Spring Cleaning

If you follow my blog at all you will know it has been awhile since I last posted and you might notice some changes to the layout. I thought it needed some brightening up for Spring. I needed something to motivate myself to post more, which usually means I clean and organize first!

I have also been doing this at home. My creative processes have been lagging by my work studio not having heat, a noisy squirrel living in the roof, and needing to sell some furniture taking over one half of the space. I posted ads for the furniture this week on craigslist and found a solution to the heating problem. So, I should probably tell you about the squirrel, it is a funny story to those who are not living with it!

I noticed creepy noises about the second day I lived here. My bed was out there when I first moved in, because it is an enclosed porch with a lot of light and it just seemed like a nice place to sleep (not many others agreed with me), but I stuck it out until one night I woke up to this awful noise that sounded like the squirrel was digging through the ceiling and pulling up the wood! I realized then if anyone wakes my up in the middle of the night they should be afraid, because I was so mad I thought I was going to kill someone or thing! I grabbed a broom and started banging on the ceiling yelling "SHUT UP" and "NO!" At one point before this I thought I could train it by yelling no and banging on the ceiling with the broom, but it didn't work, which made me only think it was a rabid squirrel or a beast! That night the squirrel won, I moved my bed into the "bedroom" I was using for a work studio. I also had to patch the ceiling with some wood where the squirrel had started to make his way through. I am warmer at night now, get better sleep, but I don't work in there as much because it is hard to sew or create when your fingers are frozen and you have a squirrel still taunting you! Laugh it up, I know the squirrel is laughing too!

So, fast forward a little to coming home from traveling with work and I noticed a pile sawdust on the floor from the ceiling where the patch was. I cleaned it up and noticed the little bugger dug a hole around the patch! Last weekend I set out to fix it again and adding some cayenne pepper to the patch, because this is suppose to help (who knows if it will)? I took down the old patch after hitting the ceiling with a broom again to make sure he knew I was coming and hopefully run it out of there. Paused and then pulled the last screw out of the ceiling and pulled off the old patch. To my surprise the hole was absolutely huge! I was not ready to see that, nor the leaves and bark and stuff it had filled it with to nest. This left me scrambling to get the new patch up there before it ran across in the silence of the drill, which would ultimately mean it landing onto my face! Luckily I managed to quickly repair it with out meeting the little bugger face to face, but he is still up there and still making noise. I have never been so angry at an animal before I have been known to be more fond of animals then people, but this guy pushes me over the edge. The noises it makes are so creepy and annoying, it is scary, and I pay the rent not him! I was originally waiting for the snow to melt before I evicted him, then it melted and then it was Spring I was waiting for, but now we are approaching March and he has to go!

So, I blame him for not being more creative lately. I have new fabric and ideas for bags, which I will hopefully post here soon. I am also working on new projects and would like to share those on here as well. So, squirrel or not squirrel, I need to motivate myself to work through it! Sorry for the absence, I am back now and ready for more blogging.