It's CLEAN .. . . mostly

In the midst of iron disaster I've forgotten to mention that I've got the garage mostly clean. I have the peg boards up, I just need some peg hooks. I have most of the shelves up. Only 2 boxes of fabric left to organize. I think that it's 80% complete. That's not too bad considering what it was like before. Here are some bad quality photos of my garage.

It's clean enough to fit 2 other people comfortably to work. If we were all just sewing I think I could fit 4 people (including me) to work in here and not feel too cramped. In fact I've had people come by and work in here. That's the real reason it got cleaned. We needed a bigger space to work.


I even moved my TV and DVD player out there in the corner, to have some background noise sewing. Maybe I'll catch up on all those TV shows I've missed since I don't have time for TV. Or not, I can imagine being planted in front of the TV and not working at all. But it's situated in front of the ironing board so that ironing isn't as tedious. If only my iron wasn't broken.


If you look closely there's hardly anything on the peg boards and it's still a little chaotic. I'm working on organizing it. Overall it's nice to have a space where I can invite a few people over to sew and have it be a productive space. I'll post later on all my organizing details, some of which I picked up from other websites. But for now I just wanted to brag about my 80%.

Disaster!! My Iron is Broken

Of course in the middle of a big project my iron breaks. This poor Panasonic my family bought 3+ years ago just gave up. My dad thinks I've fried it. I have no idea what's wrong with it other than it won't start when I plug it in. It actually died on me while I was trying to iron on some interfacing. But I've used it relentlessly and it's lived a good life fulfilling it's life as an iron. It wasn't the best iron but it was a working iron.

So now the big questions is what should a replace it with. I've been eying my friends $120 Rowenta that has it's own water tank and continuous stream of steam. Or there's this Reliable iron I've used and come to like that is $125. But that's a lot of money I don't have. We'll see what happens. I'll probably buy another cheap $50 one, if you can call $50 cheap. But in comparison to the $100+ irons I really want $50 is inexpensive.

Stray Socks, I have so many

Recently these books were pointed out to me and I can't stop obsessing about them.

Stray Sock Sewing: Making one of a Kind Creatures from Socks
Stray Sock Sewing Too: More Super-Cute Sock Softies to Make & Love

It combines two of my interests making plushies and RRR (recycle, reduce, reuse). I've already flipped through the books and think I have an idea on how to approach. I'm not sure if I need to own these books, yet. I'm going to try to do one of the projects and if I think I need more guidance, as opposed to a general idea on approach, then I might consider purchasing the books.

Some people have said that they would buy new socks for these projects. In a sense, I understand where they're coming from. You're cuddling a plushie that used to be someones smelly sock. But on the other hand, that defeats the whole stray sock concept, right? Then again, my socks usually don't match, so do I really own any stray socks?