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| Magazines I'd stacked on a printer to sort through later |
Now that I've proven to myself that I can indeed set small daily goals in order to meet a deadline, I've taken a few days off before having to dive back into steady work towards completing the next quilt. I'm using part of this time to straighten up the studio from this last push, putting away tools, swooping trimmings into the trash, that sort of thing. But in the process, it is clear I've fallen behind on my documentation files big time (so a printing session is soon in order). But before I tackle that, I've started to tackle one of the peripheral piles I left in place when I did my bigger studio cleanup at the beginning of the year. I'm terrible about this stacking of things that basically just need filing, but it's too easy to convince myself to deal with it later.
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| Still a lot to sort and file once magazines removed |
The pile in question is on top of my pigment ink printer, which I haven't used for a long time. I need to clear some clogged jets to get it functioning again, but without an urgent need to print with it, I've put off that project. On a whim, yesterday found me taking a closer look at what I'd piled on top of it, and it is mostly magazines I wanted to pull individual pages or articles from and whole magazines to keep but in need of flags marking the articles of interest. The rest is loose pages already pulled from magazines, mostly quilting designs for reference and quilts that caught my eye that will be pasted in an inspiration scrapbook. Honestly, it would have taken minutes to tend to each of these as they arose. Now I face a good chunk of time to get it under control.
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| AQS Award winning quilts worth keeping to ahhh over |
On the other hand, it has been a pleasure to go through the magazines (to my surprise, the Quilting Arts ones go back to 2015), viewing the quilts anew and affirming why I'd set these things aside. In some cases, it reminds me of tracks I'd taken off on and abandoned even though not done with the exploration, things I think I could happily revisit at this point. In other cases, I can see that I've grown beyond needing the information that once would have been helpful.
Culling, sorting, filing . . . it's a process we do all our lives I guess. But it's easier to face when we don't let it unduly stack up, when we don't let ourselves get behind.
4 comments:
Why, oh why, can I not keep on top of the tidying and indeed the housework. It just seems to mount up until it gets to be a stack or task of just monumental proportions. Going to have a little studio tidying session this morning before heading round to Yvonne's for the last day of Open Studios 2018. Hey ho!
Isn’t that just the truth!?! One can spend hours peering through saved publications and changing one’s mind every 5 minutes about what kind of project should go to the top of the ‘to-do’ list. Jumping from blog to blog on the internet is even more time consuming and inspiring. I remember when only a quilt guild meeting, one or two magazines a month, and if one was lucky a trip to a large quilt show/conference was our only means of inspiration…wow…times have changed!
On the other hand, I have found that if I let the magazines stack up for a few months I am no longer interested in the articles I thought I wanted to save, mostly because I discovered I have a book that covers the subject in more detail. I do love the idea of keeping the pages of winners from AQS shows, don't know why I never thought of that. Thanks.
Misery loves company, so I am happy to hear I am not alone in this, Hilary and Mary. And Mary, I'm remembering that when I decided to learn everything I could about quilting, the quilting shows on PBS were just getting started. I borrowed every book the library had on quilting and watched those few shows religiously. Even though there are still some quilting shows on PBS, You Tube has kind of taken over the visual how to's that we used to only be able to get on tv and occasionally on video and of course, from members of a guild. Indeed, times have changed.
Kathleen, you bring up a good point. Every now and then, I realize I actually do have a book on my shelf with most if not all of the info I need on a subject, so yes, in some cases I am saving these magazines/articles duplicating what I already have. And I have had the experience of being ready to try something, dig out the magazine article and find, as you have said, that there is not nearly as much detail in materials and instructions as I had thought. And also, I think subconsciously I'm putting off dealing with them because, just as you say, later I will look through and not remember why I thought I needed to keep them. I have tons of reference material by now and sometimes spend more time trying to put my finger on what I think I've saved than if I'd done a quick google or just dived in! Old dog here, hard to learn knew tricks - lol
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