Studio Tour Part One

I have a suspicion Blogger won't let me load all the pictures I want to share with you in one post so I'm going to break this tour up into parts. We'll begin with an overall shot of my studio from the entry door.

This room was intended to be the master bedroom of our little bungalow home. (I need more room for my artwork than I do for sleeping!) I have created an island in the middle of the room with a six foot banquet table, an antique baking table, a short file cabinet and my ironing board. My Pfaff sewing machine is on the banquet table behind the baking table and file cabinet. My cutting mat is on the baking table, barely visible in this photo. Whenever I'm not working on a project that surface collects stuff like a powerful magnet. Generally the fabrics for the projects I'm working on get piled on top of the filing cabinet. There are also stacks of fabrics for prospective projects.

Here's a close-up of the baking table. The square drawer in the upper left is full of rick rack and other trims. The little drawers hold my extra rotary cutters and blades and other miscellaneous hand tools. In the long flat drawers I keep plastic bags in assorted sizes and pattern papers. The drawer with the rounded bottom hold yarns. I store my holiday dish towels in the cubby behind the door.

On the floor in front of the baking/cutting table is a rug my mother designed and hooked.

If you turn around from the cutting table you'll face my design wall. On the right is the door to the hallway, on the left is the door to my bathroom.

Turn that corner (to the left again) and you have my desk wall. The desk is flanked by a pair of bookcases, filled mostly with books. My radio/cd player tops the right hand bookcase. You can see I have lots of visual inspiration in my space. (The uninitiated would call it clutter.)

I have tried to load these pictures in such a way that you can click on them to get a larger image. Below is a close-up of the upper half of the bookcase to the left of the desk. The yellow and orange on the left side of the picture is actually a couple of leis my SIL brought me when he visited Hawaii briefly on his first deployment. They are hanging from the cord of a movable lamp I have clamped to my fabric bookcase. I wear them when I need to lighten up or if I'm feeling especially playful already.

Did you notice the sign that says Creative Minds are Rarely Tidy? ;- )

If we turn the next corner to the left we have more bookcases, but these hold my quilting cottons.

On top we have more eye candy and some actual storage bins. One stack of tins hold snaps and elastic and such, the others are empty. The plastic shoe boxes have my silk tie remnants and some craft goodies. The bigger plastic boxes hold my embroidery threads. The smaller tote on top contains the warm color families, the tote on the bottom has the cool color families and the neutrals. You can see a bit of the beaded curtain I have over the one window in the room in this photo too.

We'll cover the last wall and my sewing station in the next post.

Outside & Inside

One more shot of my giant cosmos - this time with the two mums I just bought. I got the pair for only five dollars!! I expected to pay that much for each one.

The temperatures have come down significantly. I may even be able to wear my new IBOL sweatshirt for a whole day.

It's only a medium but it's a bit big on me. It will be lovely for those gray days when snuggling on the couch with a book is the order of the day. And it will bring back memories of the Iraqi Bundles of Love project which will make me smile. IBOL Guy counts 3, 442 bundles received so far and he thinks that's going to be the final total. Now he's trying to recruit manpower and supplies to distribute the loot.

This weekend I am going to be a part of the online studio tour sponsored by Cloth-Paper-Scissors magazine.

You can check out the details here. And then be sure to swing by here again Friday or Saturday or Sunday to see the mess I call my studio! (I'm not cleaning it up, not even for you!)

Playing in the Dirt

We are enjoying exquisite weather this weekend. A day or two ago one of my sons pulled a pair of overgrown bushes out of the ground for me and I created a new flower bed on that side of the deck off the back of our house. So far it only has my poor little white peony in it but I doubt that will be the case for long. It remains to be seen whether the peony even survives. When I dug it out of its' previous location I accidentally cut through two major roots. I'm hoping the organic compost I added to the soil will help it recover and establish itself before hard weather sets in.

Look what else I found when the shrubs were removed!

Actually, when I was prepping the flower bed I hit a boulder a couple of inches below the surface. It was too big for me to try to excavate by myself and no-one else was around to help at the time. I decided to leave it exposed so I wouldn't try to plant something in that spot in the future. The dragon and its' "eggs" seemed a good solution.

We also found this that we will have to remove when the weather turns cold. I can live with them until then.

And remember this cosmos I showed you in my last post?

This is the plant it came from:

That's all 5' 2" of me standing next to it. The bed it's in is a couple of inches higher than the ground I'm standing on but it's still a tall plant!

Second Day of Autumn

Okay, I feel I should let my readers know that things are beginning to look up again. It may not last long because I went to the thrift shop this morning and consequently may have to go through another (hopefully brief) round of depression during the recovery process, but at least I'm feeling more able to cope. Even the rash on the back of my hand is finally looking better.

This business of being chronically ill is a real learning experience, let me tell you. I get discouraged because I feel so young still. It makes me wonder what in the world my life will be like when I am truly elderly.

I spent yesterday in Regency England again. Apparently I need to get as far away from reality as possible every so often. I picked up Redwall at the thrift shop this morning; I've never read it before even though I've known about it for years. Or I may reread the Magic series by Ilona Andrews instead.

I'm feeling better but I'm not ready to sew yet. Before I try to sew I'm going to have to deal with the piles that have accumulated on my cutting table. At least the ironing board is still pretty clear. And look! My mums have survived the summer and are blooming right on cue. :- )

Last Day of Summer

We are having an absolutely beautiful day today. Very appropriate for the calendar's last day of summer.


As much as we need the rain right now I'm really not looking forward to the days and weeks of gray and wet ahead of us. Still, maybe when the temps drop back into the normal range I'll be more inspired to sew. Heaven knows I haven't been sew-inclined in what feels like a long time. That may be due, in part, to the new physical malady I'm having to cope with. By itself it's not a big deal - that we know of. It's some kind of rash, mostly on the back of my left hand. The distressing part is that there's a bit of it on my eyelids too. And we have not been able to come up with a definite diagnosis. Don't know what it is, don't know what's causing it, don't know how to make it go away. The patch on my hand has spread and evolved but not really healed per se. I have a follow up appointment with the doctor next Monday.

I confess to being more than a little discouraged by all this. On top of all the other restrictions and limitations imposed by Candidiasis and MCS I've about had it. You know it's serious when even the things you normally enjoy doing are not in the least tempting. The trick is to find something, some way to tie a knot in the end of my rope so I can hang on until things begin to look more promising. The other option is to just succumb to being a vegetable on the couch.

I don't want to be a vegetable. I've got a little tiny knot in my rope at the moment. My challenge for today is to try to make it bigger and stronger. I've gotta find something fun to do, some way to distract myself. Maybe it's time to go get lost in a book. Whatever you do today, please don't let me drag you down!