Feel-Good Friday, Late July Edition

This has been a challenging week for a number of reasons, most having to do with not getting enough sleep. I'll spare you the boring details; suffice it to say that I'm happy it's Friday. And instead of wallowing in the less-than-happy things, let's instead focus on the good in this week that was.

I mentioned at the beginning of the week that the Mister was going to be out of town for work for a few days this week. I took advantage of his absence to completely empty the stash closet and put everything on his side of the bedroom. Molly took a stab at organizing things on Tuesday while I was working, and then Wednesday night, after I put Ruthie to bed, the two of us went through all the bins and bags to put things together logically. Molly claimed some leftovers, some mini skeins, and some full skeins for herself (she's been doing a lot of crocheted motifs to make blankets). I consolidated handspun and unspun fiber into fewer containers. And we organized the yarn into bins containing full skeins/sweater quantities and collected all the fingering weight bits that could be used in charity projects. Some things were just plain thrown out because they were of no use to me or anyone else. And now the closet looks like this:

Spinning fiber is all on the left, handspun is in the center, and yarn is to the right. The Cascade bag on top of the fiber is all the bits of fingering, so I can just pull that out and pull out scraps as needed, and the soft plastic cases on top of the yarn bins is projects that have been packed away. I also want to point out that right at the top of the handspun pile is a smaller plastic bag that I deliberately left out -- it's the handspun I couldn't find that triggered this reorganization process in the first place!

Other good things: I finally blocked and photographed my most recent pair of socks (I'm writing up the pattern and will need photos, so that was good motivation):

And I've been continuing to spin almost every evening and finished the first 2 oz. (of 6 oz. total) of this lovely merino/silk/angora fiber that my friend Margene sent me:

I'm hoping we can finish up this week with some really good news: Molly is scheduled to take her driving test later this morning. She's been getting good feedback from the driving instructor (all the credit goes to the Mister for getting her out on busy and difficult roads), so I am feeling good about her chances. I know she's very much like me and won't be reckless, but nerves are always something to contend with. If you have some good thoughts to send her way at 11:30 this morning, I'm sure she'd appreciate it!

I hope this past week has brought you clearer air if, like me, you were recently dealing with smoke from the forest fires. Our air has been so much better and our weather has been absolutely stunning the past couple of days -- it was in the 50s when I took Ruthie out first thing yesterday! I also hope you've been able to find some things to feel good about, and please feel free to share them in the comments, as I think we can all use a good lift! Have a lovely weekend.