Last week Tim had a three-day weekend, and he decided to do something about it. He was inspired because he got a lot of cookbooks for Christmas and we don’t have anywhere to put them. That got us talking, and saying “what if…” and this is what we came up with:

Lengthening the shelves! He bought new wood (taking down those carpet-covered shelves, remember those, Sharon? From the bookstore?) and two more of those metal things, installed everything (well, took everything off, as you can see below, and then installed everything).

Then he routered a groove in the back of two of the shelves, so that we could face out some of the fancy plates, using them for both art and storage. Then he cleaned everything you see in the photo above and put it back as you see in the photo below.

Things I use (coffee, cocoa mix) on the bottom, because I’m short, and things he uses (spices) up taller, as he is taller. Genius!

That Timmy Sean. He’s so cool.

The rest of my 2011 daily photos can be viewed here.

Oh, but wait. What’s that, where the medicine cabinet used to be? Could that be… the original wallpaper from the house? That the previous owners put in? That I tore down as best I could and painted over after whats-his-name moved out in 1999? Let’s take a closer look at that wallpaper.

Wow. Seeing it again after … twelve years … I can’t believe that when I bought the house in 1995 that I didn’t ask them to take that out before signing the paperwork. That is *some* wallpaper!

Not the most beautiful of my photos this week, but the most exciting; in fixing up the bathrooms, Tim put a “sock drying rack” for all my handknit socks above the washing machine and dryer in the laundry room/bathroom. I LOVES IT, MY PRECIOUS!

The rest of my 2011 daily photos can be viewed here.

This is the drying rack. This makes me both happy and sad; when we closed the yarn shop to go online only, one of the things we had to leave behind was this fabulous dye bar and shelving unit that Tim had put a lot of work into. It was attached to the floor, which by the terms of the lease meant it had to stay. But the drying rack was free-standing, and since I was going to be dyeing yarn at home for Hanks, of course I was all about bringing this home. I knew, with cats, that I wouldn’t be able to use the bottom rack for drying yarn (I shudder at the thought of the mess that would turn out to be). But I could use the bottom for storage, and the top for drying yarn. And for the first few months it was fabulous… right up about until the time that Tiny Kitten figured out she could play daredevil and leap from counter to dog food bin to top shelf of drying rack. If you don’t follow me on Twitter, or don’t really know me, you might not know that Tiny Kitten has the craziest yarn fetish I’ve ever seen in a cat. She doesn’t like to play with it; she likes to eat it. Chew through it. And when she’s chewed through one strand, she’ll pick another strand. Or maybe the same strand, a few inches away. If you’re not a knitter or crocheter, I might not be able to get across the level of frustration this causes. Needless to say, since we can’t put a door there, I can no longer use the drying rack for drying yarn.

More after the cut!

The bottom of the rack is primarily storage. Here I keep bins of soap molds (separated by style), boxes of guest soap molds, extra food-safe paper I use for wrapping the soaps, and also 25 lb boxes of soap base (when I’m not out). When I took this photo I had just opened the last box; I have since ordered six more, and they line the bottom of the shelf with the boxes of molds sitting atop them. You can see I also still have hangers, which I drape freshly dyed yarn on in order to carry and hang in a cat-free room to dry. I also have multiple pots in which I melt soap base; I try to have a variety of pots so that I can have a variety of soap bases (which reminds me, I really do need to use up those hemp, organic oatmeal, and shaving bases…).

The top shelf is now used for soap freshly popped from molds; it’s where I store soap photo shoot props; and I have a few things just sitting there that I don’t know what else to do with. That bin of Lavender buds bugs me; I’d love to store it on the top rack of the dye and fragrance shelf, but it’s about one inch taller than the space I have. Maybe I need to make a ton of soap with lavender buds, and then put the rest in a smaller container?!

Next time I post in this series, we will be moving on to the ceramics room!

For as much of a workhorse as this counter is, there’s not really too much to talk about.

I put small crock pots on here for melting soap base, or larger ones for dyeing yarn (depending on whatever the week calls for). I can switch them out, or do a combination of tasks – there’s plugs enough for four pots, and room for four (five if they’re VERY COZY).

Underneath the counter is storage, and if I were a crafter who cared about making my workspace pretty, I would make curtains to hide the under-storage mess. However, when I think about that, I think about spilling soap and dye all over them… and also I don’t enjoy sewing… Sigh. Maybe I’m just too much of a practical crafter. I get stuff or put stuff under there five times a day, and I know me. I know curtains would bother me, having to slide them back and forth so often; so eventually I’d just leave them open. Which defeats the purpose of having curtains to cover the sight of stuff. What are you gonna do?!

From left to right, we have… a large bin of bird seed, which I have noplace else to put; a selection of guest soap molds; crock pots for dyeing (the soap crock pots are currently on top, as is a large block of base that I’m in the process of cutting down). Then I have more soap molds; the ones in back I hardly use, and the ones in front I use most often. There’s also a small container of yarn in the back on the right; stuff I’ve lost the label to and can’t remember the base, or kitten-nommed yarn that one day I’ll need to deal with.

Here’s a side view of the same unit. I go through a lot of paper towels; but find cloth towels to be pretty impractical for what I do. They’d wind up covered in dye and cut to hell due to the Awesome Knife of Awesome Doooooom.

You know, for about a 10×10 room, I’ve really packed a lot in here! There’s one more post on this room to come, about the drying rack. I should have that up in a day or two!

I was pretty social in May (one of the blog posts I want to write is about [un]sociability and people who work at home). Of course I went to Sweet Dreams… more than once. We also get together every Sunday night with friends and family to watch GAME OF THRONES, which we are all loving the crap out of.

The woman whose house burned down a few years ago (remember that?) moved into her finally-rebuilt house. We went to the party, as did most of the block. The same weekend, I went out with Aunt Gay and Uncle Joe to a friend’s house, of which I wish I had gotten more artsy photos because his house is amazing.

AND JAG AND ANTONY CAME TO VISIT! We went fun places. We had adventures. We had ice cream. We made a Satchel’s Van and took it everywhere (even to Sweet Dreams). Lots of good food was consumed. We saw pretty things.

While I didn’t get to ride the train, I did get to take Aunt Gay and Uncle Joe to a train station (they went to the Nebulas, where Uncle Joe got to present Connie Willis with the Nebula for BLACKOUT/ALL CLEAR – go Connie! Go Connie!).

I put a bright red wash in my hair, which has sadly already faded to shell pink.

CRAFTING

Let’s talk Macramé. Anyone do this? Anyone have a yarn or rope they like to use?

I started a series of blog posts on how I organize my craft room, after signing up for Pinterest (more on that later) and not finding any inspiring photos – for my line of crafting.

I want to knit a shawl for Amy, for her and Isaac’s wedding in September. Not wanting to wait until the last minute, I dyed the yarn already. I also finished a pair of socks, just haven’t blogged about them yet. And I plotted out a major spinning project – there’s this yearly spinning event called the Tour de Fleece (runs at the same time as the Tour de France) and I really want to spin down my stash. I’m going for quantity, not quality. Oh; and I think I need to give up on this stocking thing. I’m getting to the point where I get angry even just looking at the yarn! They’re just not turning out and I think I need to step away. I did start some new knitting that I can’t tell you about yet, but will excitedly crow about in a couple of weeks.

I fired the kiln only once? How could that be? Ah; twice. Make that three. I made more soaps in May than ceramics, as I had a couple of custom orders (the 10 for $50 set) and also wanted to get some new things done for the Craft Fair I did the last weekend of May.

I did another soap swap, and loved what I got back this time.

PETS

The kittens continued to be cute, and it’s a good thing for them because one of them is a little fucker.

HOME

When Jag and Antony were in town, Jag came over and along with Jenn and Laura, helped me wipe out my front yard weed infestation. Since then I’ve been working on organizing what was still alive, and planting new flowers.

My tomatoes started to fruit. So did my cucumbers (tiny, but delicious). Eventually I was getting handfuls every day of yummy juicy seedy goodness.

…. and those are all the things I’ve been meaning to mention!

I’m so happy with my vegetable garden. Oh, who are we kidding? It’s a tomato garden (insert joke about first husband’s body here). Sure; there are cucumbers (delicious, but not very large or plentiful) and peppers (which I’m growing for Tim). But the tomatoes are my pride and joy. Our garden must be a hotbed of bug action, too, because I really have to keep an eye out for spiderwebs when I’m picking through or weeding. I’m really spastic about spiders but am trying hard not to disturb them because I know they’re chowing on things that might eat my ‘maters (and I don’t like to share). So far we’re finding a nice balance, although I did scare this guy trying to get his photo.

The rest of my 2011 photos can be viewed here.

Let me just tell you for a second… how completely, 100%, kick-ass my girlfriends are. LET ME SHOW YOU THEM. Or, rather, LET ME SHOW YOU THEIR AWESOME POWERS. See, you may or may not know, but my front yard has gone beyond “that natural look” into “holy shit, is there a house behind that?”

I will go out there every week or so, pull on my gardening gloves, look at the yard, gird my loins, and go right back inside where I cower in fear. It’s gotten so bad that I actually reached out for… he…. heeeee….. helllllllll…. that thing you do when you need assistance. I don’t mind at all helping my friends, but for some reason am not very good at asking for help. But I did. I asked three friends – Laura, Jag, and Jenn – if they would all come over on the same day and help me to Get Shit Done.

AND DID THEY EVER! Y’all. Seriously. This only took two hours.

My two favorite photos after the cut!

Here it is before we started -

And here it is, two hours later -

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

There are still a couple of small trees that Tim needs to get to with his chainsaw, and I want to give weeds a couple of weeks to stick their little heads up out of the mulch (after which I will RIP THEM OUT TO THE ROOTS MUHUWAHAHAHAHAH). But this, coupled with the clearing near the house we had to do in February… well, I can sense a whole new landscaping bug biting me.