Good morning, and happy Saturday! Insomnia struck again this morning, and I’ve been awake since about 2AM when all the dogs woke me up to go outside and pee. I tried to go back to bed but by about 3:15 or so it was clear that sleep was not going to happen, so I decided I may as well start my day, and despite the fact that my dear spouse could sleep through a hurricane, I still creep around the house as quietly as possible.
I made good use of the first hour or so before sitting down to write, and did a little bit of necessary cleaning and organizing in my craft room. There’s a recent article on how messy rooms inspire creativity that I’ve seen several friends sharing lately, and while that may be true for many people, I find the opposite is true for me. Maybe it’s because I live in such a small house. We’re a whopping 962 square feet here and my craft room is a 10′ by 10′ bedroom. Perhaps if we had a little more square footage here I could be a little more relaxed about it, but organization is essential to making small spaces work. It doesn’t take much for my tiny craft space to get cluttered, and I find that clutter just distracts me.
The first place in my craft room to accumulate clutter is my drum carding table. Sitting just inside the door to the room, it becomes an easy spot to toss things on that I intend to put away later, or reach from the doorway to retrieve something that I may want to bring out into the living room to work on. This morning I took everything that didn’t belong on the table, sat on the floor and sorted it all out, and then put it away in its proper place. Several different circular needles went back into their packages and into my needle drawer, a few skeins of handspun that I finished plying this week found a new home in a basket of other finished spinning projects, and some recent fiber and yarn purchases were put away in my stash. Patterns, mail, and other assorted papers were sorted and either filed or tossed, and a few books were put back in their proper place.
Now my drum carding table is free of everything that doesn’t belong there and it’s ready for use, or to accumulate more clutter. I’m planning on it getting some use first because the Fancy Kitty group on Ravelry is hosting a gradient challenge that I signed up to participate in. The challenge begins tomorrow, and I’ve picked out two colors of Spinner’s Hill roving that I think will make a beautiful gradient yarn.
I have carded fiber for gradient yarns before and had fun doing it. It’s an interesting process weighing out and blending the different colors. I still haven’t spun that orange to purple gradient though. Part of this new challenge is to not only card the fiber, but to spin the yarn and even work up a small swatch showing the color changes. It’s also a good exercise in participating more on Ravelry instead of just lurking and reading discussions in the various groups I belong to.
So that’s it for me this morning. I’m off to get some spinning done while I still can. We’re heading out early this morning to hopefully get a good spot in line for the Schenectady Public Library’s semi-annual used book sale. I have scored some great finds on knitting and craft books at this sale in the past, so I’m looking forward to finding some more new-to-me treasures again today. Later this afternoon I’ll be taking the puppy out for a visit to the new Healthy Pet Center store in Latham. Our Italian Greyhound Rescue group will be there from 11AM to 2PM today, so if you’re out and about, stop in and see us!
Have a great weekend!
Aaron knits...and spins, and weaves. 