Post laptopitis and a makeover project...

January 29th was an ordinary Monday in all other respects at Karthi. After the weekend merrymaking, I was as usual torn between selecting an extended rest on the couch or whirling around Karthi putting to it rights after the weekend mayhem. I had no inkling of the disaster that was to befall me. 

In the end, I chose to celebrate the fledgling week by alternating between bouts of cleaning and sitting still. In one leg of the sitting still part, I fired up my trusty laptop of 7 years, did some work on it and left it on the blink a while later to get my lunch. After lunch I came back to my hibernating computer, sat down and pressed the switch...

Nothing happened. The screen didn't erupt happily to life on my touch. No friendly lights gleamed. I quickly attached the power cord and tried all resuscitation methods that my laptop technician relayed to me over the phone. No good. That is when I started to realize that something very serious had happened...

To cut a long story short, my laptop is still not completely fine. It was resuscitated and returned to me after more than a month minus a battery for the backing up of files. It needs another extended stay in the hospital for a complete recovery and I'm waiting for the technician to arrange a surrogate laptop for me to use till my own is returned to robust health. 

But the first two months of the year have not passed by uneventfully. Today I will share with you a project that had been niggling at me for several months. It was concerning this bookshelf in our master bedroom:

I have no idea how old this bookshelf is. From 3rd grade to the 5th, it had been part of my room in Saudi. Later, it sat in my sister's room for a long time. When our parents came to Thiruvananthapuram, they left it here at Karthi. My father had got the old plywood panel covering changed, put in new glass sliding panels and had the interior painted. But the glass didn't slide smoothly, it was a headache to open and close them and they were tough to keep clean of smudges and dust. So over the years, I was unable to close them properly and the interior got progressively dirty.

Things being so, I just stashed in some things that weren't in frequent use and had to spend considerable time and effort in retrieving them. It was tough to keep it organized and clean. Besides, it was the first thing that met my eyes on waking up and the last when I went to sleep, so it was kind of an eyesore too. 

One day I just paused by it and checked one end of the glass channel that didn't quite meet at one corner. To my surprise, it came off from the wood, trailing threads of tacky glue. I ran to my tool box, found a chisel and in no time had pried off the channel on the left side!!! I sat down to think and found that an open bookshelf would be much more easier to maintain and organize than this sliding glass affair. 

So in the second week of the new year, I bought some white enamel paint (since my painting adventure last year, I consider myself a veteran house painter) and happily dismantled the glass channels and panel without any damage.

It was a challenge taking out the glass panels and the top and bottom channels. I didn't know how to take the glass out of the channels without removing them altogether. So after a bit of sliding and prying that saw me sweating as much in stress as in exertion, they came out without breaking and I immediately packed them up and put them away for safekeeping. 

Two coats of paint later, the bookshelf gleamed back at me... Of course, the edges are a bit ragged and the paint has got out of the lines a bit, but they don't bother me.

And here it is now... organized and easy to clean, no longer an eyesore and completely usable.

So that is another project under my belt. Each time I look at it, I smile in satisfaction! Which reminds me, I have not shown you my living room makeover yet. Will post it soon!!!

Ask and be told....

Karthi is officially into summer hols from today. Oh yes, the kids' exams were over by mid-March and they have been completely immersed in activities of their own choice for the past two weeks. But it is not really summer vacation without the whole gang of neighboring kids finishing their exams and joining up, is it? 

Meanwhile their sly Momma has been using them to help finish reorganizing our home. We just had not realized till we called in the painters last December that Karthi was harboring a lot of junk. This time we were only getting our downstairs portion painted. So we had to shift everything except the heavy furniture upstairs where we set up "camp". In the process, cupboards after cupboards brought out so many things we had stashed away without thought. Our peripatetic way of life went on hiatus 5 years ago, and we never had to face all the accumulation of our belongings all at once like this. By the time we had to move things back, I was paralyzed by the thought!!! I would have taken a picture of the chaos that was the upstairs hall which was stacked on all sides with various things with only a narrow path left in the middle to walk through... only I was sure it would give me nightmares to look at it later, so I desisted :D

I have this strong belief that we get guidance to solve our problems before or as we are facing them. For me this usually comes in the form of - what else? - books! Last June, I got to read this fabulous book by Marie Kondo

I am and always have been very interested in organizing books and Marie's KonMari method has really helped me. DH and I decided that we will move down ONLY that which we use and love downstairs and would bag up the recyclable items for our dealer as we moved through the things we needed. That way, the recyclables didn't even come into our newly emptied space. 

I took this opportunity to dump a lot of stuff I was holding on to in the name of sentiment - which included old clothes, books that I never enjoyed any more, etc. As the kids and I went through the items, I appointed Kunjunni to ask me if I really was going to keep certain dubious items. He performed the role very well and prised out more useless items out of my grasping clutches and dumped them in the recycling sack. I only hope I will not take to raiding the sack which is currently awaiting the recycling guy now. Wasn't it really forward-thinking of me to appoint a supervisor over me? Knowing oneself is the greatest achievement one can attain you know! 

I applied the KonMari principle to getting the kids' clothes organized too. Every year our kids get clothes as gifts. While Kunjunni will happily wear anything that fits, Ani is very choosy and will not deign to wear something that he has taken a dislike to at first sight. Their clothes were arranged in stacks to which the laundered ones were added on top after each wash and they pulled off the ones on top the next time they got dressed. Which meant that on most weekends they would be wearing the same outfit! 

So we pulled out all their clothes and first I asked them to choose the ones that they loved and fit them. I stopped myself from persuading Ani to keep things that still fit, but that he didn't like. But I did snatch an old t-shirt from Kunjunni that had tattered ends and huge holes in the armpits! Gee, I think he is more like me than I thought I was!!! Then I helped them learn the KonMari method of folding their outfits to make them stand properly in the drawers. So now they get to wear what they love and can see all their choices properly! 

Now all that are left upstairs to be organized are our framed pictures and files and folders of every year from 2007. I am absolutely reluctant to drill holes in our pristine walls (just like guys with new cars are wary of each scratch!) and I think most of the files and folders need careful revisiting and decluttering. 

Speaking of help arriving in the form of books: I have to tell you about three books that came my way after I lost my mother. I chose them all for different reasons, but unknown to me, all dealt with mother-daughter relationships and helped me clarify my feelings and grieve properly. 

The first book is written by Brooke Shields:

This book of course jumped out at me because of the subtitle. Although my Mom was nothing like hers, I could relate to the death scene and acknowledge me feelings of being a witness to my my mother's passing.

I love reading the stories of crafters about how they evolved through their craft. So my next pick was Rachael Herron's book:

As I read through her stories, I found most of them related to her mother and I started remembering the days when Ma used to stitch dresses for me on her old Singer, the very one on which I cut my teeth, even before learning hand-sewing... 

This was feeling a little weird. Whatever I read ended up being about mothers! So next I chose one purely for the title without looking at the blurb. The title said "Glitter and Glue"... but the cover should have tipped me off???

Turns out Kelly Corrigan's father was the glitter and her mother was the glue. And if her relationship with her own mother wasn't enough, there was material about a family in which she au-paired where a mother had died of cancer and left a family bereft....

All these books helped me into coming to terms with my loss. Which is why I believe in guardian angels and divine guidance....

Tried and tested

After the untimely and much-mourned demise of my favorite productivity app Astrid, I carried its non-syncable version on my phone, still able to use my task list that I had built up with so much care even if it was only on my phone. But I also went about worrying about losing the data to some glitch that would need returning the phone to factory settings or other unforeseen circumstances. 

I tried a lot of task apps (todoist, Any.Do, Wunderlist are the ones I remember) that are accessible from both computers and phones: all had one great drawback. I couldn't customize the recurrence period. For example, I check the water levels of the our inverter battery every three months. Astrid allowed me to schedule things 3 months apart, three weeks apart or anything of that sort.Other to-do apps never had that capability.

I did not give up. While holding my precarious Astrid tasks in one hand, I kept searching for a to-do app that would let me schedule the recurrence of my tasks according to my own needs. And a few months ago, I found...

 

The first thing I noticed on their features list was "Flexible  recurring tasks"! I was still very cautious, and tried it for several days on my comp and phone before transferring my tasks data to TickTick (manually of course).

The app took a little getting used to - as with any new thing - but now I've got the hang of it. On my computer I use only Firefox to browse, so I've set my TickTick account as the home page for Chrome.  So whenever I open Chrome, I have my task list on hand! The interface is clutter-free and quite simple. I like it!

Drawbacks: 

• Limited number of entries you can make in the free version. Astrid's was unlimited. But I can live with it!
• It doesn't have a cheerful little octopus congratulating me for the tasks I mark as done :(

So finally without trepidation, but with lots of regret, I let go of the little red octopus in my phone. Bye Astrid, I'll miss ya!!!

Taming the paper monster...

What were you taught about organizing your paper work? What systems did you see as you grew up? Did those have any influence on your current paperwork organizing style?

My father taught me never to lose a piece of paper. At home we had rows and rows of box files in which he meticulously punched and put in each piece of paper that came his way. When I passed high school, he bought me a few box files too. I still have a couple of those with me - the rest I combed out of my system.

Now me, I am a nut for organization thingamajigs. Along with productivity planning, I love trying out new styles of organizing everything - so much so that I think in one of my previous births I must have been an office secretary who passed away before she could perfect her innovative filing system - perhaps somebody like Miss Lemon who was always fiddling with Poirot's case files.

Since this is one of my pet obsessions, I have studied the organizing traits of people around me. I have told you about my father's style - the only drawback with his system is retrieval. He just files away paper after paper in no order without categorizing by year or anything - so it's a real headache as I found out again two weeks ago when my Mom needed emergency care and Dad set me to search for their medical insurance papers. I gave up after two minutes - rushed to my home and retrieved my copy of their medical insurance (which reminds me, I have to get it back!)

Other styles of organization that I have come across:

1. Sweep it under: One of my relatives stores every bit of paper that comes her way - under her mattress.  The only problem - again - is retrieval, not to mention the chance of losing a few each time she makes up her bed. She once confessed to me that whenever she was required to find a piece of paper she usually had a bout of irritable bowel syndrome!
2. The Omnidiary: Several people just thrust their paperwork into a diary. I have seen several who use this method. The diary could be from their parent's times - ancient and discolored and absolutely bulging with multicolored paper bits thrusting out willynilly. Again retrieval and risk of loss each time the diary is opened are problems. 
3. The Holdall Shelf: This could be an open shelf or a compartment in the clothes cupboard. Several of my generation favor this style. They just thrust in the piece of paper and then forget about it until it is required.
4. The Box: Now this was DH's style before he married and got me to look after his papers :). Since he moved abroad and back frequently, each time he went out of India, he sent all his belongings to his Mom in suitcases. Within three months of our marriage, I had to get his fourth PF passbook since the previous three had gone AWOL. Once I went through his boxes back in Kerala, I found all three previous passbooks. That is when I decided that I should be the paperwork keeper for our little family.
5. The Entertainment Center: Since the TV table has now grown into shelves, many use this piece of furniture to hold their paper. I have found everything from cable service receipts to property deeds on this in various homes.

After seeing all this, I decided to make a filing system of my own - when I found that my Dad's system just didn't answer my family's needs or my requirement of easy retrieval. My system consists of three types of files.

1. An accordion file with monthly tabs: This is where I put in all the things that come my way at first. I just thrust them into the concerned monthly compartment as soon as I can. I corral all the receipts etc. into my table's drawer that houses this accordion file and then whenever I get a chance, I just look at the date and file away accordingly. By June, the accordion file will start to bulge. So I take a plastic folder and label it with the year and put away as much paper in it as I am sure will not be required for that year. I leave things like medical bills etc in their monthly slot. In December, I do another purge of the accordion file, move everything that is not required any further to the plastic folder for that year and keep the accordion file ready for the new year.
2. Plastic folder for the year: As mentioned in the previous section, this holds all the receipts etc. for that year. The previous year's folder lives in a handy shelf, the others get shunted to a top shelf, which can be called the Karthi archives :).
3. A box of folders: Now this is the MAIN part of my filing system. I found an old zippered briefcase (you know, the kind you get for free from jewelers and textile shops?) and found the biggest velcro-tabbed plastic folders I could find. I labelled each with a category:

• Automotive: Anything to do with our vehicles - manuals, insurance original documents, copies of ownership etc. go in this folder
• Certificates: Currently this folder holds my old youth festival certificates and DH's certificates from work.
• Guarantees and Warranties: Manuals and warranties of all our household appliances. 
• Financial: Every bank thingy, pension papers and insurance policies.
• House and property: LPG papers, all property and tax receipts, copies of mortgage, property deeds etc.
• Identification papers: Passports, Birth Certificates,Voters' id, Aadhar, DL originals, PAN cards: all live in small zippered pouches. How many kinds of identification do we need????
• Medical: Latest complete checkup reports, latest prescriptions, medical insurance papers (including parents'!)
• Miscellaneous: For those pesky papers that simply refuse to be categorized.
• Nikhil
• Nidhin : For whatever the kids need to keep from school, annual progress reports etc.
• Photostat copies: Whenever we need copies of docs, we usually take more than required. So now when I need copies of any doc, I first check this folder.

Other than this, I also use a bank strong box to keep some docs (a list of which I keep) and I make specific folders from time to time for anything that needs the collating of several documents. So these days whenever DH asks for a document or calls in a panic to say that the property tax for last year has not been paid, I calmly go to my file box and give him the required assurance. But the man is incorrigible. Last year, I had completed the collation of medical bills and filled the xls to be given to his company's accountants. He called me and asked me to keep the original bills ready for him so that he could take them to the office the next day. I searched and searched at Karthi till I was almost crying. I called back and said I couldn't make out WHERE they had got to. He called back a while later to tell me sheepishly that they were already in his computer bag where I HAD PUT IT A WEEK AGO. 

So much for being organized!!!

Productivity tweaking - too much?

Of late, I have been slightly obsessed with productivity enhancing tools and articles. This year I started listing out my daily to-do list in my daily journal in addition to the reminders for daily jobs on my faithful Astrid. Every morning, I wrote out a big list and chose three MITs (Most Important Tasks) to be completed that day in addition to my menu items for the day. Okay, this listing, so far has been done about 80% of the time till yesterday, at a cursory glance through my journal. On travel/vacation days as well as some stretches when LIFE happens in all caps, this has not happened. And did I manage to finish all list items every day? No way. I was lucky if I could finish at least the MITs!

The news that Astrid was acquired by Yahoo! and is going to be taken off the web (part of me still screams, "Why, why, why???" in true soap opera fashion) knocked me off my feet. For the first time in years, I've had some semblance of accomplishment of my daily routine and here it was going kaput! I hurriedly imported all my data from Astrid and started searching for a viable alternative.

Over the last couple of months, I searched high and low for Astrid's substitute and tried one app after the other while retaining Astrid on my phone. I tried Remember the Milk, ToDoist, Wunderlist, Trello and more.  I signed up for  each in turn and tried using them for a day or two. Something or the other would bug me about the new app and I invariably deleted my account with each. In the process, I also started using Feedly for blog reading because although I have neatly categorized and bookmarked my favorite blogs and keep culling the inactive ones from time to time, I thought I could enhance my reading organization by opting to read through Feedly.

This week I had almost reached breaking point when Astrid's farewell mail came through. Then I happened to read this article: Confessions of a Recovering Lifehacker. I realized that in my search for the perfect tasking app, I was missing out on a lot. I checked my phone - Astrid was working fine and I didn't need to sync it with the web because I only use it on my phone and it functions well enough without syncing up. Plus I have a paper copy of all my recurring tasks as well as a copy on my trusty Evernote if ever my phone crashes and Astrid on my phone is lost. I can easily manage on those in such an eventuality and since I've already tried out some new task apps, I can easily choose one then.

Aaah, relief! In that happy frame of mind I settled down yesterday to watch the final of the Tri-nation series. Now there is something totally unproductive (ok, ok, I did cheat, I took the time to catch up on some reading)!!! I almost kicked myself at 2:45 am for having lost precious sleep sitting up all alone to watch the Indian batting fiasco. But I couldn't switch off the TV because MS was still there!! As he struck ball after ball and didn't run to protect his hamstrings and the other batsman, I marveled at his courage and understood his strategy of waiting for the weak link in the Lankan bowling lineup. But when the last over equation came up, ardent fan that I am, I doubted whether Captain Cool could accomplish it on that pitch. Oh how glad I was to be proven wrong! If you'd been within a ten-mile radius of Karthi at 3 am today, I'm sure you would have been deafened by my war whoop as Dhoni's last sixer flew over the boundary line. I woke up all my family to join in the festivities. We waited till Arun Lal's last gaffe at the presentation ceremony near 4 am. Total amount of sleep yesterday - < 2 hours!!!

Live each day, fully, one at a time!

Some days things crowd up so much that it becomes difficult to breathe - literally. One has to sit still then and take time to savor each minute that goes by. And such moments are when I turn to the easiest stress-busters of all that are right here on my computer: old pictures.

Take this one, for instance:

This was taken on a serene evening in Coorg back in 2003. DH and I were on our first trip together after our wedding. I remember sitting in the city park. We had taken loads of pictures of every beautiful vista on terra firma when we discovered that we could just sit on a bench, point our camera upwards and capture several masterpieces from the show above us. Somehow, I like this series much better than any picture we took on that trip!

Now this one was taken in Detroit, in fall 2005:

We were billeted at an extended stay hotel for 2 months and were desperate for a library membership. In front of the library was this gorgeous maple in the full yellow and red glory of fall. It had also carpeted most of the lawn in front of the library with its largess. We plonked Kunjunni right in the middle and started snapping like crazy. It's one of our favorite pics of our first-born.

Now this picture - although it looks like any touristy snap in front of the Niagara waterfall...

...reminds me of how thankful we should be for having arrived safe and sound in Niagara on that Thanksgiving Day.

We started from Detroit early in the morning when snow was being removed and soon drove into a bitter snow storm even before we reached the Canadian border. We had no snow chains and saw quite a few vehicles that had turned all the way around and were stranded in our lane and on the other side of the divider.

Halfway along, DH felt a craving for some chewing gum which, unfortunately was stowed in the boot. We were driving very slowly and DH eased the car on to the shoulder of the highway - or at least that was his intention. We ended up yards away from where we had intended to stop and were poised precariously on a downward slope in a heavy snow drift!

Panic set in and we thought of calling emergency services when I suggested that we should try reversing the car. To our relief, the came back up, I retrieved the gum from the boot and our trip was henceforth uneventful. While we unwound at our hotel, I turned on the TV to find out that there had been scores of accidents on that stretch of highway that morning and we were part of the luckier ones who came out unscathed.

This picture was taken in 2006, in Duluth MN. It's one of the most beautiful places I have visited on this big, blue marble. It literally took our breath away when we found that even at the end of May, the wind that blew off Lake Superior was very chilly. We hadn't packed any warm clothes, so had to buy some! It was one of our best road trips to date. I can't imagine how cold it would be in mid-winter in Duluth. But in summer, she was magnificent!

There, I feel better already. Thanks for coming with me on this trip down memory lane!

An organizing tip for digital pictures: The path to one of my typical picture folders looks like this: Photos -- 2012 -- 0329MeenaBharani.  From this I can easily find out the pictures we took during the Meena Bharani festival of 2012 in this folder and can make out that it was on the 29th of March that year. Naming this way also means that the folders are arranged in chronological order too. All I have to do to maintain this is to spend an extra minute to think of the date and an appropriate name for the folder when I download pics. On my comp you can find years from 2002 to 2013 in the same folder format. It makes finding pics super-duper easy! Hope this tip helps!

Elephants Can Remember (Apologies to Agatha Christie)

First of all, an apology in advance to all my techno-savvy readers ... please look the other way while I gloat over my new technological "discovery"!

The name of my latest technological friend is Evernote. Yup, the green elephant head that you see down below is a real boon to me. 

 

One of my main activities while surfing is copying and saving articles I want to read again, or craft projects that I want to try. And most probably it will be in the middle of these activities that I will remember something that needs to be done @home, @shopping etc. But I would be so engrossed in surfing that the item would inevitably be forgotten by the time I got up from my chair. Now let me tell you in what ways Evernote has made life a lot easier for me.

1. Evernote has this lovely interface with my "notebooks" listed on the far left side. I have notebooks called craft, decorative ideas, braindump, home and garden and so on and so forth. I can choose whether the notebooks should be private (in which case it is saved only on my comp) or whether it can be shared by others. 

2. Which leads to the loveliness that allows me to access my notes on my android phone. So whatever I enter into my comp gets synced on to my phone that goes with me everywhere. My notes are always accessible! So now I can tell you some of the uses I put it to:

3. Evernote has a web-clipper with the elephant-head icon that appears in one corner of my browser window. When I find something that needs more than cursory attention, I just click the elephant and he asks me whether I need the whole page, just the article or even just an image. I tell him what to select and which notebook to put it in and voila!

4. I have a notebook called monthly shopping in Evernote. Till now I used a master grocery list (made, I think, back in 2002 and updated occasionally thereafter) carefully preserved in a sheet protector. Once a month I took the list around the kitchen and pantry with a notepad and checked for the items in the list, then noted down what I needed. Then I took the paper list for shopping (Or forgot it,  which happened very often) What do I do now? Evernote has a checklist feature that can be used to insert "tickable" boxes. I have three notes in my monthly shopping notebook - each corresponding to a floor of our favorite grocery shop with a list of the items available on that floor. Whenever I run out of something, I just take my phone, find the item and put a tick against it  and note the quantity I need to buy next month. So I just have to carry the phone to the store and uncheck the boxes as I put the items in my basket. So easy, huh! Saving paper is a bonus too!

5. I have another notebook named Someday. In it there are items like Books I want to read, Movies I want to watch, etc. I note down the names of interesting books and movies. The next time I go to the library or the bookstore, I have a ready list of things I need to look for.

6. This can be done even without Evernote, but since it is already there, I make use of it. I use my diary to plan the activities for the weekend (Isn't there something so satisfying about writing it down than just using keys or tapping/swyping on a tiny screen?) When we go out on Saturday morning, I just take a snapshot of it on my phone and my errand list is so handy from there on.  

7. The best thing about Evernote is when I get some free time, I can go through all the articles that I have collected and read them at my leisure.

I know that Evernote can be put to greater and more varied uses than what I have listed. A few videos at their site can give you some ideas if you haven't tried Evernote. 

I guess Microsoft One Note too has the same features and they have a site called skydrive.com where the notes are uploaded. I use One Note on my comp too, but I put only those things there that I need only when I access my computer. OneNote app's interface looks much more colorful, but I am happy with my little green elephant. What is it with me and cute icons????

Speaking of cute icons, you may remember my post about Astrid tasks. I recently became bold enough to sync my phone with an online Astrid account, so I can type to my heart's content when I get tired of using my touch phone screen. Do u know that Astrid has activity-specific icons there? For instance, when I click on my "Write" list of tasks, a bespectacled Astrid complete with pencil and paper appears! I just wish they would come to my phone too!

December madness and a glimpse into the past

I don't know about you, but December usually sees me in a frenzy of decluttering and reorganizing wherever I am in the world. Somehow, the proximity of a new year makes me want to tear up old things, shove some things into oblivion and reorganize things to an inch. I feel it is almost prompted by my subconscious, because I have never circled December 1 on my calendars in red to prompt me, ever. But the thing sort of creeps up on me, noiselessly, surreptitiously.

For example, take this year. In the first week of December, I was putting away my clothes in my wardrobe and I noticed a dress that I hadn't worn in about a year - 15 minutes later, a few dresses had been picked out and bagged up ready for recycling (also known as sewing dishrags). This week the urge has already manifested itself as rearranging our second bedroom and heaving the cots about single-handedly. Today, I went through a stash of old notebooks/journals/diaries. I sorted them into  three piles, put away one for safekeeping, another for reference and completion and burned those in the third.

As I was going through my old journals, I came across several "me's", a 25-year-old me, a newly-wed me, a new-mom-be-me, a new-mom me and so forth. The 25-year-old me certainly had lots of activities, fun, interactions with a whole bunch of people and lots of "alone" time to think about everything and write about them. But I also saw a frequent pattern of her being in the dumps about some little thing or the other - frankly, they seem quite trivial to me now.

Nowadays I am regularly swept off my feet with all the things I have to do (like a December "spring" clean!) and anyone who has young children know, I rarely get any time to be by myself now and most human interactions other than with my immediate family are via phone, email or blog! But I am so much more content now, rarely get down in the dumps any more and have daily doses of pure, unalloyed joy which I frequently take time to savor. It can be just a hug n' kiss with an "I love you, baby" from our toddler, enthusiasm and "Oh, thank you for making my favorite dish today" from our elder son or a surprise book from my hubby who has raided the bookstore for a much-awaited book the day it was released. I now understand that life doesn't need to spectacular in order to be wonderful...

Oh yes, there is much to be said about being 25, but I am happy being 35 too!

Just peeking in for a while

It's been raining here - continuously - for more than a week now. I have 3-day old washing on the line that is yet to dry well. The sun is trying to peek out this afternoon, but the best he can do is a watery smile that threatens to turn into a shower at any time. Last Saturday when I took my green denim bag to go shopping, it had a white bloom all over it! Something that would never have happened in Pune! That was Pune's great advantage - I never had to worry whether my laundry would dry soon - even in the rainiest season, the maximum it took for my clothes to dry was never more than 6 hours. But hey, I am not complaining or thirsting to go back. I don't miss Pune at all, except for a couple of friends that I made there.

My mother-in-law has left after a fortnight's visit. She was a great help when it came to setting the house to order. I tend to be overwhelmed when I see a lot of work piled up before me. But each morning after breakfast she asked me "What is our project for the day?" and we steadily emptied and dismantled the umpteen boxes, organized the rooms and did some gardening. She also took care of my younger son while I walked to pick/drop the elder one at the school bus stop. Now he again goes with me and I have to carry him most of the time...

In a way I am glad for the exercise the walk gives me. I have to go downhill and climb again to reach the bus stop. My bad   recovering knee gets a lot of work and I have found that in the last 3 weeks, my heart has begun to tolerate the slopes well. I am not so tired. In fact I timed myself and found that I could go the distance in 12 minutes flat alone. Yesterday, carrying my son, I did it in 14 minutes - not bad. Only thing is I sweat loads for 5 minutes after each walk - a small price to pay for daily aerobic conditioning. One of my neighbors - a policeman in his late forties - has had a bypass surgery last week. Needless to say, it's been an inspiration!

Not so perfect crafting

Phew, didn't that week pass so quickly? And there's something in the pipeline that I am very excited and busy about... but more about that later!

One of my pet hobbies is saving crafting tutorials of all kinds from the internet - I already have a collection of craft projects that could last me at least two lifetimes. And I won't mention how I get craft supplies without really having a project lined up for it! If it was just yarn or painting supplies or embroidery supplies, it would have been ok. As far as I am concerned variety IS the spice of life, so I have many things stashed in several places including a 5-year-old box of Perler beads that hasn't even been opened. Since we have been on the move since I bought them, it is now in a suitcase in my mother-in-law's home. When I came to Pune, I brought my crochet hooks and a set of yarns that I have had since 2006. I wanted to do only crochet, but after getting here, I got myself some painting supplies and a sewing machine!!!

Looking back at this pattern during my reflections, I tried to understand why I didn't do any of the projects that I envisioned so brilliantly in my mind and brought supplies for, but finally were let to languish before even starting. It was again my perfectionist attitude rearing up. What if the project didn't turn out as I envisioned it? What if the thing I made was not usable? What if no one appreciates it? A whole lot of what ifs would queue up and the supplies would just resign themselves to the inevitable and heap dust upon themselves.

But not any more - this year I started off  by making something deliberately not perfect. Earrings are my favorite accessories and all of them lay tangled and mismatched in a box that I brought to Pune. For several months I had been wearing my mainstay gold studs just because it was easy to leave them in my ears and not have to search for appropriate ones. I checked online for some earring organizers, but most of them required some kind of frame and metallic mesh/ chicken wire etc. That is when I had this idea to make one of my own - a crocheted one! Since it was intended to be a prototype, I got out some of my cheap woollen yarn that I had bought from the Pimpri market and found unusable for apparel because it had a lot of impurities in it. Then I found a spare plastic hanger and made this:

I made it and started using it although it is not perfect. For instance, I had started off making a block of fabric that would be the width of the whole hanger, but got bored with making it too long, so I turned it on the side to attach it to the hanger. The stitch I chose was double crochet with stitches in the back loop only so that there would be loops to hang the earring in. When I turned the piece on the side, the loop ridges turned vertical instead of horizontal, but they still work! Here is a close up to show you what I mean.

I also don't like the plastic hanger or the white "trim" that was an after thought to "pretty up" the piece, and in spite of a frantic voice in my head screaming "Nooooooo!!!!", I hung it up and put up all my precious earrings on it. Do I cringe a little each time I see it? Yes. Did I have a super-cringe when I just uploaded the pictures now? YES! But hey, I will do it in a good cause. Here is a shout out to those people in the world who procrastinate on their dreams due to their perfectionism. Get rid of that monkey! If I can do it, any body can!!                                                                                                                                             

By the way, I do dream of making another one with the following:

But hey, that's another project altogether! See y'all next week!