Pretty Things

Progress on my  new craft room has been rather slow for most of this month - a combination of me not being well enough to do much and waiting for my IKEA order to arrive. Actually, it was mostly waiting for everything to be in stock ... Anyway, I now have a house full of large, heavy boxes. 

Just room to walk down the hall (there are more boxes lining the back hall and another pile in the front room).

To backtrack though ... while waiting for the furniture, I turned my mind to prettying things up a bit. Having evicted my sheet music from a tall set of basket shelves, it was moved upstairs to be home to my Stylecraft Special which, as many of you will know, is my basic go-to yarn when it comes to designing. The idea was to put a different colour in each of the baskets, a plan which turned out to be trickier than you'd think.

There are yellowy greens, bluey greens, bluey purples ... you get the idea. I ended up with nine baskets of bright colours and two half boxes left over. These are going to hold the neutral and pastel shades with space on top for multiples (mostly for works in progress).

Then of course I wanted colourful labels for the baskets and decided that the obvious thing was to knit them using the yarn itself.

I used the six stitch stars from my Stacking Stars pattern and added a button to the middle of each. It took me longer to choose the buttons than the yarn (of course it did). The little red suitcase on the top of the baskets holds my Stylecraft colour pegs.

It's been tricky planning designs with most of my yarn inaccessible so having the Stylecraft sorted has been a great help. At the moment I'm knitting a series of little rainbow coloured gnomes which I'm hoping to get published in time for Christmas.

I made the mistake of designing and knitting this first one all in one day, something I used to do easily but which is definitely not a good idea now I'm ill. I kept thinking "I'll just sort out this bit of shaping and then stop", something I regretted when I was awake half the night with a temperature! I'm rather pleased with my little gnome though.

As well as playing with my Stylecraft, I've also been painting the top of  my old kitchen table which had become rather tatty over the years.

Doesn't it look nice? The plan is for this to be in the middle of the room but, at the moment, it's squeezed up against the fireplace so as to leave plenty of room for furniture building. Which leads me neatly on to the next pretty thing ...

Two sets of LED lights with the white battery packs hidden behind scrunched up black bin bags. It was quite a fiddle to arrange them so that I could still get at the on / off switches but I'm really pleased with the effect. They make the room seem more cosy straight away; I can almost forget I'm wearing three jumpers to keep the cold at bay.

While I think of it, do you remember me telling you about the old lamp that I restored earlier this year? It was one of my parents' wedding presents; you can read about its history in this post. They had it on top of my Mum's old workbox, made for her by her father out of old packing cases.

Now that those basket shelves have been moved, there's room for the workbox and lamp in the front room. It lights up that corner beautifully.

It's standing on a crochet mat I made when I was about 16 - yes, I was a very cool teenager - which is a bit stained; has anyone got any tips on cleaning it? I tried the gel version of Vanish on it but to no effect.

I've got a couple more things to show you in the craft room, one small and the other not so small. The small thing is my new craft trolley from Hobbycraft.

I'm very impressed with this. It's sturdy, easy to put together and has nice deep shelves. It's also very reasonably priced. You can buy all sorts of add-ons for it too but I'm resisting the temptation to do that until I know what will be most useful.

The other thing I've achieved - just over the last week or so - is to fill that great big IKEA Kallax unit that my son and daughter moved upstairs for me. The arrival of piles of Kuggis boxes with my new furniture meant that I could finally start moving the rest of my knitting stuff into its new home.

Excuse the blurry photo; I'd changed the focus setting on my camera inadvertently.

These boxes are brilliant. They come in different sizes, all with set in lids so that you can stack them together; on the top of one of the big ones you can fit two medium sized ones or four small ones. I've also found that the lids can be used as trays - very handy. I think these are going to be really useful for all sorts of craft bits and bobs but, so far, I've been using them for yarn. 

Isn't that an exciting photo? If you like, I could do a shelf by shelf tour of it next time. Basically, the yarn that the moths like is in strong plastic zipped bags in the white boxes. I've also made little lavender sachets using mini organza bags to put in each bag as an added deterrent. The acrylic yarn is in the big baskets and the red fabric bins. The shelves also hold all my crochet books and hooks and quite a few of my knitting books. It was nice to be able to go through them and decide which ones needed to be where.

You can see another new thing in that photo too, my new little white table. This is the smallest of the  IKEA Lack tables and cost all of £7! At the other side of the photo you can just see my yellow bag hanging on the door handle. Now that I regularly plod up and down two flights of steep stairs, this is essential for carrying all sorts of stuff so that I still have a hand free to hold on with. Carrying things makes me breathless, even if they're not heavy but it's better if they're in a bag. 

If I've got on to minutiae like my going upstairs bag, it's probably time to stop but I just want to show you one last thing. As you know, I've been enjoying decorating my bedroom mantelpiece each season with my seasonal cross stitch samplers at the centre. Yesterday, I laced and framed the last one but then realised that I couldn't get at any of the suitably wintry decorations to go with it. So, for the time being, it sits in glorious isolation on the craft room mantelpiece.

Winter Sampler

A Christmas Pattern

Do you remember when I used to publish a series of festive patterns every December as a sort of advent calendar? Since being ill I haven't managed to do this (they're an awful lot of work) but ...

Two years ago, I decided to knit myself a Christmas wreath, based on my Woodland Wreath but with a few different leaves and decorations. I had no intention of publishing it as a pattern but I've had so many people requesting it that, this year, I've puzzled over my very sketchy notes, done a bit of re-knitting and now it's all ready to go.

The first pattern is available now on Ravelry and explains about the wreath I used and how to cover it with knitting. Then, in December, there will be five more patterns, each of which will have instructions for two sets of leaves or decorations. I haven't decided how to space out the publication of those patterns yet - one a day, every other day - what do you think? 

In other news (apologies for those who are getting bored with my endless craft room saga), lots of progress has been made. Having had two fit and able people here this weekend, the room now has actual furniture in it. Remember those 53 baskets full of fabric?

They don't look quite so daunting now they're on shelves, do they? There are a few that didn't fit but I'm pleased with how many we got on to these two sets of shelves. If you look closely, you'll see that the baskets are labelled with tatty yellow post-its. I have plans to replace these with pretty labels at some point. In the meantime, I've added a few of Mum's angel ornaments.

I made her the one with the long red hair and the other one is one of 'Sonia's angels', a friend Mum met at craft shows. She had several angels from her; here's another one ...

While taking this photo, I took another one of the light switch which is just next to the shelves. Does anyone remember these?

Yes, that's a Bakelite switch on a wooden mount. I have these in every room but, don't worry, it's modern wiring behind them. 

While I was faffing around with angels, my son and daughter were doing the heavy work. In case you were wondering, yes, it is possible to take apart a 5 x 5 Kallax unit, carry it up two flights of stairs and then re-assemble it.

To be fair, they did have a willing helper in Tolly the cat. He often has that puzzled look; the world is a mystery to him.

Tolly definitely knows the room exists now. No sooner had they moved in a comfortable chair for me, than he settled himself down.

The other cat, Linnet, still hasn't found the room. She's a very suspicious cat and and is wary of anything new, just in case it turns out to be a portal to the vets.

As well as these shelf units, they moved a table up from my bedroom and a set of basket shelves up from the front room. What with these and the table that's in pieces on the top landing waiting for me to sand and paint it, other rooms ended up with piles of stuff and nowhere to put it. 

So, after more bookcase moving, I now have things temporarily stored in the back room downstairs.

Lots of this stuff is destined for the craft room once I have more storage but, in the meantime, I can still use this room. I've even got space for photography (hence the big lights). 

One of the joys of living in an old house is that there's barely a straight line in the place. Did I say joys? There wasn't a lot of joy when I made floor length curtains for the bay window in the front room - there's a six inch difference between one side and the other, calling for gradually lengthening hems. 

Anyway, look at these two bookcases ...

They have to be propped up at one side so that the books and files don't fall over but, as you can see, the heights don't exactly match. And yes, those shelves are set the same distances  apart.

We're now working on an IKEA order for a desk and lots more shelves. I've been having ideas for prettying up the new room too. How about patchwork curtains? I think I might know where I can lay my hands on some fabric!