory of my books, so I'm enjoying the whole process.

I'm also trying to sort out the hand-piecing projects that I'm discovering in various spots around the house. I'm gathering them all together, and then I'll have a serious think about which ones I want to finish as I originally planned, which ones should be finished as they stand and which ones I should pitch entirely. I do love to start things and never get back to them.

I'm also finding lots of non-quilting projects, and I have to make decisions about those as well. I have a huge trunk full of rug-making supplies, for hooked rugs and braided rugs and crocheted rugs and latch-hook rugs. I have enough stuff to carpet the back yard as well as the house. I threw out a heap of old material that was destined for a braided rug; having made four in the past I know that I won't have time in the forseeable future to tackle another one. It's a good feeling to discard things sometimes.

I have done another 4" of a latch-hook rug that has been in progress for two years. I have really weak fingers and wrists, and the repetitive motions and the strength needed to make the knots just ruin my hands after a week or so. This can go back in the trunk until my hands have recovered.

I found an ancient needlework picture, that needs a few night's stitching to complete. This was in a McCalls Needlework magazine I bought in 1975, and I've always loved it. As you can see by the date, I was close to finishing it 13 years ago, and ran out of the cream background wool. Last year I finally tracked down a match, and this year I'm determined to finish it and get it framed. My daughter always loved watching me stitch the roses, and once I came back from making a cup of coffee to find some very odd stitches in place. She was chagrined to realise that it wasn't as easy as it looked! I pulled out her erratic stitches and helped her do some proper ones, but she really wasn't that interested. She loves beading, but not any sort of sewing.

I found heaps of pieced scraps in the sewing room, and cut out as many of the point templates for the Wheel of Fortune as I could. It was a great way to use up some really strange scraps, and the hard work of piecing the bits together had already been done. As you can see by the inch markings on the mat, this template is quite tiny, so you can cut pieces out the smallest scraps. I'm thinking of making a block using the pieced ring of the Wheel of Fortune, and substituting different centres. I haven't got sick of piecing them yet.....

When I was dividing up the material to share with Meredith I had a struggle with three pieces that I loved, and (shame on me) didn't want to split with her. Lo and behold, when I was looking on her blog at the picture of material she'd bought, there were the three fabrics! She'd already bought them for herself, and I could keep all of mine. In total there were eight fabrics that we both bought; do we have the same taste or what!

And her parcel came to 11kilos, or 22 pounds of fabric and books and wool. It will be just like Christmas; I'm thinking of the Christmas barrel in The Long Winter.....(Laura Ingalls Wilder)