It’s a perfect day for tea and cross stitching.

And laundry. Oh my goodness gracious, the laundry.

My mother used to be an avid cross stitcher and I often envied her ability to finish so many projects. Granted, most of them were small but she did do a couple of large ones and if we were to count total number of stitches, she’s completed far more than I had by the time she stopped stitching. As she got older, it became harder and harder to see the tiny stitches even with a magnifying lens. She destashed all of her cross stitching stuff, including a wonderful floor stand lamp/magnifying lens and passed it all on to me. I came home from a couple of trips to Texas with floss, frames, kits, accessories, and a few unfinished projects. Her method of kitting up a project was to buy all the floss required and putting it in zip lock baggies. She kitted up dozens of small projects without a thought to the many skeins she already had. I was a bit guilty of this myself years ago, so I already had at least one of ALL the DMC embroidery floss colors.

My stash is now over flowing with duplicates. Many duplicates.

A few things occurred to me as I was sorting through the floss preparatory to winding it all on bobbins and adding them to my collection.

1. I don’t have enough floss boxes for all the floss.
2. Once I get enough boxes, they’re not going to all fit in my super fabulous floss box holder. Artbin Mega Tote, I believe it’s called.
3. I can’t get another Artbin Mega Tote.
4. I had to buy two more packages of DMC number stickers.
5. My floss bobbins aren’t going to all match.
6. My floss boxes aren’t going to all match.
7. I’m still kinda annoyed that I can’t get more of the colored floss boxes.
8. No, I can’t get rid of the colored ones and just have all clear ones. Although, if colored floss boxes still existed, I would consider buying all new colored ones. Especially if they were orange. That would be amazing.
9. Companies that make organization boxes just can’t be depended on to keep their colors consistent.

I’m enjoying this recent frenzy of organization, it’s soothing to the soul of a woman who just sobbed because she lives in a house full of people that won’t take care of their own dishes. I can’t control the dishes but I can control the floss.

I’ve lost my knitting mojo. I’m sick of crocheting. Spinning hasn’t even entered my thoughts. Until just now and I don’t want to. This feels different from a normal spring bout of startitis.

So what does a multi-craftual Kimberly do? She goes through, literally, ALL of her cross stitching stuff. I did. I opened all the bags and boxes and containers and looked through all of it.

Holy crap, I have a lot of cross stitching stuff.

I’m feeling the need to get it all out and onto the dining room table so I can get a good picture of it all. I don’t think it will all fit on the table.

I have dozens, maybe hundreds, of skeins of floss in little baggies that I inherited from my mother.  My mother hasn’t passed, she just destashed all her cross stitch stuff since she can’t see well enough to do it anymore. I kinda can’t see well enough either but I’m going to persevere with good lighting, reading glasses, and a magnifying glass. I’m itching to take all that floss and wind it onto bobbins like my floss is.

I’m anxious to work on one or more of the WIPs that I have from years ago or maybe one of Mom’s WIPs that she included in her generous destash gift. I’m also anxious to start a new project, I just can’t decide which one to start.

Because I can’t decide which of these things to do (wind, WIP, Mom WIP, new), I’m doing nothing but looking at all the stitchy goodness and blogging.

I obtained some magnifying glasses in the hopes that I would be able to cross stitch once I started wearing my contacts again.  I stopped trying to get used to my contacts when I was having those horrible headaches at the end of last year. I started wearing them again a few weeks ago, found my magnifying glasses and voila… I’m cross stitching again.

I think I started this just after 9/11

I’ve really missed this.

Would you run to the craft store to grab just the two floss colors you need and thereby risk coming home with a heck of a lot more than just two skeins of floss OR search through this huge, unorganized pile?

I was pretty sure I had every DMC color known to man.  This means that if I do in fact have the colors, I’m going to have to search my dozens kitted WIPs and the stuff I brought home from Mom’s to find them. Other than that, I’m ready to start. Halloween Hoot Owl from the 2014 Just Cross Stitch Halloween magazine.

I’m going to completely ignore that new colors were introduced in 2013, long after I stopped actively stashing cross stitching stuff.

For now.