This former bedroom has been my knitting room now for about five years and it was time for a good overhaul. The first thing I did was to take my yarn out of it's hiding place in the tiny closet and brought it front and center in full view in my glass cabinets. I purchased the lightweight, inexpensive cubes online from Target. They fit into my Ikea cabinet like a glove and hold all my stash. I keep stash records online on Ravelry so I never forget what I have, but seeing my big stash every day not only looks pretty, but keeps me accountable and is a daily visual reminder that I should knit from my awesome stash and steer clear from new purchases. Since one rule of cleaning and organizing is to declutter at the same time, I added some yarn to my "sell" page on Ravelry that you can see here.

Another organizing breakthrough was to gather up all my knitting notions and needles and put them in one place. When I gathered everything together I found that I had way too many point protectors, measuring tapes, stitch holders and cable needles and kept only my favorites. I store my needles and every knitting notion in a brand new caddy organizer from MollieOllie. It's sturdy and made of high quality thick grey felt and has oodles of lined compartments and pockets for all those knitting gadgets. This has been the very best way I have been able to keep all my knitting notions (plus tissues, lotion, remotes, etc.) at my side in plain view and with easy access. I love it so much I bought 4 more to give as Christmas presents for the 4 girls in my family. It will be good for baby items, but I also love it for all the flotsam that lands on the coffee table, home office or playroom. Wouldn't it be great for long car trips? I think I need a second one for that. It was a game changer in my knitting room and I love it. 

I store my circular needles in a basket file I purchased decades ago. It's a gorgeous Nantucket made basket with a wood bottom and leather handles. For the longest time I didn't know how to best use it before I realized it would hold a standard file folder (when on it's side) so I purchased a dozen clear plastic zip-closured files, labeled them 0-12 and can now easily store and find my circs. I've used this method for several years and it's perfect.

I store my works-in-progress in baskets on the shelves. Most of my WIPs are knitting, but I also have a table cloth I'm slowly embroidering and several needlepoint Christmas ornaments that get a little attention every once in a blue moon.  I'm fickle with my projects and hop from one to the other so it's nice to have them in full view and at my fingertips. 

As I'm ending this tour of my knitting room, I will admit that there is still more yarn to show, as in, what's in the drawers? Well, the drawers are chock full of all the oddballs we knitters collect. I'm not one to purchase single skeins, my yarn purchases always seem to have sweater quantities, but leftovers from projects?--I have many. I always try to keep the original label intact and store them by weight. One drawer is entirely full of my precious Kidsilk Haze leftovers. The drawer next to it has my fingering weights. The tall Ikea cabinet has two shallow drawers under the glass cabinets. One drawer has my DK weight leftovers and another has the worsted weight leftovers. I used to keep all my yarn in the tiny closet but now having it in the open is much easier for me. Since this room is also a guest room (the sofa turns into a bed) it was nice to free up some shelves in the closet so our guests have a place to store their suitcase and clothes. 

I hope you enjoyed my knitting room tour and were able to pick up some good tips. Next up I'll show my sewing/craft room. I've shown that before too but I've rearranged things in there as well. I'll take some new pictures and make another post soon. My husband thinks I may be the only person in the world with both a knitting room and a sewing room, but I'm not so sure about that--he is prone to exaggerate. I will just say that empty nesters have to do something with their children's former rooms and a knitting room is a brilliant idea!

Links

The LOVE pillow in the last picture below is from Pottery Barn and also on sale.

I LOVE it!

 

Hello! I know you come here for the knitting, but I wanted to share my new living room look with you. Four months ago I hired a young, adorable designer from San Francisco to consult with me for five hours on a few decorating ideas for three rooms in our home--the family room, kitchen and living room. They just needed some sprucing up, nothing too major, just paint, pillows, pictures and the like, and I was up for anything that would fit my small budget. We painted the kitchen a brownish gray to match the family room, (it's prettier than it sounds!), and replaced ratty pillows and dated wall art in the family room. But it's the living room that had me stymied. I've always struggled decorating the too-long wall of bookcases in that room. My decorator arrived and within minutes suggested we paint the bookcase wall a crazy green. She pointed to a painting in our adjoining dining room, and said, "that green."  I'm sure my eyes popped because "that" green was shockingly neon bright. I wasn't even sure if I really liked green anyway except except on a plant. But somehow, and with little effort, she was able to talk me into it because one of the things I had originally asked of her was to convince me to add some color. Within days the painter was in my living room and before I knew it, I was staring at a shock of acid green. I panicked! (In contrast, my husband loved it right off the bat but I suspect he might have been influenced by the idea that I was ready to paint over it and he didn't want to spend the extra money.) My decorator was sympathetic to my worry but asked me to live with it for a few weeks and if I still wanted to change it, then no problem, paint was easy to change.  So live with it I did because the pandemic hit, we were sheltered-in-place, we started babysitting, and then finally just got too busy to think about decorating. None the less, every day I would naturally look at it and little by little I started to admire it's citrony loveliness until I was in completely besotted. I am so happy with it and glad I gave myself the time to change my mind. Love at first sight is perhaps over-rated. Spice Market is the green color and Temptation is the charcoal on the walls, both by Benjamin Moore. I loved working with Sheila! If you live in the SF Bay Area and need a decorator, call her. Sheila Kramer Interiors.

Below is Carter with his first real Humpty Dumpty. We blew an egg and painted on a face and added arms and legs. Carter loved it so much and was completely thrilled and proud to be in charge of something so terribly fragile. He dropped it constantly, always by accident, but then accidents are second nature to two year olds, until eventually Humpty literally could not be put back together again. Not by king's horses nor king's men, nor by Carter's grammy and her armload of tapes and glues. Since that first Humpty we've made a dozen more. We've been eating a lot of scrambled eggs lately!