The Great Craft Room Reorganization of 2017

My crazy-time at work ended at about 2:00 AM Friday, June 30, at least for a little while.  I've been working a lot of hours since March, but particularly in the last 2-3 weeks I was easily working 60 hours/week.  It's an annual occurrence, so in that sense I'm used to it, but when it's over I'm always exhausted and cranky and have the feeling that while I was working the rest of my life has spun out of control.  That last part is not usually literally true, but so many things get put off those last few weeks I always feel like it is.

I don't know about you, but organizing something always gives me a sense of putting my life back in order, so I've spent a good chunk of the past week rearranging and reorganizing my craft room.

First goal was to get the yarn and fiber out of the closet and into the room where I can see it easily and constantly.  This is in part to make it easier to see and find what I have, but also to remind me of how much I do have and hopefully curb some of the "oh pretty" impulse buying of more.  I bought some more cubes and successfully got all my yarn, including handspun in bins or on display.  There's very little room left for more.

All of my yarn

And most of my fiber is also out on display now.  The only thing left in bins in the closet is a couple of fleece-sized quantities.

Most of my fiber

I moved my cutting table to a longer wall.  This makes it easier to access the fabric and supplies in the cubbies underneath and it's also a better location for rolling it away from the wall if I need to be able to walk around it while I cut.  My ball winder and swift also stay attached to this table most of the time. The cart between the fiber bins and the cutting table holds all my current crossstitch projects (which have seen no love in recent months) and rolls easily out of the way when necessary.

My sewing table is now where my cutting table used to be.

 About the only thing that stayed in the same place is my desk.

The bookshelf that was full of fiction books got moved to the guest room.  I removed the shelf in the closet and moved the other two bookcases in there. These hold photos that need to be sorted, craft books, supplies and things I don't use as often.

The closet is now more for storage so I won't have to move things in there around as often trying to get to my yarn or fiber.  These two tall rolling drawer sets hold partial balls of yarn, buttons, smaller pieces of fabric like fat quarters, and other odds and ends.  My blocking mats are to the right of them, and my drying racks to the left.

Although it still looks like a bit of a jumble, the remaining shelves that hold more supplies and other odds and ends for various crafts are more organized as well.

Overall, given the limited space I have to work with, I'm pretty happy with where everything is and how functional it will be.  We'll see how long it stays that way!

WIP Roundup - The Blankets

If you knit or crochet, you may already realize that "scrap" blankets are a popular project these days.  I appear to have bought tickets on the crazy train when it comes to blankets the past couple of years and have several in progress.  Some of these get worked on regularly, some sporadically.  I consider them all long term projects with no deadline (except for the one that will be obvious in a moment).

The crazy began back in January 2015 when I decided to start a sock yarn blanket. I use a lot of fingering weight yarn, for socks and other projects, but I always have at least a partial skein left over.  I'm doing 31 stitch squares on US1 needles, so each of my squares only uses about 3g of yarn.  I've been throwing more of the larger squares in lately because I've been using more self-striping yarn and it takes a larger square to really show the stripes.

Not too long after I started the sock yarn blanket, I decided to start a blanket that is truly from scraps of sock yarn.  These are bits that are too little to even make one of the small squares in the sock yarn blanket.  I'm making this one up as I go along.  I cast on 25 stitches and just knit the bits in stripes until that one strip was as long as I thought I wanted the blanket.  Now I'm working on the second strip of only 10 stitches, attaching it to the first one as I go.  Other than trying to make sure I don't do the very similar colors right next to each other, I'm not planning anything, just knitting until I run out of that yarn, then magic knotting the next color on and keep knitting.

Because it only takes a little over 50g to make myself a pair of socks, I still had a lot of sock yarn left after making a square for the sock yarn blanket, but more than I really wanted to use in the true scrap blanket.  So in June 2015 I started making blanket squares similar to those of the Barn Raising Quilt that a lot of people have made and called it my Bandwagon Blanket.  I start off my squares a little differently, but it's the same effect.  So far I've made 14 squares for this.  I'm a little more choosy about which yarns I use for this, sticking to ones I really love the colors of or ones that are colors outside my "norm" so there will be some variation in the end product.

I blame Diane of The Suburban Stitcher podcast for this next one.  She started a granny square blanket out of sock yarn, and after seeing it several times on her podcast, I had to have one too.  This is basically a big granny square that just keeps getting bigger.  I started it in December 2016 and I'm using a 3.00 mm hook and just crocheting around and around in whatever yarn I pick up next out of the bag.

So with all these "scrap" sock yarn blankets I've developed sort of a system for where my leftover sock yarn goes.  I knit my socks two at a time, so when I finish a pair there are 2 balls of yarn left over, usually about 20-23g each.  One goes into the sock yarn blanket bag and if I like the yarn enough, the other ball goes in the bandwagon blanket bag.  Whichever ball is biggest after those squares are made goes into the granny square bag and the other one goes into a bin where I keep leftovers for making mini skeins for swaps, etc.  Yarn only goes into the scrap blanket bag when it has less than 5g left and therefore not enough for making a mini skein.

The final blanket is the only one that's not a scrap blanket.  I did start it out of leftover worsted weight superwash yarn I had on hand, but I've already had to order some more of some colors, and I'm sure I'll probably need more before it's done.  This one is my 2017 Temperature Blanket, which I'm making using the Groovy-ghan pattern. This is also a crochet blanket, and I'm using a 4.5mm hook.  Basically, I do one stripe for each day of the year and the color of the stripe is determined by the high temperature for that day.  I'm about a week behind on this one because of trying to finish things for Frolic, but I'm generally trying to stay on top of it by working on it every 2-3 days.  It's going to be a large throw blanket when it's done, but not wide enough to cover a bed. This picture shows January and February.

So that's the blanket madness.  Sadly, those are not all my projects.  I have another group of projects that are hibernating.  I was going to post about those, but since it could be a while before any of them get any attention, I've decided I'll just wait until I actually work on them at some point and tell you about them then.

The Year in Knitting

2012 is almost over, and other than the birth of our first granddaughter, it was a relatively uneventful year. 

So in lieu of a sentimental journey through the year, I thought I'd share some of my favorite completed knitting projects from the year.

I had fun making this blanket for Carey for her birthday in March.  Despite the fact that it was stockinette stitch, which is usually boring, the multiple color changes kept it interesting because I was always excited to see what the next color was going to look like with what I had done so far.

My oldest niece Madelyn had her first communion this year, and I made her veil.  This was my first real attempt at some sort of design, although in this case "design" meant pulling pieces from other patterns and stitch books and working out the stitch count.  Still, I was pleased with the result, and more importantly, so was my sister-in-law.

I've made sweaters before, but never for someone else.  This year I made a sweater for my college roommate, based on measurements that I took when I saw her in the spring.  She came to visit a month or so ago and I finally gave it to her, and it fit!

I made a bunch of shawls this year.  I blogged about one of my favorites earlier this year here.  I won't go into details on all of them, but here they are in all their glory.

 With a new granddaughter, of course a couple of baby items had to be knit!  Newborns grow out of clothes so fast I decided to wait until she's a little older to make sweaters, etc. so I made a couple of blankets for her.

I had a little fun with my yarn this year as well.  Dr. Who fans may recognize these next two.  I crocheted an Ood mask for a coworker of Rob's for Halloween, and knit a Dalek for Rob for Christmas.

So that's a summary of 2012 in knitting.  I'm declaring 2013 the Year of Knitting Socks, so stay tuned!

The Stash

Like most knitters, I started out buying just enough yarn to complete whatever project I was working on at the time.  In the case of one project, I didn't even buy all of the yarn I needed at once, I just bought more as I needed it (a mistake I will never make again).

Boy has that changed!

Not only do I have more than one project in the works at any given time, but I have much more yarn than I have projects!

To knitters this is known as the "stash". While the most honest intent of having a stash is to always have yarn on hand when you want to start a project, the reality is that pretty yarn has this power to draw you in and convince you that you cannot live without at least a skein, or two, or three.

I was in a real organizing and sorting mode when making room for my new writing space, so I spent a little time reorganizing the stash to put it all neatly in its place, and I took some pictures for you.

This is all of my lace weight yarn.

This is all of my fingering weight yarn.

I didn't lay out all of the worsted weight, as it doesn't get used as much so was already pretty neatly in its place, and I was tired by then.  But imagine another similar sized group of yarn as well.

Yes, it looks like, and probably is, a lot of yarn.  But I love it all.  And if you check out the Flash Your Stash 2012 thread on Ravelry, you'll see I'm not nearly as bad as some!

Like Tripping on Acid*

Groovy man!

Pretty psychedelic building huh?  It's actually the Flanders Gallery in downtown Raleigh, and all that bright colored paint, isn't paint at all.....it's yarn.  Yes, yarn.

It is panel after panel of crocheted yarn done by Crocheted Olek.  A friend shared a pic on Facebook earlier today so when I ran out at lunch to return some library books, I couldn't resist stopping by to take my own picture.

Can you see the stitches?

While I'm not sure that I would call this attractive (apparently the odd figures are the artist's "thing"), I think it's really cool that crochet is being recognized as art.  Not everyone will agree, nor like it, but I don't like all art either.  That doesn't mean that it is not, in fact, art.  I think it's pretty cool.

*Disclaimer: I have no idea what it's actually like to trip on acid, but I did figure out how to put captions on my pictures!