I have this awful habit of buying yarn because it's beautiful, but only buying one or two skeins because I don't have a specific project in mind for it, so I end up just keeping it to look at occasionally and wish I had more of it. I also have a bunch of bits and pieces left over from larger projects that are too small to do anything with and too pretty to throw away. But as a rule, I don't buy ugly yarn. But the cheap acrylic stuff, yeah, it's in there. Right on top on the left is a big skein of yellow Red Heart (super cheap spun-plastic yarn that has been exactly the same since the 1960s) that I inherited from my grandmother, but having all those colors thrown together in an organized jumble (I tried to group them by both form and function) really disguises the fact that some of the yarn in that pile is basically only useful as scrap. Those specimens are heartily outnumbered, though, by the really lovely stuff I prefer to work with -- I even have a couple of skeins of tweed camel down that I've been itching (no pun intended) to use for something.
The rack was seriously about to get thrown away when we moved. We bought them off the clearance rack when we lived in our first house and needed something to house our growing collection of XBox games, and though it's hard to tell from the photo they're actually three separate x-shaped racks. I lapped them together so I could store yarn in the "negative space" between them and on top. It's one of the better brainwaves I've had in terms of repurposing old furnishings. After we moved into the apartment, I took two of the rectangles (the Xes come apart in the middle to form two long interlocking boxes) and mounted them vertically to the wall on either side of the bed to use as nightstands. We could store books in the bottom part, and the top was just big enough for a cup of water and my eyeglasses. There was no space for a traditional nightstand in our cramped bedroom, so these were ideal. The other 4 pieces were nested and stored for 2 years before we moved in here. Probably a good use of $45, given how much use they've had over the last decade.
All this is to say, thank you, I am crap at taking compliments, but I do appreciate them.
Also, Smells, I cannot overstate my satisfaction with the hideaway sewing machine. I am seriously in love with this concept, and it is inspiring me to actually learn to use this fancy machine that my Mom gave me 4 years ago. It does embroidery and everything, it really is too good for me. But I'm trying -- I just picked up some instructions and bought some fabric to make holiday placemats for my kids, I think they'll like that and it's mostly straight lines. It amazes me how much sewing is like construction -- lots of angles and measurements and math. The good kind of math, though -- the kind where you solve it, and there's only one answer, and that answer tells you exactly what to do next.
Edited to add: Holy crap, if this is what I'm like after too much caffeine these days, I'd better never decide to try cocaine.
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Topic: Show me your desk! (Read 21208 times)