Today is the second day in the Alps, and the most mountainous of the entire Tour. Yesterday was stunning and wonderful, a summit ending after a steep-steep climb that cracked most of the riders. Today's stage will be pushing the riders once again to their limits, as we head towards Sunday in Paris. Here's the profile for today's stage.
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As you can tell, it's a lot of climbing and some wonderful descents on today's route. The finish won't be as gnarly as yesterday's was - it's a downhill finish today - but there's no rest for the riders and there might be several who will miss the time cutoff after today's stage. |
Yesterday, my weekly "day off" turned into a massive effort focused on finishing the clean-up of my fiber/sewing cabinet. The store had contacted me, and after four weeks, my sewing machine was fixed and ready for pick-up. I had to finish cleaning my sewing cabinet so I had a clean space ready for my machine's homecoming. I had already cleaned out shelves 2 and 3, the storage cabinet next door, and most of the floor. The dreaded shelf #1 - catch-all for everything small, remained.
I'm making the rest of the blog a photo blog. I started cleaning around 9:00 am, left to get groceries and pick up my sewing machine at 10:30 am (less than $100 for the repair - SCORE!), had a quick lunch at 11:30 and worked solidly until I phoned Aearwen at 4:00 pm. After our call, I fixed dinner, then returned to work on the cabinet for another hour before DH got home from work. Finally, it's 98% done. There are still a few things I want to re-arrange, but I'm generally pretty happy with the results of many hours of hard work.
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After about an hour in, a lot of the shelf had been cleared, but I still had the hanging baskets to tackle, and the entire right side. At least I can see the table top where I put my sewing machine. |
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Where was the stuff I pulled off from the top shelf? Well, it was starting to get stacked and semi-organized on the floor behind me. I was developing quite the collection of thread spools, needles, buttons and a variety of sewing aids. |
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After I returned with my fixed sewing machine, I continued pulling things out of the cabinet. I needed to wash the shelf, and also needed to vacuum the entire floor, so everything had to get pulled out of the floor level including the "Big Bag of Fleece" I had made on one of the first cleaning days. |
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Looking back at the cabinet, most of the right side has now been cleared and only the bags on the left need to be removed. Almost ready for a good vacuum. I also pulled the cloth from the top of my antique pedal Singer machine. I love the machine and it still works. I might as well celebrate it a bit (and wash the covering). |
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Now everything was vacuumed and cleaned up, it was time to organize things and put things back in an ORGANIZED fashion. That's what I've started to do here, with my sewing machine back on top, pin cushions on the right and fleece on the left. |
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Take a look at these weapons. These are the 4-pitch English wool combs I just purchased. They are now on the shelf in their protective boxes. Thieves beware! I have combs! LOL You can see some buttons below on the top of my sewing machine shell, and some spinning tools in the below-shelf holder to the right. |
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I'm almost finished here. The first shelf now has things boxed up, not scattered here and there. The wool combs have a home and my spinning wheel bobbins are organized by which wheel they belong to. My machine is back in its' home. It's not perfect, but it's functional once again. |
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I had a bunch of long things that I needed to collect together into one container that would fit into a narrow space. There are things like heddles and sheds for my weaving, as well as the parts of my rigid heddle loom. I ended up cobbling together a small box to hold most of them. The very tallest of the items ended up in the storage cabinet next to the sewing cabinet. |
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One of the things that really sold me on this house was the sewing area, closed behind doors and almost invisible. This is how everything looks after the mess of earlier in the day. I now have these two cabinets done. I have the double-door cabinet to the left still to deal with, but I'm saving that for another day (or month). |
If you've come this far, then good on you! I'm delighted with my progress, put almost 13,000 steps onto my health watch with all of this work, and my body is complaining that it's not used to so much work (probably true). It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy, and it's functional now - something it hasn't been for a long time. Have a great Thursday, spread love and kindness, and do a bit of cleaning. It's never our favorite task, but the feelings of accomplishment are major. I'll be back tomorrow for the final day in the Alps on Le Tour de France.
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