Tag Archives: sewing room

The sewing station south

Hot, humid weekend days sent us to ReStore again over the last month and some. Wintertime usually means thrifting time, but when it’s too hot to hike or work in the yard, it is the second best option to staying cooped up in the house.

I don’t like spending much time in our basement during the day, but I was drawn to it regularly this summer – seeing bright daylight day after day became inexplicably depressing to some degree for me – I yearned for a rainy grey day (then we got a bunch and they nearly killed the garden). But I finally took N’s advice and set up a work area down there despite my earlier protests that I hated being down there in the day and needed bigger windows to work.

On our first summertime run, we encountered a motherlode of old school furniture – desks, tables, horrid attached chair-table hybrids that brought back lunchroom nightmares, and some awesome lime green lockers that almost came home with us, but didn’t because we’d have to rent a larger vehicle.

But this little desk did.

I thought it would be perfect for my not-used-enough serger.

And it is – the serger was previously on a nightstand or side table of sorts and I had to sit at it uncomfortably side-saddle. Moving it out of my tiny upstairs workroom freed up some much needed space too and hopefully by wintertime I’ll actually be able to go up there and work rather than spend most of my time organizing and re-organizing it or shifting the piles that covered one rare surface or another… And then pop down to the basement to use the serger when need be. (I’ll also be able to iron fabric more comfortably in the space, and I have my other machines that need work down there, so perhaps it will be the main work area and upstairs will be more for spinning, stash, and whatever else “art” I might get up to).

There was another table that I wanted very badly – a not too wide, but wide enough for quilting cotton, and gloriously long – 8 feet or so, mid century table with a coral formica top – possibly from a lunchroom too, or perhaps an art classroom… It was cheap (I don’t remember how cheap, but at or under $50) but again, we’d need a truck of sorts to get it home (not to mention we didn’t really have room for it – yes, it could go in the basement, but then the basement would have a giant table in it and we already have one largeish library table down there anyway).

So I forgot about it.

But then it was still there about a month later and only $10!!!!

But I still didn’t get it, but took a picture instead. Someone will be lucky and happy with that thing.

(I’m still having connectivity issues – apparently my phone line is hooked into a buried line at a cookie-cutter condo complex down the road – I like the aesthetics of buried lines, but when I’ve lived with them, they’ve had way too many problems…)

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Went for a spin…

Last Saturday morning I woke up to this.*

cashmere-winter

I still have loads of unpacking and organizing to do, but I heard the siren song scream of some no longer patiently waiting cashmere.

cashmere-fluff

It came from a lovely spot in New Mexico.

Rather, it came from a goat who lives there.

cashmere-guard hair

Some of it still had some guard hairs and bits of veg to be removed.

cashmere-spin

And I’m spinning it up rustic – who says cashmere needs to be fine and dainty?

cashmere-mess

But my view wasn’t so pleasant.

So it was only the briefest of spinning sessions, and then I got back to work on what I was supposed to be doing…

(I finally have a clear path through the room.)

*But we were mostly spared the brunt of the latest storm (and a word to the media – don’t call a storm “historic” that hasn’t even happened yet – shame on you)…

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Missing my studio and my old city…

Mine is a tale too common of late, and it could be much, much worse but it has left me unmoored…  Last spring I lost my job that had been more of an obsession, a way of life, than just a place to go and do something in exchange for money.  I left my beloved small city that I had threatened to leave so many times in the earlier years, but I discovered that I had grown with it, and really loved it after all.  I now live with the generosity of my partner N in the grey areas of the suburban outskirts of the east coast where fantastic cities are an hour’s drive away, yet a walk outside my door is impossible due to the overwhelming and maddening car culture of the area.  In my former city, we had a humble house of our own, technically two and one half stories, but you can call it three.  The two rooms on the third floor were my “studio” as well as the depository for off season clothing since the old structure only had tiny closets from the time we owned so much less.  In one room was my sewing machine  in a little window nook, birds-eye level with the trees in the back and a tiny glimpse of a beautiful cemetery one block away.

3rd sewing - Copy

In the other was a comfy window seat where we napped and watched the neighbors come and go from the bus stop.  The middle of the floor was about the size of a king sized bed, so I could lay out my quilts to piece and baste.  Both rooms had shelves lining the walls so most of my various stashes were visible and accessible.  We lovingly restored the house to something of its original state and spent days and lung tissue stripping off the shellac on these floors and finishing them to an outrageous glossiness.  Our realtor took this picture, and it appeared on the listing of the house when it sold.  No one questioned having a photo of a room with a dead pheasant (which my grandfather killed decades before I was born) perhaps since hunting was popular in the rural areas outside of the city.

front 3rd

The curtains were a vintage find to the precise length needed for the windows, and I regret not photographing them in detail, but they continue to live in the house (I hope).  I am still lucky enough to have a workspace in our temporary rented apartment, but it is shared with our boxed up lives, my part-time work-from-home station, and all stashed materials are now boxed and stacked high, or bagged and lumped.  It is hard to finish things in this state, especially when I know I have the perfect handles or thread somewhere, just somewhere, but can’t find them…

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