Changing habits is hard. Staying off the computer is hard - especially when my weekend to do list included moving the computer back to my little office and installing a wireless network for my new freebie laptop. Moving the computer and all its many doo-dads OUT of the big cabinet was much easier than moving it in - I could unplug from the CPU and pull the cables out without requiring two strong young men to move the beast away from the wall for me. Installing the Linksys wireless network was a breeze, it actually configures itself, all I had to do was plug in a couple of cables. Do not fear the wireless network, a monkey can do it now.

So I'm doing a bit better at time management, I feel like I am wasting less time each evening, but the weather isn't helping - it's too freaking hot and/or stormy to do anything outdoors. The yard is still a disaster and will remain one until the patio is in and I can go in and out the back door without stepping into the plastic and frame.

In the course of rearranging my office/bedroom space I shifted the yarn that had crept in there back to the guest/craft room, which needs to be next on the decorating hit list. Right now half the space in my little house is devoted to storage - both the kids' former bedrooms and all of the garage are a hodgepodge of Stuff Somebody Might Need Someday, and yarn. As much as I loathe garage sales, I think it's time to have one. I don't think St. Vincent de Paul would really have much need for the old racquetball racquets and giant and non-sentimentally-empowered stuffed animals and extra iced tea maker and other oddities that are bringing disorder to my life.

I don't know much about feng shui and the book I'm reading about it now is hardly a serious study of the subject, but mixed in the goofy New Agey stuff (this is feng shui as interpreted by a blonde from California, like, ya know, fer sure) is some common sense. Clutter saps your energy. I know it does mine. Dead areas in the house not only wasted space but are depressing. Yes, they are. Color is good, textures are good, natural things are good. Yes. The rest I'm taking with many grains of salt (as on a margarita glass, which seems to be the right accompaniment to this book).

But it's a fun read, and it did inspire me to look at the house through her interpretation, and I did shake my head and laugh at what I saw. Let's see, prosperity gua - half missing, because part of it is the patio which hasn't been poured yet, and the rest was my empty office was a bland, beige, dusty space, full of tracked-in sand and the patio furniture I couldn't put on the patio which hasn't been poured yet. And right now the money is flowing out faster than it can come in. Yeah.

I had planned to move my computer back into my office this weekend - the big cabinet is just not right for me. I turned it into a rat's nest of forgotten papers - I need to have my bills and important papers neatly organized in plain view, or I'll forget they exist. So cleaned my office, put the patio furniture in the garage (someday there will be a patio, I just have to believe...) moved the computer back, and then looked around the space. Neat, clean, and beige. Cream and tan and white and wood and iron furniture - I'm a minimalist but this was a little too blah even for me. Off to Pier One. (Public service shopping alert, they are having a great sale, especially on their wonderful candles!) I used to have a side chair in my office before it was broken by a relative who shall remain nameless who was a bit too, er, voluptuous for it. So I replaced that long-missing chair with a purple chair with beads and a large gray cat:

(actually the large gray cat is optional) and added a candle - I still need some more colorful art on the walls and a vivid rug, but it's a start.

Okay, next the Relationships corner - what did I find in my relationships corner? A ton of clutter and...yarn. And craft books. Hmmmm...and my primary relationship since last year has been with...yarn. NOT that this was a bad thing, it was just fine with me, but maybe now it's time to clean up this space with an eye toward making it more inviting to other people.

As I said, there's a lot of "ooh, hang a crystal and stick a plant there!" about this book but at the same time I am finding it somewhat inspiring and enlightening despite the considerable silliness, mostly because it's making me realize how much energy-choking CRAP I have cluttering my life. We shall see if improving my clutter and making my home more in balance will add any balance to my life.

Yarn. I have way too much of it. I'm on a yarn diet until I cut this yarn stash by 3/4 and reclaim that back bedroom as a guest room. Yes, you read that right. How's that for a yarn diet? It's not guilt that is motivating me, screw guilt, it's that lack of balance in my life - I love yarn, I love knitting, but, and here comes a shocking confession - I do have other interests. Nobody could tell from looking at the yarn storage room. Even I am shocked by my wretched excess. Again, most of it was aquired during the dark years of my husband's illness, when knitting and buying yarn online were the only "fun" I had, but those days are over and it's time to move beyond it.

Yesterday I sat with my last yarn purchase for a very long time, the Cascade 220, and cursed my flimsy plastic ball winder and swift (does anyone else have a problem with the ball flying off about 2/3 through the winding?) while watching DIY's new show, the Knitty Gritty. As other bloggers have noted, the first episode was really for absolute beginners, yarn weights, tools, etc., but it was vastly superior in every way from DIY's previous attempt at a knitting show. Good explanations, good camera work, this has great promise. Anyway, back to the Cascade 220. I bought enough of the rich blue for another felted bag, but while I was skeining it up I realized I don't want to make a bag with it, I have enough bags for now and this blue is so lovely, it needs to be something else. It needs to be a sweater. The other colors will go into the small, stripey felted bags, they'll be great.

So did I start a sweater with it? Oh no, I did not. Instead I pulled out the Manos-like product I bought off eBay last spring (I told you I bought a ton of eBay yarn while on caregiver duty, it kept me sane). I swatched it and I'm trying to decide what it wants to be - I get a decently firm fabric at 4 stitches and 6 rows to the inch. I can, of course, use the "Knitters Handy Book of Patterns" and find things to do with it, but in my climate I'm pretty much limited to cardigans and jackets from a wool like this. A pullover would be wearable less than one day a year, and not all day, at that. I'm a born-again swatcher right now, figuring out what I have in the stash, matching it to patterns. Like everything else about my life this month, my knitting is in transition and reorganization.

And now I think I'll read blogs and drink one more cup of coffee before I start cleaning out my walk-in closet. I'm in a tear down and rebuild state of mind.