Craft-in-a-Closet

So in my November Schedule I was supposed to talk about my efforts to organize my house on Thursdays. Last week I was rudely interrupted by a potential burgler, but I’m going to make good on my anal-retentive instincts and return to the original schedule.  So another MAJOR hurdle for this place was Where In the World to Put the Craft Supplies. My junk took up 75% of our last spare bedroom, but here, I have no craft room. Ergo: closet.

I was inspired by this Lovely Designs craft closet, this closet office with curtains, another whole ream of small space ideas, some other stuff I probably forgot, and of course some wall-mounted craft stations. (If you didn’t click on those links, you should, because that’s some pretty crazy creative stuff there.)

This, I promise you, will eventually Look Much More Decorative, but right now? I’m really super pleased with the basic construction. It has lighting! It has shelves! I can close the door so the cat doesn’t attack my stuff!  The shelves are drilled into concrete, so I’m pretty sure this will be one of the most stable sewing desks I’ve ever had. It’s also the best lit. My dad installed an outlet for me in the closet when he helped us move.

There’s more craft junk than this, of course. The rest of it I put on shelves with a table underneath. So this is the (somewhat) before. This is one end of my living room.  Jeff had just hammered holes into those concrete walls and we put up the shelves. Those boxes are my craft/art supplies. The door on the left is the closet I just showed you.

So here’s the shelves after un-packing. There’s still tool junk, a dog bed, it’s kinda messier than I like, and there are some cleaning supplies there that I don’t know what to do with (hey, it’s an apartment-in-progress), but this is mostly it. There will be a screen between this stuff and the rest of the living room eventually.

So did anybody spot my owl mascot?

Re-organizing (again) with cork

I have a problem with organization. It’s not that I’m against it, I do too much of it. A while back I moved my desk-sewing-craft-office-space around a couple of times, leading to much disarray and confusion. I’ve been slowly clearing back the weeds and did this in the process:

These are a pair of framed corkboards meant for organizing the fabric scraps, sketches and other ideas for the projects I’m currently working on. It’s a pretty simple concept.  I took two cheap 8×10 frames and added a double-layer of sheet cork and voila! Mini project inspiration boards.

The key to making one that works is finding a frame that’s deep enough for a double layer of cork, and one with a back that doesn’t come off easily when you poke pins in. Most frames will work (except the very cheapest of frames, they usually don’t have room enough for padding).

I also try to find one also that has plastic in the frame instead of glass so I don’t have a random piece of glass lying around.  Some people would know what to do with a piece of glass, but I’m afraid I don’t.

I have started these two and plan to do a couple more (because I always have more than two projects). I pinned up threads, fabric swatches, sketches, a couple clippings from magazines that gave me ideas, a photo, and a pattern.  It’s nice to see them on the wall like that, all findable and stuff, instead of scattered about my desk in an impossible-to-decipher mess.

Speaking of which, I took a picture of Jeff’s and my desks. They face each other, but are totally different. His is clear, just wires and electronic equipment on the left, and mine’s the other one, totally cluttered with piles of stuff, pens, papers, envelopes, the odd sewing machine foot, and there’s my computer sitting on top of my cutting board.  Some people complain about the men in their lives making the house cluttered and never picking up after themselves. As you can see, our house has the other problem, namely, ME.  There is a wealth of organization under that clutter, though.  I swear.

The weather, and other unpleasant facts

It’s 10:44 pm, and it’s still 86 degrees outside. No kidding. Ugh. The weather people tell me it is supposed to be 98 tomorrow. Now that it’s June, I know the weather isn’t going to do anything but be gross until October. All I can do is hope for a lot of rain to block the sun and try to balance my air conditioning bill against personal discomfort. You’d think I hadn’t grown up in the subtropics with all my complaining about the heat, but I just can’t seem to reconcile myself to being baked.

<–That’s my most recent painting. I’m experimenting with shapes and painting the negative spaces instead of the object itself. This is a technique exercise, just to try to see objects differently, to understand better how things are shaped. I like how it turned out, and I’m going to try more like it.

Summer calls for several things, craft-wise. I’ve put away all the blankets I’m making, and switched to things that aren’t hot to sit under. I have a couple of big crochet projects I’m planning (one left from last year) and a bunch of experimentation with fabric.

But first I have to put my house back together.

One thing I had to do for summer was move my sewing machine downstairs. Heat rises, and this apartment has craptastic insulation. No force on earth is powerful enough to make me stay upstairs during the day in a Tejas summer. Migrating my space has been this weekend’s production, and in fact we dragged the rest of the house into the evil reorganization vortex. I think Jeff and I moved all but 3 pieces of furniture over the last couple of days, a painful process.

Fact is that I feel as though I’m supposed to be moving right now. For the last 8 years I have moved every two years for school purposes. Big, go-to-a-different-city moves. Plus the natural upheaval of 5 years of thrice-yearly college semester changes. I wonder if I’m not having withdrawal, if the furnishings aren’t my way of making up for not being able to make a big change this year. After so much constant, regular change for so many years, I’m actually finding it more difficult than I imagined to continue in the same city, same house, and same job for a third year. I know people do this staying-in-one-place thing all the time, but I’m just not feeling it.

Anyway, another result of the shuffling-furniture project is that I have some new colors in my abode. The way I decorate takes my frequent redecorating into account – I have a primary color in here (brown) and then I use lots of colorful accents. This is a much less expensive way to make sweeping changes quickly. The red in my main space has given way to bright green. My front room has moved on to include orange and blue. I have three new sets of curtains to make and some pillows. And I have Plans for a couple of tables involving a combination of lacquer, paint and paper.

Thus begins summer. Jeff, of course, says I’m causing too much trouble for myself, but what would be the fun if I didn’t?