Organized!

 Have you ever heard of a company named Thirty-One?  They sell bags – purses, totes, lunch bags, etc.  You can get them monogrammed (for a fee) or have a name or phrase instead of a monogram (again, for a fee), or plain.  They run a special every month, and it’s tough to say no when it’s such a good deal and …it’s a friend who’s selling them.  Yep, they have a catalog, just like Avon, only theirs is bigger and it doesn’t smell funny.

There's still enough room to slip in my camera case!

I have several Thirty-One bags – some purchased from the catalogs of friends, some from the secondary market (eBay), and one from a friend who was cleaning out her closet and being ruthless with her discards (bought her skirt purse for $15, and she included both skirts!).

A friend was having a catalog party – these are great if you don’t live close by – and we don’t; she’s in NC while I’m in SC.  I decided I really needed the All-In-One Organizer.  It was $20, which could come out of my savings for Tat Days, and it was something I could use and enjoy for several years.  I ordered it in the fabric “Best Tweets,” which, if you look closely, you can see is birds on branches.  Not much room for embellishing with tatting, but then I’m really busy with work just now, anyway.

The two balls of thread at the back are from Gina's thread
stash; I'm grateful to her family for sharing with us!

I have discovered that the Sterlite plastic pencil boxes sold at Big Lots fit nicely in this tote – five of them, in fact, and that will hold a lot of tatting supplies!  Here is one open; I’ve still got room for more thread in this one.   Oh, and the pencil boxes are a steal at 88¢; and they’re recyclable if/when they break.

Clusters of these tiny mushroom have sprouted in our
backyard - there's a fallen pecan for size comparison!

Autumn spiders have become bolder - this gigantic web
completely covers what used to be the entrance to the
garage!  It's amazing what beautiful webs they make!

Not much other news from here; it’s officially fall, so we have a break from the summer heat.  I’m looking forward to getting out sweaters and warm socks, making big pots of homemade soup, and baking biscuits.  Mmmmm.  Hopefully I’ll have some more time this fall – we are working on 

a software conversion at work, and overtime is now a way of life.  The extra money is very welcome (the upstairs water closet had to be rebuilt as it had developed a nasty leak which was becoming increasingly more expensive), but it leaves me with very little free time before and after work.  I can usually tat just a bit on my lunch break – about 25-30 minutes’ worth – but it’s better than no time to tat at all!