Lines, Lines, everywhere.

I woke up this morning and staggered into my new studio.  On the way, maybe because I was still seeing blurry, or maybe because it was a first look in the morning, it hit me... we have lines everywhere in our new and improved interiors. I mean everywhere. 

Just to name a few -

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Wood and Thread

Why allow left-over wood to just sit there?

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Before and not quite After

I haven't disappeared, I'm still here, just barely.  

We moved in Tuesday night. It was supposed to be morning but the movers came at 6 PM. So it was night.

Since then we have been trying to sort out our boxes, our stuff, and our lives. With a few setbacks, (Sunday we had a storm but it was inside the house, right on top of the piano coming down from the air conditioner - sorry you asked?). There is still lots of work to be done, but everyday we see progress.

I'm desperately looking for my Ultrasuede fabric. Lots of orders to go out, lots of catching up. My threads are finding a home, these are the partials I use for my own stitching.

These are the ones I send out to you. How do you like my thread wall solution? As you see I'm running out of room so we are looking for another piece of wall. They are hard to come by!

and this is my old studio. It's our little TV room. Small and cozy, we love sitting here. 

 

I'll be back with more, promise!

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MOVING DAY!

I'll be back with some photos...

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It's starting to get to me :(

I have tried to be good. I've done my best to continue working in our temporary arrangement. Despite boxes and bags and bikes and clothing everywhere, I've made the beds every morning. I have tried to stay upbeat. 

It's starting to get to me.

The lights went up in our place.

My studio has made progress.

These are some of our belongings in storage.

I wanna go home!

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You be the judge.

I haven't posted photos of our place for quite awhile, in part because the photos I took were out of focus. The other reason? I'm not sure things are moving along or that they look much different and I'm a bit melancholy about that. I know, I was way too optimistic thinking things were moving along very well and WOW maybe they will be done ahead of time. Stupid me. We will be moving back in on June 8th. Period. No matter what. Really.

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The Quail has landed!

This weekend I finished sending out the last of the new Cyberworkshop kits, completed two small stitched pieces that accompany my new series on color in Needlepoint Now, (I decided to spill the beans),and completed the stitch guide for Painted Quail!  I feel so good about these accomplishments.

The stitch guide is available in the shop, right here. To make the process of writing the guide more enjoyable for me, I worked on a beautiful layout with tons of photos and illustrations.

Our place is moving forward. I did take photos but all of them were very out of focus. I'll try again later.

Does anyone own an iPad? What do you use it for? Please talk me out of one!

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Beginning of the week photos and news.

I took these photos on Friday but didn't post them since the focus isn't sharp. I thought I'd take better photos over the weekend, but never did get to it. So better out of focus than no focus at all.

Do you see the little squares of color on the floor at the bottom left side of the short wall? That's just one example of where the floor was sanded and sample stains were applied. There are probably 12-15 such squares and we still don't know which stain to use.

The first of my studio cabinets going up!

My studio wall from the other side.

The kitchen cabinets are going up, slowly, very slowly.

And the big "if" is... if the double oven fits into the cabinet space, I won't need to buy a new double oven and sell this one. If... wish me luck!

and, on another note: there is a great needlepoint magazine, can't tell you which but there is  "Now" in it's name, and it will have a new regular column on color. Hmmm, now who could be writing that column?...

More photos later this week.

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Help.

I need your help. 

But before that, I'll give you a quick update on "Renovation Willis".

I need to choose colors for the walls and for some of the kitchen cabinets. I think it's still really early for that, but my architect has found a way to keep me happy. He gives me little projects that won't be needed for a long time, and thus gives me the illusion that we are really moving along! 
Smart boy!

Colors for the walls, already? Yes!!

About 16 years ago we bought a dining set at Ethan Allen. Great quality! I had the chairs reupholstered along the way, and I kept the table in near perfect shape with table pads. The chairs still sturdy, hardly any scratches, upholstery still stain free. The only problem was that I was sick, sick, sick of the set. So I went a-looking for a new set for all the upcoming dinners in the newly renovated space. 

Anything I saw was either really cheap looking, or really expensively priced.  I came back home, looked at my near perfect table and chairs and decided to have the top stripped and refinished and the chairs painted. Yesterday my set came back home to mama and I LOVE the results!!! 

And now for the help.

In my old studio I hung all my fibers like this...

In the new studio I will have one entire wall for hanging all my fibers. I'm looking for a hanging system. I want something easy to use, a system that displays the threads well and allows for shifting them around when I need to add new threads, reasonably priced, but more than anything I want this something to be very good looking! What do you do with your threads? Have you seen something at a shop, at a friend, in a magazine, that you think is really attractive and, yes, practical too?

Can you help me?

Thank you.

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