This is the first wall of the room, that the door is in. As you can see, I have begun to sacrifice bookshelf space for paint jar space. This both hurts and pleases me. Books are my friends, and I hate to put them where I can’t see them; but business is good, so I need the room for new glazes! Maybe one day business will be so good that we’ll be able to buy a bigger house. I also have a work table (covered with paper towels so that rather than try to get the greenware dust out of the wood grain, I can just replace the paper towel). Under the table are boxes; some ceramics that were in storage, my sewing machine and supplies, and tiles from my grandmother. Also a few boxes filled with shredded paper, that I take to-and-from when visiting my ceramic supply shop, in case Juanita has any greenware I want to buy. The very very top shelf of the unit is filled with stuff I don’t know what to do with, and as I’m short, I can’t easily use that space anyway.

Here are some of my glazes (as you can see, I’m a Duncan girl), and also a few odd things that don’t really have a spot. I have put random things I don’t know what to do with in the middle of the shelves, as that’s a really hard spot to reach because of the table — that way it’s not wasted space, but I’m also not putting something I need a lot out of the reach of my short arms.

More glazes! I have my glazes divided by type (glossy, designer, crystals) and then arranged by the number Duncan has assigned; this sort of messes with my love of alphabetization, but when reordering, it’s easier to go by number rather than name. So there ya go.

This is my table, onto which I put fresh greenware just out of the molds. I let it dry there, and then I clean it on the same table (for which I use the water and tools you see on the bottom right of the table). The box of paints does not usually live there — sadly, it doesn’t really have a home but moves around from where it’s in the way to where it’s not in the way, depending.

Want a better look at that box?

It’s my painting supply box; paints are divided by type, but then just in there, as I take them out to put them in front of me on the table when I’m painting (as seen here and here). I also have my brushes in here, and small plastic cups which are great for when I need a large amount of paint. The paint jars themselves have very tiny openings, and some of my larger brushes don’t fit through very easily. It’s simpler to pour out paint into a small cup, use what I need, and pour the remainder back in.

And that’s part one of my ceramics studio! More to come, including how I store my molds, where I pour, how I keep my shipping supplies, and more.

So. I THOUGHT (hahahahah!) that I’d told you the whole story back in December; turns out there was a minor addendum last month that almost made me find a baby to punch in the face.

We had about a week to get all the vegetation away from the house. Including my ten-year-old rose vine. I’M NOT BITTER. Wait, YES I AM.

So… I don’t really know what to say. They told us to do it or they’d cancel the insurance. So we did it.

I am not denying that my yard needed some maintenance – I basically haven’t worked on it at all since opening the yarn store. So it’s not like this isn’t going to be a great opportunity to replant flowers in the Spring. But… it’s just the way we had to do it. I strongly dislike “do it or else” ultimatums. I’m not a child. I know it needs to be done. I know we live in a shithole, but… have you SEEN our neighborhood? We practically live in the ghetto! It’s not there’s a bunch of $500,000 mansions in the gated community and we’re bringing the prices down. Fuck. Also, it’s fucking FEBRUARY. We’ve had a number of unusual freezes (for our area) and practically everything in town, let alone our yard, is dead. Even the prettiest plants will look like shit when dead and brown.

Anyway. I’m still cranky about this. And I probably will be until about this time next month when we get a bunch of flowers.

MEANWHILE. Here’s a shitload of photos that I’ve taken over the years of our yard, both front and back. Here’s a direct link to the album in case you’re reading this in a Reader and don’t see the album below.

1. Not your ordinary 2×4 – I love what Tim did here with rounding off the corners. It’s a small detail, unlikely to be noticed unless you’re looking up; but it makes it classy and impresses those who notice.
2. Shelves, stocked with dye – And room to grow! The shelves are deep enough to hold two (one in use, one backstock) and ultimately should be able to house all of the available colors.
3. Crock pots a-ready – I have base yarn on the way, and these should start seeing use by the end of next week!
4. Standing in doorway, looking to left – We debated putting doors on the shelves under the sink, and decided not to; eventually, though, the shelves under the crock pots will have doors. Notice also the small bar above the sink; this’ll be great for moving yarn from the crock pots to the sink without having to take them off the hangers.
5. The drying rack – Looks remarkably like the drying rack from the store… probably because it is. Tim cut the middle shelf out (the one that all the African Violets were on) to make it shorter so that it could fit in the smaller room.
6. View outside over the crock pots – maybe this view every day will inspire me to rip down some of that crazy ivy. That bar, by the way, is on an adjustable chain; so if I need to make it higher or lower it’s going to be incredibly easy to do so.
7. View outside over the sink – I can not wait to have time to do a garden this fall; my poor vegetable gardens have been unused the last three years because I knew I didn’t have the time to devote to caring for a vegetable garden. I can already taste next spring’s tomatoes…!
8. Lovely gift from Beth – No reason really to include this, other than our friend Beth did the macrame herself, and I feel like it’s a good luck piece.
9. Standing at back door – I don’t know that the winder is going to live there permanently, blocking the coffee mugs and taking up valuable table space. BTW, mom, do not worry about that table – not only will it not be near anything being dyed, but I have a slipcover for it just in case.

All hail The Mighty Tim (some call him… “Tim”…), who is just all kinds of fabulous!

This is my office. It may look no worse than usual, har har har, but it’s actually coming along really well. I’ve pulled out about two boxes of stuff to donate and another two bags of stuff that can be thrown away.

Here’s the living room, relatively clean, even!

The other side of the living room, with hutches filled (and a pile of framed photos and art that I need to hang on walls).

Kitchen – done!

Dye bar, about 90% done (shelves are put in but doors still need to be made/go up; this isn’t a priority though as I won’t need doors until I have a backstock of yarn that I need to keep away from cats and dogs) –

Other half of dye bar, with coffee mugs –

Overall what still needs to be done? Tim’s still working on the drying rack, that should go up in the dye bar later today or tomorrow. Doors for the dye bar. Eventually, down the road, new kitchen cabinet doors (very far down the road). Still some unpacking, straightening, and rearranging of small things to be done (like hanging all those pictures). Overall, though? It is really coming together!

It’s in my house now, in my office. You can compare it to when it was in the shop.

The rest of my 2010 photos can be viewed here.

With the yarn shop closing, I need to make room for some furniture; antiques that my mother gave me. I knew upon getting them, in fact, wouldn’t have accepted them without Tim and I understanding that at some point in the future (for either good reasons or sad reasons) they would be in our house rather than the shop.

The biggest thing by far is the corner hutch (there’s also a table and a small… couch? Settee? I’m not sure what it’s called. Loveseat?). The hutch is built to go in a corner, and needs 2.5-3 feet on either side of the corner. It’s about 80″ tall. So Tim and I walked around the house, room by room, with a tape measure, evaluating each corner. There’s really only one corner it can go into both height-wise and without blocking anything, but that corner (in my office) was already taken up by two smaller hutches.

So we needed to move those two hutches in order to make room for the big corner hutch. Where could they go? Again; tape measure. My Libra orderliness wanted to keep them together – in the same room, at least, if not close to each other. Hey, they are 72″ long when next to each other. There’s a wall between our kitchen and living room that is exactly… 72″ long. So… guess what’s there now?

Oh! But guess what? There was something already on that wall (and exactly nobody is surprised). There were some bookshelves cobbled together from boards and L-brackets. CLASSY. So we would have to take those down and find someplace else for those books to go. Did I mention that the brown hutches there were already full of books? (Again, nobody is surprised).

I’d never liked the boards-and-brackets thing anyway (quick fix after The Training Husband (TM) got the nice shelves in the divorce). So Tim is going to build a fabulous bookshelf that will run the length of the long window in the living room. It will be adjustable for oddly sized books (what had been on the wall were art/humor/photography books, yes, I categorize my books, doesn’t *everyone* do that when they come from a family of writers and librarians?). It will be perfect. But it will take a couple of days to build.

Meanwhile, all of the books are on the floor, in front of the TV. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we just can’t watch anything on either DVD or VHS. Come to think of it, I’m not 100% sure that the VCR still works. Maybe it does. Ah well. MOVING ON.

It’s been like this for about 48 hours. In that 48 hours every worry that I ever had of becoming a hoarder and eventually being crushed to death by a falling pile of books or magazines has been banished. I have books piled on my desk. Books on the floor. I have to weave my way through piles of things that could fall over at any second… AND I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW STRESSFUL THAT IS. I may be ruthless with these books when I go to put them back on the shelves. I may wind up getting rid of a few/many/some. Too bad Denise and Tarrant don’t live here any more!

I also may need to cull my coffee-cup collection. Why, you ask? Because Tim’s also doing a little work on the room in which that collection is currently housed. You see, because of the closing of the yarn shop, I’ll be dyeing all the yarn we do at my house instead of at the shop. And our kitchen is in no way cut out to hold four crock pots that may need use at any moment, for most of the day, for most of the days of a given week.

So we have this dining room, that we never use as a dining room. Tim is ripping up the laminate that we put in back in… 2003 (?). Chili essentially destroyed it by peeing all over it, and Tim has wanted to replace it for a while. So this isn’t necessarily a hardship, it’s just now got a time limit on it that we weren’t expecting. Because he’s laying down tile, and is then going to build a brand-new dye bar, wherein I can dye yarns like a mofo, and the supplies for that will start moving into the house on June 28th. Hoo-boy; after a couple weeks, That Poor Man may get tired of me roaming around the house, Bat’leth in hand, chanting in a low voice “perhaps today… IS… a good day… to dye…”.

HAH! Thank you. I’ll be here all week.

ANYWAY. Up until 48 hours ago, the dining room mentioned above was a box room; all of those boxes are now in the corner of my office where those two hutches were, where the corner hutch will go in about a week. They are boxes mostly full of two wedding china sets and a lot of ceramics that I haven’t had room to put on display (see note about first husband getting shelves) for a number of years. My plan (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, plans) is that I will fit as many books onto the under-the-window bookshelf as I can, culling the herd as I go. Then onto the hutches, wherein I hope to be able to put the wedding china sets and as many of the ceramics as I can (culling the herd on those also; expect some things to maybe go up for sale).

Meanwhile, I’ll be tip-toeing around the house, trying not to knock anything over for the next two weeks. Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster. I said to Jenn earlier today, I didn’t know who I would rather not be over the next two weeks; myself, or Tim. I’m going to have a lot of emotions to process as we get into the last days of the physical yarn store. There’s going to be a lot of bittersweet moments and I hope I’m not too busy in the dye bar to get to appreciate them. I’m going to be hard at work, dyeing and winding yarn for the grand opening of our online shop a few days after the physical shop closes. I’m going to be on my feet 8-10 hours a day, overworking my shoulder on the winder, cranky and hurting by the time I get home. But Tim is still trying to catch up on his certification, still trying to work on getting a job, and now he’s taking on all this physical labor in the house that has a finite amount of time that he can spend on it until shit needs to be moved from the shop at the end of the month. Plus, he’ll have to deal with me. Who would you rather be?!

I think it may be time to do a prescribed burn in my yard, and start all over again from scratch. This bitch is really out of control.

The rest of my 2010 photos can be viewed here.

So, remember a couple of weeks ago when I was quoted in the paper, talking about the 3/50 Project? My friend Juanita saw it, and called me at the shop – she didn’t know about the shop; in fact, I hadn’t seen Juanita in years. She owns a ceramic shop out on Williston Road, and I hadn’t been there in years since I hadn’t been working on ceramics. But I’ve been itching to get back into it for a wide variety of reasons (I miss it, I need to be doing something creative that isn’t about yarn, I miss it, I’m good at it, I have all this stuff why waste it, on and on). So I decide that this is a confluence of events and I should to to Juanita’s on Tuesday in order to pick up some slip and new paints.

All day Wednesday and Thursday (and by “all day” I mean the time “before and after I go to work”) I putter around the house, finding and reclaiming old paints, locating old brushes and taking stock of both them and whatever tools I can find.

Friday morning I go to clean out the ceramic room. I pull out everything that doesn’t have to do with ceramics (OK; I leave the comics and photos in there, on the large bookshelf). Since the room had become a stockpile for All Things I Didn’t Know What To Do With, I wound up taking out two very large bags of trash, breaking down close to 2o boxes, and just generally Purging. I piled up all the supplies for my other hobbies in a different room, expecting to go through and sort and prune from that… because it still looked pretty tight inside the small room and I wanted to get a table in there for a workspace.

I decided that instead of four three-high adjustable shelves, I could get more in there if I made three four-highs. So I did one, and then went to do the second one… and that’s when everything came to a screeching halt. The shelves were in corners, so they could have walls for support. Those walls had paneling on them that started just a couple inches above the shelves… which meant I couldn’t get the shelves any higher because I couldn’t get the bracer for a fourth shelf into the hole on the third shelf. Unless… unless I wanted to move the shelves over by about an inch. Which means unloading the shelves because with the molds on them, they weigh close to 400 pounds or so. FLAIL!!!! Also, FAIL!!!!

I go to get Tim, thinking that if I have to move one thing, I might as well think about moving other things around, but I’m flailing at all the spatial stuff – things that I think should fit turn out to be an inch or two longer, and I really need to plan this out before I do it, and yadda yadda. Enter, The Tim.

This is getting pretty long; I’m going to put the rest after the cut.

So. Enter… THE TIM.

Also enter, THE CATS. THE CATS are very excited that the ceramic room is open – they never get to go in there, and… well, you know about cats. Curiosity, and being little fuckers who break things, and all. So while I’m standing there talking to Tim about moving stuff, and getting the table in there, and blarg… Tavi keeps winding herself around our feet. So happy to be in the room. So happy to be where she’s not usually allowed to be. So happy to show us that she’s there. And generally being a pain. So I look down at her, exasperated, and say “if you want to be in here so bad, I should just switch rooms with you!”.

Blink.

Blink.

And then it was like a mad race between Tim and I, shouting out ideas of how things could be changed, built, moved, made better (we have the technology!). And this is the place where Tim rocks like a rocking thing that rocks a lot – this was Friday morning, and I told him that I was really ready to work on things and that it was important to me that I be doing things by next week… whether I had a new studio or not. I would be fine either way, but I didn’t want things to be in limbo for a long time when I had greenware precariously packed in the trunk of my car.

Friday after I went to work, Tim plugged everything into Visio and came up with floor and shelf plans.

Saturday he purchased and cut all of the wood for the shelves. Saturday was also the day I threw the fuck out of my back.

Sunday he deconstructed the habitrail in the cat room, built shelves for the molds, moved ALL OF THE MOLDS HIMSELF into the new area.

Monday he reconstructed a new habitrail for the cats in the old ceramic/new cat room, and moved my work table into the new ceramic room.

Tuesday I spent my day off pouring ceramics and making messes.

It. Was. Awesome.