Chaos

 

I don't seem to have found my crafting rhythm again yet since the children have gone back to school. The youngest is only doing two and a half hours of a morning until November, which is rather less than the three full (school) days he was getting at nursery and I spend my mornings frantically trying to fit in as much domesticity as I can so that he can have my attention in the afternoon. I have also been painting the bay windows at the front of the house (inside and out) but it has been tricky to fit this around everything else with the added element of the weather.

 

For a few weeks all my stuff was left in an awful muddle because I just couldn't get around to sorting it all out. The fact that this room is in the attic, and is accessed by a fold-down ladder which is only out when our time-share teenager is here means that it is very easy to ignore a mess as nobody can see it.

 

 

 

The need to get my sewing machine out and make some things for the SnB swap I'm participating in necessitated a quick tidy but there is still lots to do.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but there are several large Ikea bags stuffed behind the desk in the eaves space that need to be sorted out. Also when Mr Magpie brought my white drawer unit up, it got turned on it's side. I'll let you use your imagination as to the state of the drawers, in which I keep all my tiny oddments including needles, beads, ribbons and lots of other small objects. Picture, if you will, some kind of haberdashery soup and you'll get the idea. Still plenty for me to be getting on with before I can relax into creation up here.



 

I know that this yarn should really be packed away from moths and sunlight but it looks so pretty!

Just out of interest, this is the other side of the room. The bed is a double, so you don't really have to sleep squashed under the eaves, although I have done exactly that on occasion (sometimes we sleep up here when family comes to stay, we frequently play musical bedrooms in this house).

I'm actually getting quite excited about the SnB swap. It's the first time I've ever done one and I can already tell it won't be my last. This is a 'round robin' swap, consisting of five rounds. Every few weeks we pass the bags along having placed in our item for that round. There are five rounds altogether. Week one was yarn, week two accessories, last time it was a pattern and this week a handmade item (hence the need for me to sort out the craft space). The last item is something edible or drinkable.

 

None of us know who is getting what for who and the rounds mean that we get to choose things for five different people and our own bags will be a deliciously varied mixture, but hopefully chosen with the recipient in mind. I can't show you what I have made for the handmade round until the swap is completed but it was something new for me and I may now have to make something similar for myself.

 

My knitting is coming along well and will hopefully be finished soon. I even found some foam blocks at a charity shop last week which I'm reliably informed are brilliant for blocking on (more on that another time).

 

My Smoothie-hat knitting also got me thinking about trying to knit some hats for the Magpies again (questionable results achieved last time a few years back). I fancy trying to knit 'in the round' and need to have a play with some different techniques. If anyone has any advice I'd love to hear it. I'd also like to hear about any other hat disasters because it will make me feel better.

 

Thank you for reading, it's been lovely to have a little catch up,

 

Beth x

Catching Up

Firstly please let me apologise for another lengthy gap in posts but we are still not quite out of holiday mode here as the littlest Magpie doesn't start school until next Tuesday and there have been lots of other things happening around the nest.

September rather than January always feels like the start of the year to me (will I still feel that way when the pattern of our lives no longer revolves around school days?) and here at Magpie HQ we have been in a sorting out and re-arranging kind of mood.

 

Having admitted to ourselves that middle son was not enjoying the drum kit he was pleading for only two years ago, we decided to sell it to free up some room. The kit was in the attic, along with another instrument that has been massively underused. Make that completely unused. My Christmas present from last year, which Mr Magpie ordered me to sell and to buy with the proceeds something that I wanted instead, although not wool apparently (??).

Now that the attic room is no longer a music studio, it has been decided that my our lovely dining/craft room should be transformed into a dining/computer/train track room and me and my 'crap' (his word, not mine) are to be shifted two floors upwards.

 

It doesn't look it from the pictures, but there is actually loads of floor space in this room and I'm thinking that my long white table will fit alongside the one you see with the computer on it, which is the same height and width. The computer will be going to live downstairs, so I will have loads of table space, and when I've re-arranged the space under the eaves I should be able to fit everything in neatly. I will be having a clear out though. This week I have bagged up two big bags of old clothes and sorted out perhaps half of my books to go to charity. It feels quite cathartic, so I will seize this mood to keep streamlining my possessions. Keeps Mr 'Neat Freak' Magpie happy too ;) .

 

I used to sew up here when I first started sewing regularly and it's actually a peaceful, sunny space to work in. The main reason for me moving into the dining room was to be on hand for the family, but as come November all the children will be at school full-time, I can cloister myself up in the eaves without having to navigate the ladder every ten minutes to answer demands for drinks, snacks, refereeing or bottom-wiping.

The room itself is in need of some sewing treatments. I promised the Mr I would make curtains to cover the eave spaces which run along both sides of the room, and we have actually bought the fabric for it. I also need to make two more blinds, like this one which I speedily constructed before the Magpie cousins came to stay, so as not to blind our guests with morning sunlight.

The dining room is going to get a make-over of it's own in due course when all the downstairs sashes have been winter-proofed and I have painted the exterior woodwork at the front of the house. So, it may be a while yet, but I will share the pictures with you in due course.

Knitting-wise, after a few false starts on projects where I just couldn't seem to get the perfect mixture of pattern and yarn, I have started a new shawl/shawlette with some yarn that was originally going to be used for a lace project, but didn't work.

The pattern for this shawl comes from Ravelry and is called La La's Simple Shawl, and it really is very easy to knit. The yarn I'm using is called Poems, by Rico and it changes colours gradually, instead of being flecked like my Hitchhiker.

I was making fairly good progress to begin with, until my cheap-o bamboo circular decided to separate itself while I was pulling my stitches up and I had to make an emergency dash to the wool shop for a rescue operation. Work saved, I decided I couldn't wait for Ally Pally to buy new needles and ordered an Addi Turbo needle online.

I am so glad I did as this needle is just so much better than anything I have used before. I am a tight knitter and always struggled to move my stitches along the bamboo needles, and even on my ordinary straights it was challenging. The Addi needle tips are highly polished metal and my stitches really glide over them, making my knitting quicker.

Now that I am knitting more, and think that going to SnB will push me to challenge myself further, I am considering whether to get a set of circulars, perhaps like these? I was just wondering what other people use and how they rate them. I'm not sure whether to get metal or wooden needles so any advice would be great.

I seem to have experienced a little flurry of new people following the blog, so I would just like to welcome you all along and thank you for stopping by in my little corner of the world. All of my readers help to keep me motivated to craft and blog, for which I am thankful and when I am followed by other bloggers I get a chance to peep into their corners too, which as a nosey person is a great treat.

I hope you are all well and enjoying the change of seasons. Thanks for reading,

Beth x

Craft Room Tour

So, I have given my sewing space a little bit of a tidy up so that you can all come and have a look around. Please  do come in.

Having a dedicated sewing space is still relatively new for me. For most of the time I have owned a sewing machine it has lived in a variety of cupboards, wardrobes and hidey-holes and setting it up for action was a bit of a pain.

When I first started sewing more regularly, I set up a small desk in our attic room but I quickly outgrew the space. Much as I enjoyed the light and the peace, it was a little awkward negotiating a ladder several times a day and  bumps on the head were a frequent hazard.

Very kindly, the other Magpies agreed that I could move my paraphernalia into our dining room, which is our larger reception room. We have a cosy living room at the back of the house.



When I first set up in here I brought my little attic desk downstairs with me, along with some more ad hoc storage. It worked fairly well but there wasn't enough storage and I frequently spilled over onto the dining table itself, which meant lots of dinners eaten at the tiny kitchen table.

Apart from the desk area, there were still a large amount of supplies, stock and craft books to be housed. For a while, the back wall of the dining room looked like this.

  

Whilst the madness of creating stock for the (many) craft fairs I participated in last Autumn/Winter was going on, I didn't have time to organise the space, and to be honest it was driving me a little bit bonkers. Mr Magpie will testify that my housewifely skills are not award-winning by any means, but I do have to have a tidy space to work in or I can't settle properly. While I was creating stock I kept jamming stuff in anywhere I could squeeze it, but in the back of my mind I began to put together a wish list to get the space working for me better.

Top of the list was a bigger desk that would run along the length of the wall. The desk I had was from Ikea, so I was able to re-use the legs of my small desk. I also added the set of drawers I can be seen putting together here. The drawers are brilliant; they have swallowed much more of my supplies than I thought they would and as someone who has only recently had a new kitchen and is used to elderly/traditional furniture, smooth gliding drawers are a complete joy!

  

 

 The extra room means that I can set up my little iron and board alongside the sewing machine for completely lazy sewing.

 

 And I can leave my WIP's at the end of the desk as opposed to all over the table where we eat.

 

Did you spot my rather fantastic reel holder on the wall? It was made to my exact specifications by a very talented member of the clan and I love it. Rich makes beautiful items with wood and is in the process of creating a website of his own. When the website goes live I will let you know and you can see for yourselves.

Go on then, have a nose in a couple of the drawers, I gave them a tidy for you.

Well, maybe not this one, but I'm still trying to think of a way to bring this lot under control.

The extra storage meant that tidying the back wall of the room was a fairly simple re-organisation job. Here's how it looks now. Much better.

I know it's a bit of a squash but I couldn't resist using my old CD rack to house some of my ever-expanding collection.

So that's my crafty space. I hope you enjoyed the tour. So far all the new storage is making it much easier to keep the room tidy and we get to eat surrounded by all the stitchery!

Thanks for stopping by,

Beth x