Yesterday I began tidying my art and craft room after making a right mess in there making Christmas decorations and presents. It is a tiny little room, perhaps only fit for storage really, but with my system of drawers on top of drawers,and  folders and baskets crammed where they fit you find that there is a place for everything. It is during these tidying sessions that I really familiarise myself with the chaos, so that at some point in the future I can realise I need black sparkly wool and know that is in the drawers under the computer desk, second drawer up, in the gold zip bag at the back.

   I also tend to find things I had forgotten about, such as this delightful old book…

As you can see it is quite worn around the spine so  have made a point of keeping it in a safer place from now on. The book was reprinted in 1966 and has this message carefully written in fountain pen on the inside:

To consult the Oracle, first you must choose your question from a list of 100 deliciously old fashioned musings, such as “The Gentleman that I am glad too see, does he think of me?” and “ought I to fear the tête a tête?”.    I chose question 36 “Ought I execute the project I have formed?” As it seemed quite fitting, with my new found enthusiasm and all…

Whilst concentrating on the question I hovered my finger over a table of symbols with my eyes closed and chose one at random. This corresponded with my question number on a table, telling me on which page I would find the answer I sought…upon finding the page, you again locate the symbol and there you have the words of dusty wisdom. Mine happened to be “You have never conceived a better one”.