Nesting

Today was a much needed day of nesting here at home. The only time I left the house was when we took Bailey for a walk this morning. Have I said how much I love this neighborhood for walking? It's the best. There are some hills but they're good for us.......

I sewed up some valances for my studio spaces. Here in the weaving room I made a short little valance from cute llama fabric from my stash. The fabric makes me smile. Yes, that's a ladder in front of 'Rose Lane' on the side yard..........we've got to find a place for it so I don't have to see it out my window.

Here's the sewing room valance - it's hard to see in the picture but the fabric is a print of thread spools, also from my stash. Really tough to see but there is a cow out the window.

And I couldn't stop sewing so I made covers for my 3 sewing machines (the ones that stay out). For the back machine, the serger, I used the same spool fabric as the valance. The front two machines are in a graphic lettering fabric, also from my stash. The left machine is the little Brother embroidery machine - when I need the Bernina serger I just change places with it. The machine on the right is my Bernina regular machine. I did hang a couple of things........maybe tomorrow I can hang the rest of the 'stuff' for the weaving and sewing rooms and gradually move into the rest of the house. It's about time to get artwork on the walls instead of them leaning against the walls.

A bit of progress.........

 Remember way back last December 25th when I opened the first package of the 12 Days of Christmas spin-a-long from Inglenook Fibers?  Well, it didn't take me too long to spin it all, but it took a while before I found a pattern I wanted to use for the resulting knit shawl. I finally finished it up a few weeks ago but going outside to block it in this smoky hazardous air quality wasn't happening. Yesterday I decided to just set up a table inside to do the blocking. Here it is finished. The pattern is called Be Simple Variations - it's an asymmetrical shawlette.

 I decided to paint the loom room and sewing/craft room before unpacking boxes. I knew once it was all unpacked they would never be painted, I mean never. I painted a bright white which is great since so much of the walls will be covered up and there's only one window in each room. Unfortunately my loom room is a bit smaller than my last one so two pieces of furniture won't fit in and it's a bit tight but I'll make it work. Here's one view of the room.

Here's a view from the other corner. I still need to buy shelving for the closet to store all the books and magazines and whatever else. Above the closet is a 3 ft deep shelf - I'm going to put things I don't use as often up there like my table loom (workshops only), inkle loom, marudai, drum carder, etc. It will take a ladder to take them down but that's ok, they'll be out of the way when I'm not using them.  There is going to be a tv mounted up high so I can see it from my chair at the table and also from each loom. What you can't see is the view out the window is the side yard with roses all along the fence. 

 Here's the sewing/craft room - I've got two tables in there so I have space to work on 3 machines, my Bernina QE440, my Bernina 1350 Serger and my cheapie Brother embroidery machine.....which does a great job. I have another cheapie Brother but it's in a carrier to take to workshops.

Here's looking in the other direction. I didn't get a picture of the closet but it's the same as the loom room with the storage shelf above. Maybe it will be a good place to store roving.......not sure yet.

I plan on starting to unpack all the boxes into these two rooms this week. I'm anxious to be able to find things and get on with weaving. I've got several special orders to weave. I've got some sewing projects I want to get to with making café curtains for the bathrooms and then a special order of embroidered towels.

We have the worst air quality in the nation - the fires just keep burning and it's not just the fires close to us but it's the entire northwest. It doesn't matter which way the wind shifts, there's always smoke. They are making headway on our Taylor Creek Fire - it's now 38% contained. The Klondike Fire, only 5% contained, is getting close to meeting up with the SE corner of  our Taylor Creek Fire. For safety reasons (for fire crews) both fires will now be under one command. It's going to be a long fire season - what's really scary is that we haven't even entered the worst part of fire season yet. We've always had fires but nothing like they've been the last 10+ years - now it seems to be the norm to live with smoke the majority of the summer.