Embarrassment of riches (Warning: contains yarn porn!)

It's slow going, but I'm continuing my progress in organizing my basement craft and bedroom sewing areas.

This is what my basement looked like prior to my husband emptying the storage unit:

This is the view from the top of the basement stairs - the stairway is painted a light lavender color. The wall at the bottom of the stairs is "Soothing Green Tea" green.

This is the "green" side of the basement, where I'm setting up my crafting area, yarn storage and my daughter's "work" table.  The door on the left leads to the laundry room, storage area and furnace. The door on the right leads to the closet under the stairs - some day we may turn it into a half bath, but for now it's just general storage.

This is the "nook" where my IKEA storage unit/craft table is going. That wall with the outlets is about 8 1/2' long.  I love having all the outlets at countertop height - should be able to accommodate my convection oven, food processor, Foredom buffer, Dremel, magnifying light and more (for my polymer clay art).

This is the family room area on the other side of the stairs.  The wall looks very blue in these photos, but the color is a dark amethyst (purple). That funky post on the side of the room is holding up the house (there's a load bearing wall above).  We had thought we might do some sort of built-in cabinet back behind it for the DVD player/sound system components, but we're going to see if we have any furniture that might work in that space. We're going to install our movie projector on the rear wall (to the left of the support column) which will project the image onto a pull-down screen on the opposite side of the room.

View of the green room from the purple side of the stairs.

And, a view of the stairs from the green side.

My friend Clara helped choose these colors; the photos do not do them justice.  I love the high contrast between the green and purple - it's really energizing.  The baseboard trim has been primed, but not painted yet - it will be Muslin White.  The window on the green wall will be covered by a pull-down movie screen when we're watching our Netflix's at night..

 

View from the bottom of the stairs.

As I said, these photos were taken BEFORE my husband emptied the storage unit and filled up both spaces with all our crap stuff. I've been moving things like sports and camping equipment and out-of-season clothing to the new shelving we put in the laundry room storage area, and I would have been able to finish it before this weekend except that I need to get another shelving unit (or two) to put stuff on. So I decided to tackle my yarn stash instead.

In order to figure out how I wanted to store my yarn in the new space, I gathered all of it (well, most of it, because I can tell that some skeins are missing) and sorted it into piles on the floor.  (Yikes!  I have THAT much yarn?)  This is what it looked like earlier this afternoon, before I put it all away:

...and this is what it looks like now:

Gee, that's not so bad, now, is it? I did manage to fill a very large bag with yarn that I know I will never, ever knit, which I am planning to unload at a yard sale or similar venue this spring. The boxes are just temporary (I hope!); what I really want to put my yarn in are a few of these Neu Home Honeycomb 5-Section Storage Units (about $20 each at Amazon.com, this picture shows 4 units combined):

Pretty nifty, huh?  Except they are sold out everywhere online at the moment.  Gaaaah! 

January 1 - Organize!

I want need to get my sewing and craft space(s) organized and inventoried.

The impetus for this (aside from the fact that I'm months overdue for it) is that we are nearly finished remodeling our basement, adding about 500 square feet of comfortable, attractive living space to our 1200 sq. ft. home. Included in the new space is a nook approximately 8' wide and 6' deep, where my IKEA craft table will go. This table consists of an 8' counter atop a 5' VÄRDE freestanding kitchen unit and a couple of table legs, forming a desk of sorts on one end. It's where I have done my polymer clay art in the past, and it will probably continue to serve that purpose, as well as be the place where I hang out with my daughter once we start homeschooling (more or less officially) in the fall.

In addition to the basement workspace, I have a sewing table (it's actually my husband's grandfather's cherry exam table from his Boston medical office) in our master bedroom. DH put up several long shelves on one wall of the room for me to store my sewing projects and supplies, and the smaller bedroom closet is filled to almost overflowing with fabric and notions in Rubbermaid and other containers. He has no problem with my having sewing stuff in the bedroom - what a guy! - as long as it's reasonably well contained. (His actual quote: "Just leave me a clear path from the door so I can get to my side of the bed..."). Problem is, I have more fabric and yarn than I can store in the closet up there, so I'm trying to decide if I should store ALL of it in one location (probably the basement), or split it up between the bedroom and basement.

Besides my fabric and yarn, I have about 100 patterns (I know, because I put them all in my pattern library on PR), and numerous UFOs and thrifted-garments-to-be-recycled-some-day. I think I need to let go of quite a lot of stuff that I'm no longer feeling any love for. (Corollary Resolution #1: No more fabric/yarn/pattern buying in 2010 unless it's something I need to finish a project. Or something really, really cool.)

I would like to keep my stash(es) organized online. I already have most of my yarn stash on Ravelry.com, and I'm thinking about using Google Docs for the fabric. If I'm feeling REALLY inspired, I may complete my wardrobe inventory (as outlined by The Very Small Closet's Jennifer Skinner) on Google Docs as well.

I'd also like my ongoing projects to be more organized as well. I plan to do that by staying on top of my pattern reviews on PR and Ravelry, and utilizing resources such as Style.com and Polyvore.com for lookbooks and ideas. (And, of course, keeping you all updated with my progress right here on my blog.) When choosing sewing projects for myself, I'm going to try to SWAP (Sewing With a Plan) to avoid ending up with "singletons" that don't coordinate with existing items in my wardrobe.

That's the plan, anyway.  We're supposed to be getting a foot or more of snow this weekend, so I should have plenty of time to work on organizing things in the bedroom, and will start in earnest on the basement next weekend.

Cloche hat continued...

I've made it past the brim, and am now two rows into the mindless st st of the hat itself - yay!  I plopped it on my daughter's head, and the fit is much improved. I think this will turn out very nicely. My plan is to work on it some more on Sunday at church.

I'm always on the lookout for mindless knitting that I can do while I'm at church or in meetings. I've even spoken with Jodi, the minister of the church I attend, about her feelings about knitting during the service, and she has no problem with it. I wouldn't think about bringing a large project or a complicated stitch pattern to church, though - I like to have something to keep my hands busy while my mind is free to focus on the sermon.

I've been puttering around in my bedroom, which is where my sewing machine, stash and other sewing accoutrements reside (at the moment). We have a fairly large bedroom, but the sewing stuff takes up a decent chunk of real estate. My husband (who only asks that I keep a clear path for him from the door to his side of the bed) put up shelving in the room for me a couple weeks ago, and it's made a huge difference. I'm one of those sewers that always has a big pile o' crap on the sewing table, so the actual space available for me to sew on is pretty small. I'm hoping to get everything off the table this weekend and either up on the shelves or in my fabric closet (yes, the smaller closet in our bedroom is my main stash storage place).