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!

Calm Before the Storm

I got my 2014 Reading List up to date on here today and started my list for 2015. I can tell from the last few books I've read that I'm entering my mindless reading phase.  When my life gets busy and stressful my reading tends to be mostly Harlequin type romance.  They're escapism at its finest, coupled with guaranteed happy endings, and they give my brain a rest for a while from all the other stuff going on. 

Work is going to start getting busy again next week, so I'm taking the next two days off to have a 4 day weekend and try to combine a last couple of days of relaxation with getting a couple of things done.

Tomorrow is "relax day".  I'm going to spin, knit, read, weave, sleep, whatever I feel like doing at any given moment and not feel guilty about it or think about anything I "should" be doing.  At some point I will figure out what we're having for dinner, but it will most likely involve take out.

Friday is the day to get a few things done.  The pile of donations that have been sitting in first the floor of the guest room and then my craft room for over 3 months need to be listed, bagged, and dropped off at the Salvation Army.  If the weather report remains accurate and we don't get any rain, I will finally get the outside Christmas lights and wreath down and put away.  And finally, the largest project, I will get my craft room cleaned up and organized because right now it looks like everything exploded in there.

Saturday morning early Rob & I are heading to buy some wood so he can start the master bedroom closet built-ins.  When we get back from doing that I'm going to drive down to Stedman and check out the Spin Stitch Knit Festival.  It's new this year and probably small, but I figure I'll give it a chance.  I know that one of my favorite vendors Unplanned Peacock will be there, so that alone will make it worth the drive.

Sunday will be my normal routine, which mainly involves doing laundry and a trip to the grocery store, and gearing myself up to go back to work on Monday.  Hopefully by then I will feel ready for the months to come.

Girls With Purls Anniversary

My knitting group, Girls with Purls, had its 7th anniversary dinner tonight.  I've been in the group about 4 years and we have a pretty good time.  It's also how I met Michiele and Roxie, so for that, even if there was nothing else, it's been a worthwhile experience.

We meet at a restaurant that one of our members has an "in" with and generally have a loud and rowdy time talking, eating, and playing a version of dirty Santa, except with yarn.  All in all it's generally a lot of fun.

As usual, work was fickle this afternoon and I thought I might not make it, but since by 6:00 the people I was waiting on still didn't know what they wanted me to do for tomorrow, I left work and went to the dinner.  (Of course now that I'm home I had to take care of what they finally decided they wanted prepared, but it beats sitting around work waiting).

I did take a few pictures, but they're all pretty much of people sitting and standing around tables talking and then things got fun and I got to talking and forgot to take any more pictures.  So I decided since you really couldn't see anything interesting in the pictures, I'd just leave them out.

Here, have a cute cat picture instead.....

Mindless Monday

No, this is not a new theme for Mondays, well I guess it could be, but it's more a comment on my lack of brain cells at the moment.  It's Monday.  It's the unpredictable time of my work year.  It has caused my brain to be a little scattered, and as a result, the only things I can think to write about today are posts that require more brain power than I currently possess.

So instead, you get this...

Nothing like a little mindless yarn winding when you don't have the concentration to do much else.

But y'all....I'm getting ready to knit with my OWN handspun for the first time EVER!....I think I just squealed a little.

Hopefully I'll have a little more for you tomorrow.

FO Friday

Our daughter & her fiance, and my in-laws are all here this weekend for a bridal shower tomorrow, so since I really haven't thought much about today's post I decided it would be a good time to implement "FO Friday".

FO (finished object) Friday will involve showing you objects I've recently (or maybe not so recently if I haven't actually shown it to you yet) finished, knitting, spinning, weaving, or whatever other craft I might use to create the object.

For my first FO Friday I will share the mistake riddled scarf that is the result of my weaving efforts I shared in this recent post.  There is definitely lots of room for improvement, but I learned a lot, including what things I need to learn how to do better.

I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to weave next, but it will have to wait until my craft room is not being used as the overflow guest room.

Friends & Fiber - Part 2

Although the fiber retreat was in Candor, just south of Asheville, we actually stayed in Burnsville, just north of Asheville because Roxie has a very kind friend Maryann that has a house there she lets us use on occasion.  Not having to pay for a hotel room really helps out and we REALLY appreciate her letting us stay (I don't think she even knows about this blog, so I'm not saying that just to suck up either).

Silk scarf dyed by Roxie

Roxie had a class Saturday morning to learn how to do another kind of dyeing, so we headed back down to the retreat for the morning.   The plan was to spend the morning at the retreat, have some lunch somewhere and then head back to the house to spend the afternoon crafting.  But the great thing about traveling with Michiele and Roxie is that plans can change and we all go with the flow.

The retreat was actually held at a middle school just up the road from the Friends & Fiberworks store, so after we left there we stopped by the actual store to browse around (and maybe make a couple of purchases).  While there we found out about yet another yarn shop just north of Asheville on our way back to Burnsville, so we had to stop there as well.  That store, The Knitting Diva, is relatively new, but it is an awesome store.  They dealt oh so well with our particular brand of crazy while we were there & we will definitely visit it again when we're back in the area.  I may have spent a little money in that one. (Have you been keeping count?  That's five yarns stores in the general Asheville area.)

Cute sheep outside Yummi Yarns

There's also a yarn shop in Burnsville called Yummi Yarns.  We had been there before, but they've moved to a new location since our last visit, so we had to check it out as well.  I did buy a skein of sock yarn there to make Rob another pair of socks.

By the time we got back to the house around dinner time, our massive crafting plans had dwindled a bit, but that doesn't mean we did nothing.  Michiele had brought her drum carder so I spent a little time turning some fiber I had dyed at Carolina Fiber Frolic, but wasn't really thrilled with into something that I may actually want to spin.

This, which was muddy and kind of compacted

Turned into these, which are light and airy and hopefully will be nice to spin

I also used the drum carder to blend two different colored fibers together into batts.

This became....

This

We took our time heading out Sunday.  We stopped by to see a former coworker of Roxie's who has recently moved to the area and then had a wonderful brunch at Kirkwood's Cafe before finally getting on the road.

Overall, a great time, and I can't wait to do it again!

Friends & Fiber - Part 1

I love the "epic" part

A couple of weekends ago I went to the mountains for the Friends & Fiberworks Summer Retreat with my friends Roxie and Michiele.  As usual when the 3 of us go somewhere, we had a great time, did a little shopping, and had a lot of laughs.

Friday afternoon Michiele & I took a class on Photographing Your Fiber with Franklin Habit.   This is the 2nd class I've taken with Franklin, and I just love him.  If we didn't both already have husbands I'd ask him to marry me.  But back to the class, although it doesn't show in any of the pictures in this post, I did learn a lot about how my little point and shoot camera works and tips for lighting, etc. that I can use even with my iphone.  Hopefully one of these days I'll sit down and go through my camera manual and really learn how to do something with all he taught us.

Miss Babs was also attending the retreat as a student and was in Franklin's class too.  She's a fiber celebrity in her own right because she dyes the most gorgeous yarn and fiber, so I had a double fan girl moment.

That's the only class I took, but there was a small market there, so I did a little shopping as well.  I bought my Cricket loom (the subject of yesterday's post) there as well as a little yarn and fiber.  But of course the shopping didn't end there.

We went into downtown Asheville where there are three shops that sell yarn, count them, three in one downtown!  Only one of them is exclusively a yarn shop, but the other two have more than just a small amount of yarn.  I managed to curb my spending and not buy anything at any of them except for a couple of pairs of needle tips I needed.

Check out the cute sock monkey ninjas!

And sock monkey pirates too!

The perfect accessory for UNC football games dontcha' think?  If I could find a pattern for this my entire family would get them for Christmas!

Also while we were downtown, Michiele proved that I am not the only person who has become obsessed with crafts.  When we were at the Carolina Fiber Frolic in March she learned how to eco-dye using plants and flowers.  As we were walking around she noticed some marigolds at the end of their life and couldn't resist deadheading them all so she could use them to dye.

I'm sure the Battery Park Apartments thanks her.

And all that was just Friday!  I'll tell you about the rest of the weekend tomorrow.

In Which I Learn ALL the Fiber Crafts

Rob says I've become obsessed.  I prefer to think of it as having found something I enjoy and having fun with it.

Before I decided to learn to spin, I was contemplating learning to weave.  My yarn stash was growing and I thought that weaving would be another way to use up some of it.  I did some weaving on a floor loom when I was a kid at Camp Yonahlossee (now Yonahlossee Resort) and my mother still has the pillow I made, and I think a place mat my sister made as well.  But that was the extent of my experience. I was debating getting a floor loom, but decided I didn't really have the floor space, and then I ultimately decided that learning to spin was what I wanted to do next.

Fast forward about a year, and now that I'm spinning and creating even more yarn, the urge to weave returned.  I decided to go the cheaper and smaller route to begin with, so a couple of weeks ago I bought a 15" Schacht Cricket rigid heddle loom.  I finally got around to warping it and figuring out how to use it, and here's what I've done so far.

I started with a simple scarf project in the book that came with the loom, and using the yarn that came with the loom as well.  It's a good thing, because what you can't see in that picture is how horrible the majority of my edges are and the 4 or 5 places where I missed a thread or two when running the shuttle through the warp.  You might be able to tell where I'm not quite even all the time either, but that's what practice is for I suppose.


 This is a small loom, so I may still want a floor loom eventually, but for now I think I'll have fun making scarves, maybe some coasters, and who knows, maybe even some place mats, a la Camp Yonahlossee.

And there are still more fiber crafts to conquer....bobbin lace anyone?

The Closest I'll Ever Get to the Tour de France

The Tour de France started yesterday, July 5th and goes until July 27th, with only the 15th and 21st as rest days.  That's 21 days of riding a bicycle, in other words, a lot of damn bicycle riding.

In the fiber world however, that means it's time for Tour de Fleece!  Yes, fleece, as in the wool off of a sheep.  The primary goal of Tour de Fleece is to spin every day that the Tour de France rides.

There's no official website, but there are a lot of groups and teams on Ravelry participating.  Each person chooses their own goals for the event, and some of the groups do prizes for meeting your goals, but it's really just about setting a goal for your spinning and trying to achieve it. 

This is my first year participating since it's the first year I've been a spinner.  My goals are pretty modest in my opinion.  My primary goal is to spin at least 10 minutes every day of the event.  This week should be relatively quiet at work, so I should be home at a decent hour every night, but who knows what it will be like after that, so just making time to spin every day might turn out to be a challenge.

My secondary goal is to get as much of this box of fiber spun as possible.  That lovely dreaminess is 40 ounces of Three Waters Farm polwarth/silk.  The plan is to spin it into a 3-ply yarn, dye it an as yet undetermined color, and knit a sweater out of it.  40 ounces is probably way more than I need for a sweater, even for my larger size, but I wanted to have plenty to mess up with in both the spinning and the dyeing.

I started spinning this fiber a little this week before the official start of Tour de Fleece, but I've almost got one bobbin full of singles.  That's not quite 4 ounces on the bobbin at the moment.

Knowing me, 21 days of spinning the exact same thing might get a little boring, so I may spin something with a little color a few of those days (I can already imagine how handy it would be to have a 2nd wheel), but right now I'm motivated to get a lot of this done.  The polwarth/silk blend drafts wonderfully so it's very relaxing to spin.

That's not all I've got going on though, stay tuned tomorrow for a peek at my newest fiber craft.

Random Things on a Saturday

Today was a little bit of everything.

My parents came down around lunch time to bring me a small secretary they had at their house that I planned to make my new writing desk.

Cute isn't it?

The plan was to make my current "desk", which is really a sewing table/cart more of an actually crafting table where I could use my rigid heddle loom, etc.  Unfortunately, I didn't realize how deep the top overhang is on this desk, so when I open my laptop on it about 3 inches is hanging off the desk.  So it's now out in the living room being pretty with pictures on top of it, and I'm using the same desk.  I'll just have to move my laptop when I want to weave I guess.

We went to Fairview Dairy Bar for lunch, and then while Rob & Dad piddled around the house, Mom & I went to the yarn store, Hallmark, and Belk.  I actually did not buy a single thing at Find X Design, the local yarn store, so I was very proud of myself. Mom bought some yarn, a pattern book, and some needles, so we still did our part to help the economy.

I made my own economic contributions at Hallmark & Belk though.  Our Hallmark has an attached boutique which sells Danskos and I finally bought the brown tooled leather ones I've been wanting for a while.   I have these same shoes in Black & wear them all the time. At Belk I bought a t-shirt.  They also had Fiesta dinner plates as singles, so I bought a few more colors of plates to add to our every day dishes.  I've been wanting some more plates, but haven't wanted to buy full 4 piece place settings, which was the only thing I'd been able to find before now.

After Mom & Dad left I did some knitting, finished cleaning & sorting the bathroom cabinets I started this morning before they arrived, cooked dinner, then did some more knitting while I watched TV with Rob.

So nothing too exciting today, but all in all a good day.  Now I have a date with my spinning wheel because Tour de Fleece (more about that tomorrow probably) started today and I can't fail on the first day!

Spinning a Yarn

I've really been enjoying spinning lately.  Practice makes you a better spinner and being better at it makes me enjoy it more I guess.

I finished some Three Waters Farm Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) right before I went to Carolina Fiber Frolic, and I chain plied it while I was at the event.  I still put a little too much twist in the single and in the ply, but it's a usable yarn.  I washed it today finally and it helped relax the twist a bit.

Skeined up, but before washing

After washing

Friday night I finished spinning the second bobbin of a braid of Polwarth/Silk from Gale's Art  and didn't even think about the fact that I should have let that bobbin "rest" overnight before plying because I was too excited.  This is probably my best skein so far as far as twist goes.  The singles were probably a little over twisted, but it all seemed to even out in the plying because the yarn is very balanced.  I did this as a two ply fractal spin and I like the way it turned out.

Right after plying

After a bath

Last night I pulled out some more Three Waters Farm BFL that are dyed in special colorways for a Ravelry group I'm in. 

The multi-colored one is called Blue Sunset, and the other is just Burnt Orange.  My original plan was to spin each braid into a single and then ply them together in a two-ply.  I did a sample spin last night and I liked the resulting yarn. 

Bad picture, but you get the general idea

But I started spinning the Blue Sunset first, and the more I spin, the more I just can't see diluting these colors by plying with the orange all the way through.  So I think I've decided that I'm going to chain ply both braids and that way I'll have a multi-colored yarn and a coordinating orange yarn that I can use in a project together somehow.

You can't see the orange underneath, but this shows most of the rest of the colors.

I'm spinning this braid a lot slower this time and working on making my singles more consistent in thickness.  I still have so much to learn about spinning that sometimes I feel like I don't have a clue what I'm doing, but then I remember there was a time when I felt that way about knitting (not that I know everything there is to know about knitting).

Now I just need to figure out what to knit with the new yarn I'm making!

Taming the Stash

Friday was a holiday for me, but Rob had to work, so I decided to tackle organizing and sorting my yarn and fiber closet.  The yarn stash has gotten rather large and was falling out of the bins & the addition of fiber for spinning wasn't helping, so it was time to add another set of cubes.

This was the closet shortly after I began.  I didn't think to take a pic until I had started taking a few things out, but you get the idea.

Yarn falling out of bins

Stuff all over the floor

I got it all out into my craft room, which was really a much bigger looking mess.

I've been trying to not buy a lot of yarn this year.  "Oh pretty" is often the reason I buy yarn, with only the vaguest idea of what I plan to do with it.  I've been pretty good so far, and have only bought yarn and fiber at a couple of planned events.  But if I needed any more proof that I really don't need to buy a lot of yarn, I got it Friday.

This is all my lace weight yarn

This is all of my fingering weight yarn

 Those are the two weights of yarn that I have the most of in my stash.  I didn't take a picture of the heavier yarn because I don't really have all that much of that.

The other good thing about pulling out all of the stash is it reminded me of some of the great yarn I do have, and I've already planned a couple of projects using yarn from my stash.  Plus....isn't it all so pretty?  It sort of makes me feel like Gollum and I just want to pet it and croon "my preeeciousssss".

So anyway, after 8 hours I finally had the new cube built and in the closet and all of the yarn and fiber stored nice and neatly.

This is all the lace weight, and the drawer tower has all my baby yarn and dishcloth cotton plus a few odds and ends

The two left bins are sweater quantities, the bottom right bin is the rest of my worsted/DK, and the top 3 bins are fingering weight.

This is the new 9 cube bin and it holds the rest of my fingering weight with my needle case sitting on top. That drawer tower on the right has some work horse worsted weight, my few skeins of handspun, and some odds and ends like buttons, beads, and dye.

The bottom left bin is some acrylic yarn and the other 3 bins are all my spinning fiber.

This is a shot from the door.  See...nothing on the floor!

Quite a productive day off, now if I can only keep it that way.  I've got more to ramble about regarding knitting and my craft room, but this post is probably long enough already, so I'll save that for tomorrow.

2013 Knitting Review

I've been making a concerted effort to get some knitting projects I started last year finished this month.  There's no reason why the shawl I started in August and the socks I started in April shouldn't be done by now.  We won't even talk about the shawl I started in January 2011 that has a gazillion beads, but I am determined to finish...one day.

Unfinished projects certainly haven't kept me from casting on for totally new ones already, but there are even more that I want to start and I'm trying to keep the works in progress (WIP) to less than 10.  Yes, I said 10.  I've currently got 5 on the needles, but that's only because I've finished up a couple in the last week or so.

All that is really unrelated to the point of this post, which is to give you a sample of my completed knitted objects from 2013.  I showed you the sweater for my daughter and shrug for a friend in my December recap post, but here are a few more.

You've seen these before, but I'm still inordinately proud of my Water for the Elephants socks.

I did several shawls by one of my favorite designers, Romi Hill.

Winter's Moon

 

Misselthwaite

Song of Spring

 And another shawl from a different designer, Montego.

I also made Rob a pair of socks (which he didn't really want until he wore these hunting, and now he wants more) and a pair of hunting gloves (which I don't think he tried at all this season).

This shawl was made for a friend for her wedding.  Silver colored silk lace yarn with seed pearls.  I don't have a great picture, but she was happy with it.

I did a couple of samples for designers to take to shows or display in shops this year, including this single colored Coilis out of some really cushy locally produced organic wool.

That's not everything, but I don't want to bore you.  All in all, I finished 26 projects last year.  That's not as prolific as the 35 I did in 2012, but still a good bit.  I totally failed in my goal to knit 13 pairs of socks in 2013.  The ones I'm trying to finish now would have been pair number 5, so I didn't even get half way.  Oh well.  Knitting is relaxing to me, so I try not to stress about it.

Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the show.