Yuletide Tunes - A Very Happy Solstice To All

Yule Sing Along Eventually

Leading Into Yule

I have been so busy...I can't even catch my breath!  Things are rough, here at the casa, but life goes on.  Yule is coming, and I thought I'd post some old videos I made and share a little music with ya.  Enjoy...or don't, your choice.  Whatever you celebrate, I hope it is marvelous.

Wee Hours

Sometimes the only time I have with my thoughts, the only time it is relatively quiet (except for the humming of the heat pump, the bubbling of the fish tanks, the creaking of the house as temperatures change and the wind kicks up, the dishwasher, the fridge, the cats...) is when everyone else is asleep.

It doesn't happen often...even when they're all in bed, sometimes I am back and forth to Sprout's room to shush her back to sleep when something disturbs her and she cries out.  Sometimes I am too tired, or feel guilty for wasting the little bit of time that Someone and I have together on the rare nights he stays over, or I need to fold laundry.

Once in a while, though...once in a while I am up late, like the old days, just me and whatever is rattling around in my brain.

Tonight is such a night.  Someone is staying over but he went to bed, worn slap out from a day of working out in the yard at his place.  I needed to stay up and work a bit, trying to get a slew of Etsy listings done for K2 to have up for Cyber Monday - look for Unleashthegoddess on Etsy  if you want to shop a talented artist and find unique items to gift or wear yourself (shameless plug).  I finished a few minutes ago, and I could go to bed, snuggle up to Someone, enjoy his warm presence...but I need...truly, need...a few minutes.

Week after relentless, sometimes grinding, week of being a single mother homeschooling her kids wears me out.  Week after endless week of noise and movement and chaos leaves me breathless and in need of just a little peace, and as it stands the only way I can get some of that precious peace is to snatch it from the wee hours.

I can sleep some other time.  Right now I am going to get my think on.

Thankful.

I have a few traditions on this day. Not many - the menu, recording the Macy's parade so I can watch it and fast-forward through all the crappy pop music, commercials, and talking heads to see the twenty minutes of balloons, floats and high school bands I'm interested in hidden among all that junk  (although I will have to forgo that pleasure, this year, alas), and my list of some things for which I am thankful, in no particular order and in no way complete:

The house in which I live
The Evil Genius

Mum
Someone
Sprout
Gypsy, K2, Mizz A, Kit, Sam-I-Am, PJ, Mizz Beth, and all of my friends who put up with me when I am most myself and therefor least likable. They are the net beneath me when I fly and fall.
Bread
The scent of leaf loam and woodsmoke in the crisp autumn air
Books, music, and art
Clean, plentiful water
Clean air
Clean clothes
Freedom
Nature and the way she finds to show me something new of herself every day
Words
Song
Dance
Adversity, that joy is all the sweeter (Okay, okay, the joy is sweet enough, so basta with the adversity for a minute, please)
Every creature and plant that I consume to sustain myself, because without the life I take, there would be no life to live
Love - that it exists at all is a wonder, and I feel blessed to know it in many forms
Chocolate, gift from the Gods (yes, even the perversion called "candy bar") (Mmm...candy bar...)
Strong hands
Strong spirit
Strong will
Laughter
Cussed determination not to curl up and die just because life can sometimes be a succession of truly awful, bleak, and desolate days...but sometimes it isn't.
The Internet
You

I hope you have a blessed day, and that you the things you're thankful for outweighing the things for which you're not.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all, from us at Casa de Crazy to you out in the Blue Nowhere and beyond.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What's Fer Dinner?

Time for the annual posting of the menu!  You've been anxiously awaiting this post all year, haven't you?  I knew it!

Casa de Crazy presents:  Thanksgiving Dinner

Featuring: Mr. Thomas Turkey

Co-Starring:  Herb and Onion Dressing, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Green Bean Casserole, Mashed Turnips and Carrots and a special appearance by Can o' Cranberry!

Also Appearing:  Mrs. Smith's Dutch Apple Crumb Pie and Sara Lee Cheesecake along with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Reddi-Whip

Special Guest Appearances by:  Pitcher of Water and Stick of Butter

How's your Feast shaping up (if you celebrate, that is)?

The Countdown Begins

Thanksgiving is in four days.  Four days!  Where'd my year go?  Gah!!!

Ahem.

Today I am baking herb bread so I can cut it into cubes and let it go stale.  Yup.  That's how I do my dressing, and so far no one's complained they don't like it.  The dough is on its first rising as I type.  I dig bread dough - it's alive!  Watching it poof up, slowly encroaching on the edges of the rising bowl, is kind nifty.

In a couple of hours it'll be in the oven, making Casa de Crazy smell fantastic.  I'm baking two batches, which will yield four loaves.  Not all of it is for dressing, but I have learned that I need to make extra - filling the house with that delectable scent and not having any to nom on is just about the height of cruelty!

I'll be doing little things all week to get ready for Thursday.  We're not having a huge crowd and I'm not cooking a huge feast, I just don't want to have a ton of work to do in one day, and some things do better when they've had a day or three to sit and mingle.

Tomorrow I am shooting photos at K2's place - this time of year she comes off the road and updates her online presence and I help by shooting pics and writing Etsy posts for her.  There's a link on her sidebar if you're interested in some fantastic art and wearables!

The rest of the week will have me in and out of the kitchen and tidying the Casa (which isn't as much work as it has been because I've been kinds sorta keeping up with it a tiny bit more).

How's your week shaping up?

Do You Know Him?

He's an alcoholic and a drug addict and he carries his demons under his shirt and close to his heart where they claw and rend and he bleeds out anger and hatred and misery and love.

He carries his demons close to his heart and inside his head and they whisper and taunt and tease and blend with the voices outside his head that tell him he's useless and worthless and wrong and bad and a drunk and no good and unwanted until it all turns into this big noise and the I Love You gets lost.

The I Love You gets lost because he isn't capable of understanding it, can't comprehend how anyone can look at him and his scars from the all the demon-scratching and his bleeding and anger and drinking and pot smoking and still say the words with meaning, even after he has spewed so much anger and bitterness out that they have coated everything, my heart, my soul, our home, his eyes and ears, and taken all the meaning out of his own i love you.

His own i love you has no meaning to him because he can't believe he has value, because he knows what he has done in this life and feels, behind the curtains of his eyes, deep in his mind, that he cannot have value because he has broken the law, broken hearts, broken vows, broken his word, broken himself down and down until he is tiny fragments, dust to be swept up and discarded.

He is dust to be discarded because that, in his mind, is all he has ever been.  In his mind, in his eyes, in his heart, in his experience, he has been tossed away like refuse when he turned out to be a disappointment, when his imperfections, so many imperfections, burst forth despite his best efforts to hide them and pretend to be the person he wants to be, and so tossed away he has drifted far from his better self and become this drunk addict who feels the scorn seeping through his walls and into his bones.

He is an alcoholic and an addict because he is trying to hide from, trying to buffer himself from, trying to resist what he thinks is real, that he is no good and no one could really want him and the hammer will fall, the shoe will drop, and he will once more be thrown out the door he is always halfway through.

He is halfway through the door because he has created a life that is untenable, taken the love he's been freely given and twisted it up, torn it to pieces, tossed it about, trampled it, all because he can't believe it is real and simply love and not some desire to change or turn him into what he isn't, that he can be loved for nothing more than himself and so must lash out at what he doesn't understand because love can't be love for its own sake but has to have a dollar value.

He thinks love has a dollar value because he has only felt loved when he was approved of, was only approved of when he had a job and was a good boy, did as others wanted him to, hid himself away behind blue eyes and a smile that never reached them.

When the smile reached his eyes, he was afraid, because that meant something more than a plastic existence of pretension, it meant he was opening himself up to an honesty for which he was not prepared, and that honesty burned and ate at him until he had to call it a lie, but in naming it a lie has only wounded himself more because he knows that the lie is truth and he can't hide from truth in the one place he wants to, inside his own head.

He can't hide from himself, and so...he is an alcoholic...and an addict...

And I love him.

Six Things

Some while ago, I took part in some memery called Six Things, wherein one listed six things one found in various places.  I have had it in my head to play again, so here goes

In my laundry basket:
One sock made with recycled cotton yarn of varying blues and purples.  Where the other is I do not know, and Sprout isn't saying.
One pair of not-so-frilly unmentionables that I should bin, but can't bring myself to because they are soft and comfy.
One t-shirt.  How I managed to wear it is a mystery, because I don't wear that kind of shirt any more and won't until another fifty pounds have gone the way of the Dodo.
A Peek-a-Block
Something that looks suspiciously like a petrified cat hork.
A spoon.

In my bathroom:
A mini Butterfinger.  Why?
Four dry-erase markers.  Again...why?
A jar lid filled with honey and borax.  I know why.
The spout to my bathtub...on the counter...
A ghostly spider that is wondering why the dearth of insect suppers.
Cat litter...on the floor...no matter how often I sweep.

In my kitchen:
A plastic baggie full of white powder.  Guess.
A bright pink charger cord.
A terribly empty cat bowl (it will be filled this afternoon).
One yellow Playtex glove.
A magnificent cobweb.
A frighteningly poofed up milk jug.

In my refrigerator:
Something green and furry that may or may not have been edible at one time.
Something orange and furry that ditto above.
Something liquid that should probably be solid.
Something solid that used to be liquid.
A piece of brie of indeterminate age but impeccable breeding.
A questionable brownie that could double as a brick, it's been there so long.

In the pantry:
A light bulb.
A box of club crackers with exactly six crackers in it.
Some stale oyster crackers that no one wants to eat, but we can't seem to toss into the compost.
A cat toy.
A package of Fig Newtons with two Newtons in it, both of which bear more resemblance to blocks of wood than cookies.
A sock...but not the mate to the recycled cotton one, alas.

In my van:
A handful of Froot Loops from the stone age.
A piece of beef jerky that is slightly older than the Froot Loops and twice as tough as Chuck Norris.
A flashlight that sometimes works.
Three different toddler shoes.
A small jug of chocolate milk that occasionally hisses at me.
An astonishing assortment of crumbs of varying sizes and ages that bids fair to take over the back seat.

So...if you want to play along, just pick six places and list six things you found there.  Easy-peasy.

Oooh, 'ku!

I've been playing with Haiku on Facebook.  I enjoy them.  Here are a few of my recent creations:

Sunlight pours whisky
Through shivering Autumn trees
Illusory warmth
~
Small girl wakes often
Nestles late in Mama's bed
Warm nest hard to leave
~
Small girl has bad dreams
Crawls into bed with Mama
Mama holds, girl sleeps

They're not exactly master class, but I'm having fun with them, distilling a head full of thoughts into seventeen syllables.  Do you 'ku?

Veteran's Day

If you served, or if you are serving, heartfelt thanks.

If your feet walk foreign soil, I wish you a swift and safe return home.

If you came home broken, I wish you swift and full mending.

If you suffered loss, I wish you the softening of grief, and abundance in your future days.

Thank you Dad, Big Brother, Uncle, Cousin, Basque A, and all of those who step/ped up and put on a uniform.

And I don't Even Have A Pilot's License!

Listen up, people!

I don't drive so much as fly low.

I like to go fast.

As fast as conditions allow.  Maybe just a little faster.

I am no Maria Andretti, but I do enjoy feeling my Astro hunker down, take the bit in her teeth, grip the road, and go.  It is probably for the best that I love my Astro and have no desire for a sporty car.  You're welcome.

65 is tolerable.  70 is nice.  75 is even better, and 80 is just lovely.  I am quite comfortable at 90, and I have learned to my sorrow that my Astro maxes out at 100...my sorrow because I was on a beautiful, long, straight stretch of unoccupied road that just begged to be zoomed.

I try to keep it safe and keep the cuss words down to a minimum.  I sometimes wish the other motorists sharing the road were a little more cognizant of their surroundings.  Sometimes that wish for awareness expresses itself in a stream of invective that makes my kids laugh and horrifies or amuses any fellow adults in the van.

If you're one of the right lane hugging people who have the misfortune to wander into the left lane when I am steaming towards my destination, some tips:

     -When you must enter the left lane, take a moment to assess the traffic in said lane.  Those handy makeup mirrors on the side of your vehicle, and the hair styling one in the center of your windscreen?  They are perfect for seeing what's going on behind you!  Note the speed at which the left-laners travel and try to time your entry into Speedsville with a nice gap that won't force anyone else to disengage their beloved cruise control, mash the brake pedal, and engage their profanity release mechanism.

     -There is a special Hell for people who drift into the left lane and then float along beside the vehicle they were thinking about passing until they noticed their speedometer indicating a two-mile-over-the-limit increase in velocity.  Don't ensure a place in that Hell by crawling along the left lane like you have nowhere better to be and all the time in the world to get there.  That steam in your rear view?  Isn't an engine going bad.  It's coming out of someone's ears.  Probably mine.

     -I am not afraid to pass on the right.  If you force me to, please don't be surprised when I stare at you as I go by, maybe even shake my head and look at you like a dog with a grape (if you don't know that look, give a dog a grape and watch him try to sort it out...is it food?   toy?  some other category of thing that is neither/both food or toy?  What should he do with it?  Confusion abounds!).  Please don't pretend to be surprised or offended when I move back into the left lane a safe distance ahead of you, and please don't slam on your brakes as if I have suddenly cut you off when I am a half mile ahead of you before I make the switch.

     -Turn indicators (also known as blinkers) have a purpose.  If you don't know what that purpose is park and take a bus until you have educated yourself.  Buses, by the way, stay in the right lane because they know that's where they belong.  There are people on the road who could take their cue from a bus.

We share the road, not always by choice.  I know there are people in the lanes who can't see well, are distracted, or are driving impaired or scared.  I know there are people who make it their business to slow everyone else down because they don't think anyone needs to drive that fast, should have left earlier if they're late, should slow down because speed kills.

I know there are people who think I am slow and who impatiently try to crawl up my tail pipe without so much as a by-your-leave.  They wish I would move out of the way and drive over there in the right lane where 80mph cruisers belong.

We all have to compromise a little.  I like to think that, despite my need for speed, I am conscientious, courteous, and really quite safe in my driving.  I don't ride anyone's backside like we're on some kind of kinky, automotive themed date.  I don't try to force anyone aside or wedge myself into a half-sized space when a lane is ending.  If construction signs are visible, I mind them, and if a lane is closed I make sure I move from it as soon and as safely as I can.  I don't cut people off.  I'm not dangerous...I simply like to move along at a low cruising altitude.  Do me a favor and let me, won't you?

The Illusion of Normalcy

Today I must finish a quilt I've been working on for a benefit auction and then ship it.

I must take the injured kitten I've been caring for over the last few weeks to the vet to have her splint re-wrapped or removed, depending on how her bone is healing.

I must bake banana bread for a friend who just underwent cancer treatment.

There are dishes to do, and laundry.

There are floors that so desperately need cleaning, we stick to them.  I wish I was kidding.

I must prepare food for my children, hopefully things that will nourish them rather than convenience me.

What I must not do is give any sign that the ground beneath me (figuratively) is crumbling.  I must not let show the cracks in the facade, the hurt, the fear, the sorrow.  I will not cry where anyone can see me, there will be no evidence of tears if anyone takes the time to look.  I will have a pleasant demeanor, as always.

It is for myself that I perpetuate the illusion.  For myself because I just don't want or need to hear opinions about my feelings and what I should be doing about them.  I don't want to trot out my damaged soul one more time and show how tattered and worn it is, how it flutters in streamers smirched by shadow and history.  I don't want to talk about it.  Isn't it enough that I am experiencing it?  It's exhausting.

This slow disintegration is tortuous.  It's not a nice, quick cut of the psyche it's a long, horrible slide down the rusty edge of a cast off blade, itchy and painful and dull.

I am thinking things that are...unpleasant...things like why don't I just drive away and leave everyone behind and just disappear, because they'd all be better off without me.  Things like I could drink those two bottles of whiskey all at once and be catatonic in short order.  Things like why is my honor so bloody important that I let it get in the way of what I so desperately need.

And don't need.

Because not wanting to live and wanting to die are two very different things.  Worlds apart.  Huge distinctions.  I can not want to live without wanting to be dead.  I can look at the mess I have made around me and want to live differently without exactly wanting to walk through the other side to get to cleaner, less damaged ground.

This churned up muck that is sliding away from me while dragging me through itself is, at least, my muck.  It's my experience, and there's no escaping that.  Try and run away, it just follows, flows through lifetimes until the lesson is well and truly learned.  May as well endure and learn now.

So none of the turmoil will show.  I will look just like a fully functioning member of society with never a hint of the internal train wreck that's going on.  Perhaps you'd be surprised to know how many like me there are in the world.

Once Upon A Time?

There must have been a time, a place, some circumstance, when I was confident and felt like I had value to myself and the world at large.

There must have been.

I see my children, how they go so boldly about their lives as if they are the center of it all, and I know I must have been the same way, mustn't I?

No one's born into this life thinking they are without worth, are they?

So what happened?  Why can't I remember a single time or place when I felt like I was doing it right?  Why am I always so very aware of how I'm fucking things up, but if I am doing something good it's like I'm not there and can't remember it ten minutes later, like it never happened?  How is it that the positive, if it exists, is so quickly and easily drowned out by the horrid?

Why is it so easy to believe the ugly things people say, to believe the ugly things are deserved, even in the face of love and compassion?

My love and compassion feel battered, bruised, and trampled right now.  They feel...useless...pointless...unwanted...much as I feel I am.

Depression is a hard row to hoe.  It's no easier when one is volubly judged as a fuck up.  It is no easier when people think one should just get over it, or that it isn't real like cancer or the flu.  It isn't easy when it grinds and grinds and drags and darkens, sucks one into the mire.  It is certainly not any better when the best one can do is met with scorn, derision, indifference or apathy.

Days and days I wonder why I fucking bother.

Days and days I wonder why I don't matter.

Days and days I struggle with the idea that everything and everyone would be so much better off if I wasn't here to fuck it all up.

I can't remember a time when the idea of love, the words "I love you", didn't mean "I want something from you" or "Whatever I say or do you have to accept" or "I own you and you have to be who I want you to be"...when they haven't meant the speaker believes to their core that I have some obligation to them.  If that was all I knew of love, maybe I'd be fine, but I see others NOT living in that reality so I know there's another way and I'm just not allowed to join those reindeer games.

Yes, I am in a very bad place right now, and my head is full of shades and ugliness...but how is that any different, I wonder, than when I am NOT in a bad place?

I wonder if I will ever be able to touch a memory of feeling right, or create one in some distant future.  I wonder if I will ever be free of this doubt, the self-defeating, self-hating internal dialog that tells me to shut the fuck up and go away because really, how could I possibly think anyone is interested in my nonsense?

I don't think I ever had whatever it is that lets people go through their lives with grace, confidence, compassion, and love.  Deficient, me.

Who Wants Music on Monday?

I'm taking the kids to the park and running a few errands, so here's a little musical interlude for ya.


A blast from the past:

This one always makes me smile:
 

Another bit of musical yore:


 I hope you have a tolerable Monday!

Cool Days, Crisp Nights

Autumn is coming on apace here at Casa de Crazy.  The light is changing in duration and color, and we are enjoying a delicious cool spell.  I have no doubt Summer will do his best to muscle into our lives for a brief spate of heat, humidity, and general uncomfortability, but for now we can sleep with the windows open and even eyeball the comforter with a thoughtful air.

I enjoy sleeping with the windows open, especially when the humidity has dropped from somewhere in the breathing-through-a-wet-sponge strata to the breathable-for-humans range.  I loathe feeling like I need to wring out my lungs, and it's nice not to wake up sodden from both perspiration atmosphere!

Windows open also means I can fall asleep listening to the woods-dwelling symphony behind the Casa.

Crickets make up the strings, tripping along their melody line from dark to dawn, blending perfectly together into a sustained whole note.

Then there are the Piccolo tree frogs, each one trilling his part with enviable earnestness, each of them vying to be heard first among the rest.

The bullfrog Timpani is sometimes off tempo, but one cannot blame him for becoming distracted - cool weather means he must turn his thoughts from his mighty calling out for love to finding a place to weather Winter when the season finally rolls through the wood and along the creek.

Sometimes in the darkness the French Horn owls hoot out their lingering notes, long and low, full of longing and mystery.

When it rains, we have the ticking of drops on leaves, a staccato click-tick-splat-hush that softens the rest like an auditory mist.

And the wind.  The poly-rhythmic wind.  Soft it flows from one pulse to the next, gliding from branch to branch, sky to ground, shaking leaf rattles and clacking twigs, ruffling the grass with a hissing, sighing exhalation.

When I lie awake in the deep hours of night, awakened by some unknown sound, I listen to the tuning of the orchestra and the weaving together of the sounds into one night's song, slipping slowly back into sleep and what dreams may come.

Apples to Oranges

My brother has bought a new house.  This is his fourth property - three in the US and a flat in England (near Brighton, I think) where they stay when they go over to escape Redneck Central summers and visit my sister-in-law's family.  He and his family wanted a place they could keep their horse to save boarding fees, so they found a nice place in the country on five acres with a barn.  I saw pictures this past weekend, and it looks lovely.

The other two houses have become rentals.

He works with computers, and I couldn't begin to explain what he does, except folks think he does it well enough to pay him to muck about with theirs, and some of it looks like he has to sacrifice a goat to the new moon to make it work.

Me?

Umm...

Well...

I can't help looking at my life, and his, and feeling a little...disappointing.  I know that we are two very different people with different wants, needs, and priorities, but at the heart of it I think we share something common to ALL people, which is a desire to succeed, to do well for ourselves and our families.  I can't help thinking I have failed, utterly.

I know I shouldn't compare.  It's a habit born in childhood, when some of the most influential adults in my life would ask, shaking their heads, "Why can't you be more like...?", with the person named clearly better at something than I.  My poor cousin Cindy was often the good example, and it's a wonder that I didn't grow up hating her...but it's difficult for me to hate someone simply because they are who they are - in her case, lovely, intelligent, and damned good at what she did/does.  Admire?  Respect?  Sure.  Hate or resent?  Not so much.

Today I could tell them "Because I'm not...  I'm ME!"

But "me" isn't enough.  Me has no value.  Me doesn't have houses and cars and horses and a bank account.  Me doesn't do much besides fail...and the voices in my head like to point that out regularly.

So this week while my brother and his family work out what needs doing in the new house, moving dates, and the like...I am staring at two letters telling me another way I have failed - one from the state proclaiming that the insurance on one vehicle lapsed and I must re-insure it and pay a fine, the other from the insurance company telling me the other vehicle will be lapsed because payment is past due and they will be informing the state next week, which means I cannot legally drive and may have my license suspended.

41 years old and I still can't look at anything I have done and say "Hey, I succeeded at something!"  Unless that something is fail spectacularly.  Then I'm coming up roses.

I often think I must be the bad example.  You know..."Eat your vegetables or you'll end up like...", or "Finish your homework or you'll wind up just like...", or "You don't want to be like...do you?

Sigh.  Good to have a purpose, eh?

All I can say is, at least Mum got ONE good one.  I'm glad he's doing well...

Gone to Pot...Holders...

Below are the pot holders I made for the Kickstarter campaign.  They're simple, pieced with scraps and backed with denim (I've had that red denim for ages, and I wish the photo could relay how soft it is - like suede!).  Not fancy, but machine washable and serviceable.  I hope the recipients like 'em!

A Load of Scrap

Lately I find myself rashly offering to make quilted things for folks.

First there was the quilt I offered to make if anyone donated a certain amount or more to the band's Kickstarter campaign.  That's still in the planning stages, since it's a big one.

Then there was the custom lap quilt for a raffle to help  pay for a young man's cancer treatments.  About halfway finished it would be done if my children would quit trying to help me with it.

Then there were the pot holders I needed to make to fulfill the Kickstarter promise of some kind of craft item from a band member for anyone donating at or above a certain level.

Now there's another quilt to be made for another fund-raiser, this time for a woman who has recently endured a string of misfortune that would buckle most folks - the loss of her husband to cancer followed by a devastating motorcycle crash that left her in pieces with staggering medical bills and the need to completely rearrange her house so she can simply get in and out and live her much-altered life there.

For some things, I buy new material, but for the pot holders, one of the lap quilts, and for a few future projects, I decided to rummage in my remnants box and make use of some scraps.  I have a lot of scraps in my life.  Sometimes I feel sorry for them, bits and pieces, odds and ends, just lingering in boxes bags and bins until I recall this bit or that which might be just what I need.

Hopefully the folks receiving these items won't be too disappointed.  I DO warn people that what I make is simple, meant to be used, worn out, patched, used some more - I don't do heirlooms, I do things for every day.  Scraps are good for that - little pieces of colorful cotton that might otherwise languish until I am long gone and some unfortunate heir has to wade into the craft room and sort through all that...er...priceless vintage fabric?  I hope I live long enough for my stash to become vintage, anyway...

Also, using the oddments means there's now room for more...because (and if you work with fabric, yarn, paper, or any craft medium, you understand this) there's no such thing as enough...even when it all looks like nothing more than a load of scrap.