Knickknacks

I've been having a lot of trouble getting used to balancing my new year obligations - specifically, my decision to start my novel has negatively impacted my crafting time. I'm going to have to find a balance - and I think it'll get easier when each days worth of writing doesn't require that I do hours of research (I'm averaging about 2 hours of research to write 3 pages of text - some days as little as an hour but most more like 3 or even more). Needless to say, if I'm working all day then researching and writing for hours, it's hard to find a block of time in which to crochet! Still, I have been working on my free pattern (the first version looks very cute but doesn't work cause the darn thing won't stand up! Which stinks, cause I made two before I realized it!), and I'll be taking another project on the train today instead of bringing a book. So things are moving along!

However, I didn't want to put off posting longer, and I've got some shots for a post I've been planning, so might as well get it up here!

We all have busy times and complex lives, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who considers home something of a sanctuary (even though I work at home). But with limited space, I think what we choose to display in our homes says a lot about who we are and what we care about. I live in a very small apartment, but I still wouldn't feel at home if I didn't have some precious personal objects out and on display. I generally think of these sorts of things as "knickknacks" (which isn't how I think to spell it but I'm bowing to the all-mighty spell check), and I took some shots of some of mine to share. Note that the lighting in my apartment sucks, so high art these pics are not. :)

First off, this is my entire apartment:

I stood in one corner to take this picture, and you can see the front door. Only out of sight are the kitchen, which is just left of the door, and the bathroom, which is right. Note the art of the wall - that's a passion of mine, but not for this post! :)

Most of the knickknacks are on my room divider:

It separates my living room area (TV, couch, computer, filing cabinet, DVD stands, drum kit) from my bedroom area (sitting chair, bed, book cases). It's where most of my random items live. On the top shelf you can see some items from my shot glass collection. Yes, it's a strange thing for a girl who doesn't drink a drop to collect, but they're pretty and help me remember where I've been (and my friends buy them for me, too!) :) Some of these knickknacks are just things I liked (the monster on the lower right was on sale at Target!) but most have some amount of meaning to me, often a lot.

Take these two, for example:

This is froggy and Spaceman Spiff. Froggy was an over-priced stuffed toy that I fell in love with when I was a Sophomore in high school. I didn't want to ask for him cause I thought he was too expensive, but then I got really sick, and my mom brought him home for me as a gift. I've loved him ever since. I brought him to school a few days later (yes, in HS) and got made fun of by my friends because he has no eyes. He's been with me on every trip I've been on that he can fit in to the luggage. The beads on his arm are a charm I bought in...er...Japan, I think. Asia somewhere. Spaceman Spiff I bought around the same time, at NASA in Houston, and he gets to go on even more trips cause he's smaller. They're both very precious to me.

A lot of other things on here are from places I've traveled too, like this little set of guys from Germany:

The thing I REALLY wanted from this store were the awesome antique-style clocks, but I couldn't afford this. But I just fell in love with the moon faced man and his star faced singers. :)

Gifts also make it on to the divider:

My dad got me this on one of his trips (I think it was too Hawaii) and I think it's lovely - he gave it to me for Christmas a few years ago. The Moon and Stars behind him was also a gift, when I was much younger, from my "Aunt" Cynthia, who bought it for me at a street fair when we were out together, and behind that still, and from even longer ago, is a bird perched on a piece of drift wood that my grandfather bought me when I was about 7 when the two of us visited Canada together.

When I was a little girl, I loved animals and breakable things:

The result is a very eclectic mix. The little glass animals with features are all from when I was very young, and were bought at the Museum Of Natural History on various visits. Many of them are broken because of all of the times they've fallen over the years, such as the tusk-less Elephant. However, the one just to the right of the Koala is a Kappa figure that I found in Japan three years ago after hunting all over for one that was just right; the horse in the background was a gift from my mom about five years ago when she went to Phoenix - it's made by the native tribes there; the little blue elephant came from somewhere or other and I bought it cause it was only a buck, and the crystal bunny with no ears left is one of my more dear items, because my dad got it for me. When I was very young, my parents got divorced, and for some reason many of the things my dad got me as gifts (especially during visitations) became among my most precious possessions. I used to really miss him.

That's also the story behind this:

Probably the dearest to me of all of the items I've got on display. This was also from my dad, I was probably 5 or 6 years old.

And yet another, he brought this home on a trip he work trip he took to Greece:

When I was a kid, I thought it was an antique! :)

Whatever the items are, though, I wouldn't have them out if they weren't important to me:

A gift from my mom's trip to Germany; a piggy bank with dinosaurs I bought while visiting my brother and sister-and-law, the Mets apple I got for free at a game last year...these are things that remind me of good times and happy things, and it's important to me to have them out where I can see them. With such limited space, the things that don't matter as much don't get to be on display, and I really had to pick and choose.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the choices I've made, though. Some are old, some are new, some are in between, and very few of them match at all, but they're all important to me, and I could tell a story about almost every one!



So, what knickknacks do you all have out? What do they mean to you?