July post-ish.

(I never get tired of putting out the little stitchies from years past for July.)

 Hope everyone in the US had a nice holiday weekend. The weather here was dreadful for the 4th -just as expected with a hurricane/tropical storm passing by the coast. Torrential rain, hail, wind, thunderstorms, etc. Only off/on though so it could have been worse. And the power kept threatening to go out but it hung in there so I guess all the tree trimming the electric co. has done in recent years is actually helping. 

I had work to do anyway and he actually worked Friday/Saturday so I didn't mind the bad weather really. It all came together for a glorious, perfect summer Sunday so it's all good. 

Plus I had this to keep me company. What's that, you say? Oh, just my latest fugue-state, fever-dream, rabbit hole I fell into. It happens. You know, that thing you do where one thing leads to another leads to another, and you're covered in flop sweat and determination until you reach the very, very end of it? That thing.

I finished a Plum Street freebie and decided it was a good time to start putting threads away. 

I tend to pile up 'used' project floss in one zipper bag until there is enough to really make it worth it to sort it and start putting it back where it belongs (i.e. 4 cases of DMC, 3 giant rings of hand-dyes, etc) but I had a full bag now so off to be sorted they went. 

Then it seemed only natural to put away the 'newish stash' that was also around. Where it was quickly apparent that I shouldn't ever ever in a million years of evers be doing free patterns because I have enough PAID patterns to last me a few lifetimes.

After I stopped feeling a little ill from the OMGSOMUCHSTUFF feelings, I immediately started doing a (PAID FOR) pattern I had kitted up (SOME TIME A LONG TIME AGO) and....riiiiiight off the bat I ran into the issue that I was missing a stinking floss color. Well, that's not right. Why would I purchase all of the other colors but not this one? I must have misplaced it. 

So I started searching for it. The search didn't last all that long as I don't generally have a lot of projects in progress hanging around. (In fact, I only had 3 projects in progress and one of those probably doesn't count because I had already 'robbed' it of all it's floss ages ago and the linen has just two teeny, tiny candy corns completed. Things that can be ripped within 5 minutes like they never happened don't count as a work in progress, right?) But that didn't make sense. WHERE WOULD THAT ONE STINKING COLOR BE? 

So I dug in places it wouldn't be, just to be extra-specially certain it wasn't there. This searching took longer because it was nonsensical searching. Maybe it's under the sugar container! Could the bookcase have eaten it?!? Would looking downstairs behind the wood stove be totally crazy or just mostly crazy?!?!? 

(Nonsensical searching is the worst kind of searching because all possibilities exist at the same time and, therefore, must be searched or you are always going to have DOUBTS. Also, time is a circle. *twitch*)

And then I thought........maybe it's in my floss boxes but not in the right place. I have all my hand-dyes separated by company AND in alphabetical order.....but alphabetizing things, as we know, can be a teensy bit fuzzy whenever humans are involved. AHA! PROGRESS! There were some Weeks Dye Works in with Crescent Colours and oh ho ho, I'm on to something now. It is hiding in plain sight! To sort that out I would have to consult the Master List. 

Wait? Do you have a Master List? MS Word documents listing all of your floss by company that you can consult so you can easily determine what you have on hand? Well, I do. And the more I checked that the more it was apparent how TOTALLY FREAKING JACKED my data entry skills have been the last few years. The mistakes. They were plentiful. So I had to start ticking things off one by one, through hundreds of floss colors, and redoing the alphabetizing for each company and rearranging floss bags and.........

Here's where things get a little crazy. 

I used to use Bag It bags for my hand-dyes but they stopped making them at some point, so I ran out and started having to use Floss-Away bags instead. 

 

This would not be an issue but Bag Its hang from the bottom when hanging on a ring and Floss-Away bags hang from the top and this has always really, super duper bothered me because they ALL have to go ONE WAY or the OTHER. Mixing them is just...........it's wrong. I was just COVERED in the wrongness of it as I was flipping through my rings, trying to correct my Master List. So..........

250+ Floss-Away bags later ( that I, mysteriously, just HAPPENED to have on hand) I changed over every single Bag It bag to a fresh/shiny/new Floss-Away bag. While consulting the Master List, of course, so everything is just perfect now. Perfect, I say! BUT BOY HOWDY DID IT TAKE A LONG TIME TO GET THERE. Three days and multiple, multiple hours. (And honestly? Most of my Crescent colors were already on Floss-Away bags. These piles are just from Weeks and Sampler threads. FLOSS HOARDER. *ahem*)

I never did find that stupid, hated, fever-inducing Endive floss color either. I have to concede, at this point, that I never had it and, also, that I am ridiculous. Whoops! My bad. (It's on order.) Oh well. The weather was really bad and my stuff is, like, HYPER organized now so I guess it's all good. :)