The great freebie roundup 2013

About a week ago, I got sick and tired of seeing stacks of paper--my printed freebie charts--all over the house. There were a lot in the office, and I run a fan in there to keep it cool, since it's a small room, and I have all my computer equipment in there and it gets hot in there by early afternoon. When the fan started blowing, the papers would rustle, and . . . in case I have never shared this before, one of my personality quirks (along with not walking on grates because I think they'll collapse and give me a compound fracture) is that I can not stand the sound of rustling paper. It creeps me out. And I have enough hoarder tendancies that I have lots of paper. Now you know why I call this place Crazyville . . .

Anyway, I wanted to stitch Left-brain the Sanman Merry Members Christmas train for Christmas. He likes trains, he likes Santa, we don't have the space or money to buy a real train for under the tree, and so I thought this would work. I collected the parts . . . and true to how I roll, stuck them all over the house. Because that makes sense in my brain. And then reprinted parts of the train.  And couldn't find the engine and car 1. I did ask Sandy if I could have the charts again. She sent them to me. Which I am publicly going to thank her for, because she is awesome. TRULY TRULY AWESOME. But then I got to thinking about why in the H*LL I continue to live in this slightly modified chaos. And I decided I needed to really make an effort and organize these freebies, so that I stop doing this. Because it's annoying.

So I went through my freebies. I pulled the binders out I had, which were never really organized, and the boxes, which have been hidden all over the place like a squirrel's winter stash. To give Left-brain credit, he has stopped looking under the bed.  He doesn't know why I insist on storing things down there, says under the bed is not for storage; let it be known, Left-brain has never lived in a college dorm, but I have. And I stick cross stitch supplies and books under the bed. Because I like to keep them close.

 I set up a pretty simple system: one binder is all Sanmans, one is Halloween/fall, one is spring/spring holidays/rabbits, one is animals, one is summer/patriotic, one hearts, and one will be fantasy creatures and houses, along with primitives. The Sanman is done, as is the Halloween, hearts, and summer.  I still have to sort out the fantasy ones (I have a lot of dragon charts), and the animals. The basement looked terrible for a few days. I told Left-brain it was just temporary. While we would watch TV in the evenings, I have been sorting and putting into sheet protectors. The baby started picking up random sheets and handing them to me, I suspect to trade me for fishy crackers. LOL.  The room is starting to look better now.

I found a gnome chart for my cousin who collects gnomes. I will stitch that up for her for Christmas.

Along the way, I have figured, there are a lot of cat-related freebies. I think I have about a hundred, and that does not include the fall black cats--those went with Halloween. Dogs don't get represented in the freebie world like cats . . . wierd, hunh?

And that i have enough "be mine" freebies to do a tree in them. But I'm not doing that. Because I don't have time for it.

And I comparison-shopped sheet protectors. 100 at Target are a little over $8. 100 at Walmart, less than $7.50. And Walmart doesn't have any really cool school supplies that can be used for cross stitch this year. Hunh?

I am getting rid of any duplicate copies. Why keep them? It's just more paper to be making noise when the fan blows. And they take up space. And I want better for myself.

And it also reinforced my notion from two years ago that there is NO REASON to steal charts. There are so many freebies out there and available online that you don't have to violate someone's copyright. Like I've said before, I have such a wide range of stuff in these binders from very simple to very complex, by a lot of designers, it's not like I am suffering for choice. And while I do have to say, this isn't a collection (because that is what it is, really) that one amasses in a day or a week, it wasn't that hard to get.

By the way, I found all the pieces to my train. I'm going to look it over, see what I need, and hopefully get started soon. I'd like to finish a couple WIPs before starting something new, but I am not dumb, I realize I need to get started on it soon for Christmas. But this is a start. I've been sorting Katie's clothes and putting them away, will be getting rid of some books and clothes of mine. I will do better. And it starts with the freebies.