Containment

Earlier this past week, while M and I ate dinner one night, I looked over at an “extension” of our bar and sighed.  The extension was an old TV cart made of contact paper covered particle board from my graduate school, single days.  Liquor bottles covered the top (which could swivel!), a black plastic tool box holding M’s mandoline (for slicing not music) occupied the “VCR shelf,” and the small cabinet below was full of containers of loose tea.  The cart was ugly, and both cart and all the bottles needed to be dusted before we hosted a dinner party on Saturday.  If only I had a cabinet that I could put all the bottles in.  Then I thought, I could buy a new cabinet.  The next three evenings found M and me at three different stores, and Friday we hit pay dirt.  We bought it, M assembled it, and I filled it.  Neatness abounds.

It holds a lot of stuff (the Ficus tree next to it is about 7 ft high):

So now even the Original Bar is not so crowded (although there are still more liquor bottles in other containment elsewhere–we are well stocked):

Containment is a good thing! Even for knitting projects. The funny thing is that for my three “large” WIPs, I have a matching project bag. Containment and Coordination!

On top is an Amish basket given to me by my only aunt (the Amish person is her neighbor in northern Wisconsin); it’s sitting on my Grandma Frances’s old picnic basket. To the right is a cherry blossom bag I got for my birthday; it’s from Janine King Designs. I keep my pink mohair cardi project in there, as the cherry blossoms have the same pink in their detailing. In front, the Totally Autumn throw is kept in a bag with apples on it that one of the millions of my mother’s former English students made and sold. And my newest project, Career Check (Ravelry link), a basket weave jacket by Kathy Zimmerman matches my newest bag, a Christmas gift, handmade by my friend Nancy.

I feel very matchy-matchy. I only hope that if I start to knit a blue sweater, I’ll be able to refrain from purchasing a matching blue project bag or basket.

With all this coordination and containment going on, M and I hope that next weekend we will have time to sit down, have a cocktail and write a blog post. Until then, it’s sobriety and knitting around here.