A not knitting kind of day

Monday was a not knitting kind of day.  It was a finishing up of stuff kind of day.

I finished the laundry.  I had gotten a bit behind a few weeks ago with sheets and towels and it seemed like every time I made a concerted effort to catch up, I would get caught up in loads of clothes, which led to getting behind in folding, which I said I wasn't going to let happen again but which happened again.  And so on.  It's a vicious circle.  With the recent burst of energy, I feel like I really can make a go of keeping up.  It's a small machine but there is only me, after all.

When Mr. Needles and I were newly wed, I used to watch my neighbour and wonder.  She was a lovely little Ukrainian lady, and every morning, she was out on the stoop, washing clothes from the day before on her scrub board, and hanging them to dry. When a towel got used, it got washed. No backlog for her.  The only thing she did in her machine, was sheets and pillowcases.  The big stuff.  Her daughter told me about her dislike of the machine, but I have often wondered if it was not really just that momma saw the machine, as a great waste of time and water.  She could take 10 minutes and do it on the back stoop and hang it and she was done.  I have often wondered if she wasn't doing it right.  Think of how few things you would really need, if you kept things right up to date. Imagine how little you would need to buy, to store.  I think about that older way of living, that older style of low consumption and sometimes I think she was doing it right.

And then I hung some things on a newly installed curtain rod. Not curtains and certainly not on a window.  I have several things, a table cloth, a simple hardanger throw, a thing from my mom's wedding shower, a table runner from Ukraine, some truly marvelous real actual linen sheets that were a gift.  These are things that have always been close at hand, and have been tossed around here in the most heinous way.  There are a few other things that I have to take out from boxes that will be added in time.  These are things that are precious to me, that have always deserved to be used, but I have no reasonable way or place to use them.  These are exactly the kind of things that professional 'organizers' tell you to get out of your house, but I see it as just needing the right way to display them.  It might seem like a weird idea, but a hanging display will suit my study just right.

Yesterday was lovely outside.  The deck was sunny and warm, and sheltered from the wind that rose as the day wore on.  A neighbour stopped and we had coffee.  Then,  I decided it was time to do a little something that I had been putting off for a week or so.

I have lovely deep window ledges.  They are one of my favourite things about my wee house.  Lovely old fashioned window ledges.  I also had some really great bright pelargoniums/ geraniums on my deck, that made it through the whole summer in grand style and two nice varieties of ivy.

I thought I would give a try at saving the geraniums for next summer.  If I don't manage to keep the slips alive, I lose nothing but for the 2 dollars that the rectangular containers cost.  Even that wouldn't be a total loss.  I can fill those next spring with pansies and violas.  Or cucumbers.

I let them sit in the sun against the house after I  finished planting yesterday, and made a mad dash late at night, to bring them in when I realized that there was a frost warning for my area.  Today they will be put to their new homes.

And then I went off to play with my little boys. And that was my day.

I mean to be back on my regular schedule today.  A little knitting with coffee, a little quilting, and the usual stuff of day to day life.