About Me ColorJoy Home Page Free Stuff About Me Contact Me
ColorJoy Home Page
ColorJoy Home The ColorJoy Blog Buy Patterns, Recipe Books, CDs Patterns Schedule & Potential Classes Recipes & Food Information The LynnH SockTour LynnH Polymer Clay The Fabulous Heftones - Lynn & Brian

Never Seen Before (Never again?)

I’m pretty public here about a lot of my life. You see all my creative exploits on this blog, and hear about those I love. You learn about my city and things that catch my eye and ear.

However, I don’t share everything here, there are parts of me that are private for whatever reason. This is appropriate, it’s called “boundaries” and the world would do much better if there were more of them in proper places… but I digress.

One thing I’m not proud of is how messy my physical stuff can get. I can typically find anything on my computer, even if I wrote it on the computer I had back in 1994 which had Windows 3.1 on it. All that stuff is now on this machine, having gone through many hard drives. It’s also backed up in several places, including one offsite, to avoid data loss. Electronic information is easy for me to organize, find, put away and get back. Tidy, almost.

My house, my artful stuff, my office? Not so. First, our home is relatively small for Lansing, Michigan. However, we have much more room than a person from NYC or DC would have. What is really true is that I can fill up any space you give me, and in far too little time.

stash450

When I worked with polymer clay, the media itself did not take much space. When I started doing soft-block printmaking, it did not take much more. But wool? Oh, wow. Wool is fluffy and big. Not heavy, not breakable, but big. (I’m glad the pottery bug did not bite me.)

My living room was the only real storage area available when it was time to organize and store the new obsession/profession. A painter needs many colors of paint so that the right resources are available when ready to paint a certain thing. A knitter, especially one who has created items with nearly 20 colors of yarn in one piece, needs a similar assortment of possible yarns when it’s time to create. I believe this is not an extreme amount of yarn for what I do.

I have two cubbyholes for yarns larger than worsted-weight, two for worsted, two for DK weight, two for fingering, one for specialty yarns, one for novelties, one cubby is shared by beads and cottons. I have one for brushed mohairs, one for projects planned but not started, two for yarns I spun myself on my spinning wheel, and a few for storing samples and books and the like.

(For the record, these boxes are stuffed so full that when I pull them out they overflow and must be tamed again to get them back in the cubby where they belong. The boxes at right are stacked so that I have to take one down to get into another. This area will not stay tidy for long, but I do know where balls of yarn should be found. Partly-knitted items are not quite as organized, and neither my finished samples nor yarns for my dyeing business are in this room.)

You can also see boxes full of patterns and magazines. Under the boxes at right, you can see a shiny thing. It’s a storage box, chrome and shiny, designed for storing tools in your pickup truck. There is another one behind the couch. Those hold spinning supplies and projects in progress.

For the record, I do love the way this part of our house was built. It’s something like 1904, with solid oak trim around the windows, solid wood floors, nice details though not too fancy. This house originally had a cistern for collecting rain water (for cleaning), an outhouse, and wood stove for heat/cooking.

At some point they got a coal bin (it’s still down there but no coal in it), and when they added on in the 1920’s a few bedrooms. At one point the 2nd bedroom became a bathroom with claw-footed tub. Nice details for an otherwise-simple home with a small lot, I think.

I realize this is not tidy enough for most folks’ living rooms. However, this is as tidy as it ever gets around here, so I took the opportunity to snap a photo.

I present to you the Casa de ColorJoy Yarn Stash! For what it’s worth, anyway.

4 Responses to “Never Seen Before (Never again?)”

  1. Jane Says:

    I really don’t see anything wrong with this picture! LOL But I do have one question – are those Christmas lights on your windows? And if so, are they still up from last Christmas or are they up early for this Christmas?

  2. Lindy Says:

    I would feel right at home in your house and you would feel right at home in mine. I do not feel comfortable at all in any house where there is a place for everything and everything is in its place – unless that place is right out in the open and easy to reach. I do not feel comfortable in a house where the resident’s personality does not shine through in the form of the things said resident loves. I really am not comfortable in a house where there are no books and magazines stacked everywhere. My husband and I both surround ourselves with the materials we are currently reading and with the projects we are working on. Of course, there are “boundaries” and I really must draw the line at messy, greasy motorcycle and/or airplane parts scattered about the main rooms.

    That said, I love the way your room looks – it is so very livable and workable.

    Lindy, currently in AZ (MI native)

  3. Mandarella Says:

    I think it looks wonderful! And it is MUCH more organized than my house or stash! It would make me happy to be able to just look over at my yarn and know that whenever I needed to be creative with it, it would be right there waiting for me! Lovely!

  4. Diana Troldahl Says:

    I like being able to see my yarn. I think it looks wonderful, like a living sculpture :-}