Damn, Knit & Blast It

Populating the Knit-Room

November 8th, 2010, 3:50 pm

The last couple of weeks have been fun in the Knit-Room – more screwdriver action than knitting

I do have lots to show you though- Prepare for photo overload

New carpet is down and nice Mr Ikea has left me a huge pile of stuff to build.

All there was to do was to put the “stuff” in the room according to my cunning plan – you will remember this…

…surprisingly little went wrong – except for me forgetting that there were light switches and power sockets So every thing shuffled up a bit and I lost some space in the bottom left corner

First we got the Beddinge sofa bed and my my new Norden table in place.

From Knit-Room

Norden will be used for my sewing machine when it’s leaves are up and as somewhere to stand my coffee for the rest of the time! It weighs a ton – Didn’t realise that when I bought it -so not so easy to move around – mainly because of all the really solid, cunningly concealed storage draws…

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Thankfully, the table fits and makes a bedside table with the sofa bed open too! (You had me worried there, Jacqui!)

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“Where’s the wool??”, I hear you cry!

Ok, Ok….

The yarn is in the wardrobes! We built them to have 8 big lidded pullout draws to hold yarn and some shelves for other stuff, plus some hanging space in the middle for the occasional guest. The wardrobes are from the Ikea PAX range where you buy the frame and chose all your own fittings for the insides….

…And,Yes, I said “8″ draws for yarn…

From Knit-Room

I have been good though and only filled 7 of them!… and a big box of handknit cotton but I’m hiding that… One draw has been used for my fabric stash too – mostly left over from making curtains.

Wanna see?

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When not in use, everything is neatly obscured behind frosted glass doors…

From Knit-Room

The draws have been filled roughly by gauge…

a 4ply draw
2 x DK draws
an Aran draw
a Chunky draw
a miscellaneous “wont fit anywhere else” stuff draw
and of course – an entire draw of my beloved KidSilk Haze…

From Knit-Room

By this point in the yarn sorting frenzy, the men in my life were flaking out…

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Thug wasn’t much help either….

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He did have a chat with me about ornaments though-

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Thug recommended this display for the table made up of an old vase and my beautiful glass needles…(clever cat, that one!)

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Last thing to show you for now are the books….

They have a new home in two Billy bookcases, complete with beautiful doors (I love those doors!!)

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I also learnt something alarming about Billy bookcases. If you build them, then try to hang heavy doors on the front, they fall over onto you when you’re screwing the doors on! There was much squealing but no harm done. There is a good reason Ikea give you widgets to screw them to the walls -take note!!

I took the opportunity to update my Ravelry library while I was putting all my books and mags away.

I was a little surprised to discover I own 85 books, 83 magazines, 51 booklets and 5 PDFs
Those of you on ravelry can see the true horror here -> Susan’s Ravelry Library

Here’s some random shots of the insides of the Billys (just in case you’re feeling nosey and want to see what’s inside;-) )

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Even Boofle and Monkey have settled down on the window-sill -Well, they are both knitted!

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I am so thrilled with the results of the Knit-Room.

I feel a very privileged knitter to have such a room

Filed under Cats, Chat, DIY · 20 Comments

Project Knit-Room

October 25th, 2010, 11:12 pm

I have been very jealous since “Project ManCave”.

Project ManCave was where we took a nasty, grubby little bedroom full of boxes of Ben’s toys and general Geekery…

From Knit-Room

…redecorated, replaced the carpet (due to a leaking radiator incident)…

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and created the perfect Gaming Geek room with shelving for games and a handknitted Sackboy...

From Knit-Room

Great for Ben…..What about ME??!!

For the last year, my Knitterly possessions have languished like this…

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In an equally horrible environment in need of some love….

From Knit-Room

Time to create the Knit-Room Which also has to double as a guest room. If you know me, you’ll know that being invited to share a room with my precious stash is indeed an honour. (It’s share with the stash or endure a night with Ben’s beautifully hand painted Games Workshop miniatures of Orcs, Trolls and monsters staring down at you all night!)

Hmmm….
……. Not sure about that name…”Knittery”? Yarnarium? Any better ideas out there for the Knit-Room??

All my “still packed up from the house move” yarn, books and equipment has been moved to another room while the Knit-Room was scrubbed, prepared and painted plain white.

Nothing too difficult or heartbreaking, huh?….

Painting done, we decided to whip the carpet cleaner over the carpet….

Oh Dear.

Once the carpet was moistened, we were aware that there were several patches of ancient cat wee on the carpet. ICK, ICK EWWW! (Definitely not Thug and Mewsley’s work!!)

After trying every trick on the internet to get rid of the smell (and actually making it much worse), it was obvious that no yarn could be stored in the stinky room and we certainly couldn’t ask a guest to sleep in there – it was revolting.

One carpet, rapidly on the way to the dump.

I now have a clean, fragrant but rather empty room.

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While waiting for the replacement carpet I have spent many happy hours planning the room layout so it can accommodate a sofa bed for me to sit and knit on (and maybe a guest to use), yarn storage, knit book storage and “other crafty things” storage.

Good old IKEA even had some inspiration for me in one of their Business catalogues…

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(Click the picture to see it larger – that really is wool in the shelves and needles and yarn in vases as ornaments!! )

Hmmmm, looks pretty but the yarn would get dusty and moths would love it…My yarn needs doors! (And rather a lot of plastic bags )

So I have decided on this layout….

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Beddinge (sofabed) and one wardrobe I already had, Billy is a bookcase and Norden is a gateleg table. I think you can guess who the ginger one is!

Nice Mr Ikea delivers tomorrow…the suspense is killing me…watch this space

Filed under Chat, DIY, Knitting · 10 Comments

Conservatory Stash Busting

July 12th, 2010, 2:40 pm

Do you remember how we painted the Conservatory a striking shade of green?

Well, we’ve now put some furniture and plants in there and created a favourite snoozing spot for Mewsley!

From Double Vision Cushion

Do you like the cushion on the chair behind Mewsley? It was bought on a whim from Ikea.

Here’s a better look (right way up too!!)..

From Double Vision Cushion

We really wish we’d bought a second one we liked it so much but they have discontinued it – Bah!!

There was only one thing for it – Knit a matching cushion!

First I gathered all my likely green and yellow stash wools together in a big heap…

From Double Vision Cushion

Then I had a couple of disastrous attempts at randomly combining them – You can laugh at these attemps if you like – I did

The random stripe disaster…

From Double Vision Cushion

Then the random colour blocks using the Ten Stitch Blanket pattern.

From Double Vision Cushion

This is a clever pattern that spirals out from the centre. The problem was my attempt at random colour blocks! Looked like something a very old beginner knitter might do to use up oddments…

The pattern is better suited to random dye yarns and when done properly, looks like this…

From Double Vision Cushion

So enough of laughing at my failures…what did I choose?

I’ve always gasped with amazement at the beautiful Afghans designed by Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer of Woolly Thoughts.

I was thrilled to see their Double Vision Afghan technique as a Cushion.

From Double Vision Cushion

The cushion uses 4 colours and blends them in all possible combinations (with yarn doubled) to give the 16 squares.

I chose my 4 colours and some ancient black mohair (left over from a long dead 1984, cropped mohair jumper) and got carried away….

What do you think so far? I really trying to mirror the colours and proportions of the Ikea cushion…

From Double Vision Cushion

I am so pleased I can’t wait to finish!

Of course, that is just one side…

I like having the back of a cushion different so I’m knitting diagonally (so I can easily get the right size) and repeating 4 rows of each of the 10 possible colour combinations.

Like this so far…

From Double Vision Cushion

Hopefully, this will be finished a bit quicker than Halcyon….

…which has taken a shamefully long time to knit….watch this space for an update….

Filed under Cats, Chat, DIY, Knits WIP, Knitting · 6 Comments

Knitted Election??!!

May 4th, 2010, 7:23 pm

The paint fumes probably are the reason….

…I seem to keep seeing knitting where I shouldn’t….

…even in the election coverage!

This strange and slightly worrying tenancy started when I was in Israel in 2008 (When I made Geno, and Hedera on holiday)…everyone else saw a sculpture dedicated to world peace…I saw…a giant ball of wool!

From Geno

So why the paint fumes?

I’ve been at the DIY again. Up til now the only person using the grubby, tired, sick-green conservatory was Thug. Occasionally for it’s acoustic properties for a good long “Meowing Opera” but mostly for his afternoon nap, on a thoughtfully placed blanket, when the sun was out…

From DIY 2010

I was jealous. I really wanted a comfy chair out there for knitting in the sun.
A quick tidy up, lead to a quick clean which lead to a total inside and out scrub complete with Ben and a water powered death laser (pressure washer to you and me)!

From DIY 2010

Once we had gone that far we kinda had to paint it – there’s not much wall so we chose a brave, strong green to bring the garden in…

From DIY 2010

Yep that’s my garden knitting chair through the windows. The chair I restored a while ago – one must have a choice of knitting venues, suitable for all weathers

So that explains the fumes…what about a knitted election?

Have you watched the BBC coverage? Have you looked at the BBC Election website?

Seen the BBC election logo at the top of every page?

From Election

Am I obsessed or are those a bunch of knitting needles??

Once you’ve seen it – you can’t un-see it….

Filed under Cats, Chat, DIY, Knitting · 5 Comments

Tales from the DIY Dungeon

April 8th, 2010, 6:00 am

I know this is a knitting blog, but here’s the deal.

I’ll tell you about my exciting new knitting project in my next post if you humour me and listen to me brag about the DIY we’ve been up to…

This was our Utility room, just after we moved in…

From DIY 2010

There was 20 years of dirt on the walls, which never seem to have been wiped, chocolate brown gloss paintwork, knackered old cupboards and a bile green carpet that had been used as a cat toilet. We even found cans of beer in those old wardrobes that were 12 years out of date! 12 years!!

It made my flesh creep to put anything of ours out there, let alone let any laundry touch the floor. Even worse – what if Thug and Mewsley got the idea they could use it as a cat toilet too? This room quickly became out top priority to get sorted.

First we ripped up the disgusting bile green carpet and lino and found the original beige lino underneath – a thorough scrub and bleach and we could live with it for a couple of months.

The window was replaced (we had the whole house done – what a change!)
and we scrubbed and painted the walls, gloss and ceiling. The Utility room is quite a big room – 6.5m x 2.5m so this was quite a big job. This was when Ben christened it the DIY Dungeon! For weeks we seemed to spend every spare minute out there rubbing down, filing and painting.

Time for a breather while we planned phase 2!