A Few End of the Year Purchases

Today or tomorrow I’ll have a post about my plans for not spending next year but yesterday was not “next year” and there are several things I’ve been thinking about so I figured just order them and get it over with.

Aida:

First, I bought some aida. Denise does most (maybe all) of her stitching on aida and it always looks so nice. She’s a great stitcher so her work would look great on anything. I don’t have anything against aida but once I started back to stitching three years ago, I started with linen and haven’t tried aida.

When I’m having to wait somewhere away from home, away from the magnifying lamp, that would be a good time to stitch. While Vince and I were both going to physical therapy, there were a couple of times that our appointments weren’t at the same time but his would be at 10 and mine would be at 9 so we’d each have to sit and wait for an hour. I certainly couldn’t take the magnifying lamp with me and even with my glasses and cheaters, I could not see to stitch on 40 count linen. I did have a project on 36 count linen, in a scroll frame, that I could see to stitch with the Rx glasses I have for stitching but it was slow and difficult. So, I thought I would get a few pieces of aida and kit up a project or two that I could use with a hoop so I didn’t have to haul a scroll frame around with me. I ordered a couple of pieces of 18 count aida, a couple of pieces of 16 count aida and one piece of 20 count aida . . mainly just to see if I can see that ok with the Rx stitching glasses.

It would be really nice if I could stitch in the car too . . we’ll see.

I’m also hoping I can use one strand of Flower floss on the 16 and 18 count aida. One strand works for 32 and 36 count linen so . . we’ll see about that too.

Floss Drops:

I have always made my floss drops. Punch them out of card stock, punch a small hole in the top for the ring, punch a larger hole in the bottom for the floss. That’s three punches per tag and my old wrists are getting tired of that. If the cardstock is heavy enough to hold up to use for the amount of time it takes me to finish a project, it’s pretty hard to punch through.

I was watching a flosstube the other day and the lady was using these floss tags. Those should hold up much better than my paper tags, I won’t have to be punching all those holes and not only will it save me time, but it will save my wrists from a bit of pain. The lady sells labels (DMC numbers) to go with them but often I’ll have 10 projects going on and all have DMC 310 in them so I’d need three labels that say “310”. I think the lady in the flosstube said she uses these labels (affiliate link) so I ordered those.

Jar Labels:

This is going to be a long story.

The breakfast room in this house is long . . really long. See the door open and the window on the far end between the breakfast room and the sun room?

I don’t really need a window into the sun room. There’s plenty of light that comes through from those two big windows in the breakfast room. We have blinds on those windows and often that blind into the sun room is closed because I’m not sure why there’s a window into another room and it kinda bothers me.

So, I asked Vince what he thought about putting a shelf unit in front of that window. I’m sure it won’t win me any Beautiful Decorating awards but I have and use a lot of different grains, and beans. Several times a week, we use barley, hard red wheat, hard white wheat, oats, kamut, spelt, rye, and several times a week, we have either black beans, small red beans, pinto beans cannellini beans, black eyed peas, split peas, lima beans, etc. I keep those in half gallon jars and I have to go down to the basement, get the beans I need, come back upstairs . . which isn’t a big deal but it would be easier if I could store some of those upstairs. I figured if we get a shelf unit, I’ll keep the blind behind it closed all the time.

Vince got online and found a shelf unit that was supposed to be heavy duty because beans and grains weigh a lot. I figured I could also put the pasta maker, the food processor and maybe the big Nesco roaster that I use a lot, especially in the summer with tomatoes, on that shelf. The shelf unit arrived yesterday and it was not what I would call heavy duty. I thought it was kinda wimpy. I kept asking Vince . . do YOU think it’s heavy enough for the weight of half gallon jars of beans and grains? He agreed that he didn’t think it was, plus one of the shelves was bent in shipping and I’m afraid that would have made it even weaker so we’re sending that unit back and we ordered another one . .

It’s by Seville and it’s supposed to be ultra heavy duty, 800 pound capacity per shelf. We won’t use the wheels and while it isn’t going to be beautiful in there with all the jars, I think it will be fine.

All that to say . . I ordered these labels (affiliate link) for writing on the jars. Currently I use a Sharpie to write on the lid but I’ll need a label on the front of the jar to see what’s in it.

Having matching labels should make it all look a little better, right?

There will probably be room to put some little decorative pieces on the shelves too. If it looks awful, we can always put the shelf in the garage and forget about my idea of storing grain and beans near where I use them.