A Day of Stuff

Yesterday was another day of less than average knitting.  There still was knitting but it was reserved for when I was watching tv in the evening so just a couple of hours instead of the usual couple in the morning , couple after lunch plus the evening.  

I was working on this.

These are just a part of the rocks that we have collected over the years.  If I looked over in the packed boxes I fear I would find a couple boxes filled with the better rock samples which we had up in the living room. We were very natural history museum here at Chez Needles.  These shelves here were the less pretty looking, more often explored pieces.  4 book boxes, packed half full but heavy enough that there is going to be whining from the helper squadron.

Then there was this.

We started collecting seashells on our honeymoon.  Every trip after that to places along seashores became an opportunity for more.  We have one medium box of shells, about 2/3rds full.  This box is remaining open so that the rest of the natural history collections can go in it.  There is an interesting beaver skull and some lovely pieces of birch bark that will fill it up.  This is a light box and the helper squadron is going to fight to move it.  I know my helper squadron.

And then, if you look again at this,

You will see books and books and books.  

These are the books published as sets.  A set of Will Durant's Story of Civilzation, a set of Winston Churchill's Second World War.  A set of time Life books of cultures and histories from around the world. (I have no idea what the heck they are called but they are way better reading than Uncle John's Bathroom Readers.)  A set of the Companion Library.  Not a complete set like my dad had, but enough volumes that these and the Book of Knowledge were my library when I was a kid. A set of Readers Digest Great Encyclopaediac Dictionary, volume three of which has the most eclectic assortment of information that a kid really ought to read and know so that they could win all the trivia games they ever will play.

And this.  

I think you could refer to this one as a calculator from before calculators were cool.

There are also a dozen or so Readers Digest Condensed books that have crept into the house over time.  These are not my preferred way of reading books - there is so much out of them, but once I had them and read them, they became mine to conserve.  If I didn't keep them who would? 

The pile, minus 3 boxes of books. They just didn't fit in the picture.

Keep in mind that this is just one small corner, literally the shelves built under the stairs, in a wee reading nook that I have always loved. The hard to picture part for you guys is that about half of the books that were on these shelves were already packed up.  There are boxes of text books that also called these bookshelves home.

I am not sure how it all fit!

Yesterday I thought I would put the nativities and music boxes here till after Christmas.  And I still might, though even now, with just the music boxes,  

the nativities might not all fit! 

I don't know if Mr. Needles and I were collectors naturally, but together we sure became that.  It was kind of a shared joy, finding interesting stuff and putting it on our shelves for the kids to wonder over and ask questions about.  Perhaps it played to my girlish notions of living as the Swiss Family Robinson did (from the Companion Library) but I have loved hosting this odd assortment of things over the years.

I hope you don't mind these forays into stuff.  There might be more if I think the stuff is weird or might be interesting for you and if I remember to take photos as I go.  I will try to keep it to a minimum.

Just in case I have not bored you enough, or to take away the sting of reading about my crap, I will impose one more small thing. It is a happier thing, even though we are teething.