My craft room is one of those rooms that always manages to get away from me. The table gets piled with yarn and books, fabric and paper. Just stuff. Clutter. I know I’m lucky to have a craft room, but I seem to prefer crafting on the couch and just use that room as a catch all for all the stuff I don’t want to put away. Travis calls it “The Room of Death” - cute isn’t he. I decided that this weekend was the weekend I would clean things up. I bought a closet organization system a while ago, but I hadn’t followed through and really finished with the room. This weekend I did that.

The closet is the home for all my fiber - yarn and fiber, books, bags, and a few other crafting things.

I put shelves and drawers in to hold yarn and books. The fiber sits in baskets and bins on the floor and spinning stuff rests on shelves with the yarn and knitting supplies. There wasn’t any room in the closet for knitting needles, so I decided to make wall holders. I looked around a long time, but couldn’t find anything that fit my needs, so I made some fabric covered pockets. I made organizers for circular needles, one for dpns, and one for straight needles and crochet hooks.

The circulars and straights are hung behind the door in what would have been wasted space.

And the dpns are hung in a small space between the bookcase and the window.

I have a great table for the room. Travis gave it to me for Christmas a year ago (well, a year and a couple of months). It’s huge and pine and takes a beating and cutting and pounding doesn’t hurt the finish. The one bad thing about the table is that it’s huge and it makes a great place for dumping crap. So, I spent a large portion of my time on Saturday putting things away, throwing things out, and cleaning off the table.

I transformed a flee market chair by spray painting it red and making a chair cushion using leftover fabric from the window shades.

The only other things in the room are a filing cabinet Travis grandfather made, a shelf that I use to hold my sewing machine and craft stuff, and a bookcase that is already full. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all the books that I’ll buy, but what can you do when you love books?

So, that’s my craft room organization. What do you think?

I hope you all had a lovely holiday weekend. Things were pleasantly quiet around here and I managed to accomplish a few things. I spun on Friday night and my alpaca spinning techniques need some work. It’s pretty slippery stuff and I haven’t mastered the best way to spin it, but I’m going to have a lot of time to practice because I have a basket full of fiber. I imagine I’ll be spinning this alpaca for months to come. I hope I have it figured out by the time I get done.

Saturday afternoon seemed like a good time to try to bake some apple turnovers. I tried these once before (although with a different recipe) and they were less than stellar. However, I had some apples that needed to be used up and so I thought I’d try again. This time the recipe was from my favorite baking book - How To Bake. The recipe uses quick puff pastry (my first try at this) and has you cook the apple filling before you bake the turnovers. I added icing rather than just dusting with powdered sugar because Travis thinks everything is better with frosting.

I am really happy with how these turned out. The pastry is light and flaky (not tough and chewy like my last attempt) and the filling is sweet and a little spicy. The recipe made 6 (with apple left over) and they lasted for a day and a half. I will definitely be making these again.

I am this close (imagine me holding my thumb and index finger about 1 1/2 inches apart) to finishing the second knee high - I can’t wait. I’ll have those pictures for you just as soon and I can get it done. These suckers have taken forever, but I hope they’re worth it in the end. Have a great Tuesday that is a Monday. Happy knitting.

The weather here is terrible again. This winter has really been bad. It’s snowing and blowing again, and it seems like a good weekend to stay inside and knit (and to be really glad I don’t have to worry about driving to a job I hated). I hope you have a great weekend and stay warm (or cool depending on where you live). Tonight will be spent spinning and I think I’m going to try to spin the alpaca - something new and different. I’ll leave you with a little western eye candy. Happy Friday.

Sometime in December, Jenn and I made a deal. In exchange for a truly awesome Christmas goodie basket, I would knit Jenn the Bulky Beret from the Vogue Knitting Holiday edition. There was a lot of discussion about the yarn because the pattern calls for Blue Sky Alpacas Bulky Hand Dyes, which put the cost for the hat around $45. Jenn and I thought that might be a bit much for a hat, so we started looking at alternatives. Ultimately, we decided on Rowan Big Wool in Bohemian. I ordered 2 balls and then discovered that they were backordered - for 2 months. The yarn finally arrived last week and I picked up the magazine and the needles Saturday. I ended up with a 47″ size 13 circular for magic loop rather than the the dpns and the 24″ circular the pattern called for.

I started on the hat Monday morning and finished it after karate Monday night.

The pattern is very simple with a twisted cable stitch detail.

I sent it off to Jenn yesterday and she promised a modeled shot as soon as she gets it. Now, I have to get back to knitting those swatches.

The never-ending blue coopworth is finally done. I had hoped to ply it during the week, but I didn’t get to it until Friday night and it took me a couple of hours on Saturday to finish it up.

While I didn’t enjoy spinning this fiber, I am quite pleased with the overall result. It is fairly even and I’d say about sport weight.

I tried to spin this fiber woolen, which creates some challenges, but overall plying it went better than I could have expected. The finished yarn is scratchy, so I’m not sure what it will become, but it’s in the stash closet and the right project will come to me one day. The Friday Night Spinners is really working for me. Even if I don’t spin at all during the week, I make time to spin on Friday nights and I’m actually making progress on my spinning. I told you before that I have some camel colored alpaca (and a little bit of dark brown - yum), but I also have some Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sheep To Shoe that I won from Wendy. Which one do you guys think I should spin next?