My theme for this season’s Discardia (which runs through July 18th) is about evaluating the Things I Do for Fun — or at least, with my spare time. I started with a big cleanup of my studio and evaluating what I do and don’t want to spend my time on. Some of the things that didn’t make the cut:

• apparel fabric that I bought before my wardrobe rework that doesn’t fit with my new image
• most of my quilting fabric stash
• an assortment of lace trim, elastic, webbing and other sewing odds and ends
• tools and supplies for printmaking (I never took it up)
• most of a ream of white card stock I bought to make accordion books for my Etsy shop (I’ve realized I don’t enjoy making accordion books)
• many sheets and largish scraps of colored paper and leftover bookcloth

All of that (several trips to the car) went to SCRAP (Scrounger’s Center for Reusable Art Parts), a local non-profit that resells the supplies for cheap and serves many local teachers and community groups — and will accept donations of a big stack of card stock and colored paper. I also sold my coverstitch machine on Craigslist, which is something that’s been on my to-do list for months.

Other things that were stacked up in the studio: enough folded sections of Mohawk Superfine paper to make at least 20 books. But, oddly, paper for 20+ books is daunting — it says, “You have to make 20+ books now!” And then I run out of the room. But since my Japanese papers were all suddenly so nicely organized, I cut enough book board and cover papers (the step that take the most spreading out and dealing with large sheets of stuff) to complete all of the books. Now it feels like finishing them is much more manageable — a little sanding, a little gluing, a little sewing. I’m thinking Coptics.

So — w00t! Clean studio! It’s quite nice in here when it’s not yelling at me.

Other targets on my list for the coming weeks: working my way through accumulated reading debt, getting rid of iPad time-sucks (I’m looking at you, Zuma), and tuning my new computer into the perfect productivity companion.

I broke out my Gocco and printed these Moleskine notebooks for everyone on my team at work. I don’t think they all get the Douglas Adams nod, but they appreciated the humor.

I first knit the Upstairs shawl back in August, 2010. I wear it frequently, but more often as a scarf than as a shawl because it doesn’t wrap far enough around to stay closed when I want it to. (I know, I could pin it. But I don’t.) It’s also a little narrow, and I always meant to reblock it but I never did. So instead I decided to spend 60 hours knitting another one. In black, of course.

This time I used two skeins of Malabrigo Lace, which gave me an extra hundred yards or so of yarn to work with. I cast on the same number of stitches as before, but got four more rows of the pattern repeat. I also used blocking wires to block it, which has turned out very well — I managed to block it to the suggested 22″ width this time, and 66″ long.

The Malabrigo seems drapier than the handpaintedyarn.com lace-weight yarn I used the first time. I don’t know if this is due to better blocking, or if the Malabrigo is softer (it feels softer). Maybe now that I have blocking wires I’ll finally reblock the first one.