Wednesday 29 March 2017

Minimalising

I am sitting on the terrace now, - it's going on for 6 o'clock and the weather is still beautiful. I have been watching a blackbird trying to get worms out of the lawn which I cut this afternoon,

Blackbird looking for worms

...and listening to bees just buzzing about looking for a flower.


One thing I love about living in France is the weather. Maybe there are other problems with things such as the bureaucracy and the officialdom - the forms and bits of language that I am sure I will never be able to understand not even if I live to be 100, but the weather here in the Haute Vienne, well it's been lovely.

I am just putting string onto labels I made a while ago so that I can price up things for the sale I'm having in the second week in April which is the week after next now.  I have advertised it on Facebook and it seems like a loads of people are coming so I just hope they all come and will buy lots of the things that I feel I am not going to use any more and then that will give me loads of space and I will feel relieved that all this 'stuff' that I had is gone and I am surrounded by space that I can use for living in!

Stringing labels

But at the moment I have a room in my house I can't use because it's full of, well, 'stuff'. I call it my craft room but actually it's just a space where I store things I'm in the middle of sometimes and then they usually never get finished!

In fact, this is what that room looks like now...

Craft room 2017

 So I put an advert on Facebook on various groups and it has had a really good response. In fact I'm a bit worried now, that people will arrive en masse here on Monday, 10 April and that there might not even be enough room in the hamlet for them to park and they will be disappointed with the selection of stuff that I have for sale.

Well, I have been crocheting and knitting and sewing and and amassing bits and pieces to use with those crafts for a long time now and in fact I brought a lot of that stuff out France with me when I moved here 10 years ago and to be honest I really haven't used it much, if at all. Sometimes I have even bought more, though I hate to say so.

Anyway I have a lot of bits of yarn and material, beads and sewing things and work boxes (at one time I had 17 work boxes although I have sold some of them now) and I just feel I will never live long enough to use all this stuff up.

There are a lot of crafty ladies - English ladies that is - living out here in France in this rural part.  I suppose they always did crafts but now they have more time to do it and there isn't a lot around this area that you can go out and do and there aren't many shops where you can buy the bits and pieces to do those things that you want to do and anyway whatever shops there are are probably at least half an hour away from nearly everybody, and most of these people are on a very restircted income.

You can see from the pictures I have put up in this post and previous ones, that this is a very rural part of France - shops are few and far between and they shut for two hours at lunchtime anyway,which might be just about the time that you have made the long journey to get there !

 I guess we all like a bargain whether we live in rural France or in an English city or next door to a shop with all the things we really want,  so I guess it's partly that and the idea of spending some time rifling through somebody else's collection of goodies,  which makes the idea of going a fair distance to look at who knows what (but it might be really interesting) attractive. And if we know there's the prospect of a bargain - great!

So I am just waiting for a delivery from Amazon of clear plastic carrier bags (yes, I know they aren't eco-friendly) so I can sort out materials and yarns ready for the sale and bag and price them. I have a good idera of what I have for sale, and, hopefully, I will have everything (well, almost) ready for the week of the sale.



4 comments:

Elizabethd said...

Wow, that is quite a roomful that you have! Do hope it goes well and that you manage to sell everything to give yourself some space.

Babajeza said...

Good luck! I'm getting rid of things, too. However, I'm still keeping the craft supplies. :-) There are no shops in fair distance, so when ever I want to do something, I have the material right here. Have a lovely spring in France. Regula

Carolyn said...

Good luck with the sale. I am trying to sell stuff locally at the moment, but live in an urban environment so people have more choice.

Clicky Needles said...

Good luck with the sale. Your craft room looks full!