In the Studio Part Two

Wow, it's been a while since I posted. But with the past month I've had it's not surprising. Here's a quick recap before I move on to new things. Since July 2nd:

• Got a dog
• Mr. Cleaver turned forty
• Released the Smocked Tank

• Tour de Fleece happened and I have about 600 yards of handspun yarn
• Turned 28
• Saw the final Harry Potter movie
• Helped write and turn in our major funding application at work
• Took a business trip to Buffalo and spent inordinate amounts of time in the Philly airport

• Saw an Elvis Costello concert
• Released Alaria with Quince & Co.
• Submitted a potential project packet to a knitting mag
• Painted and revamped my studio
• Knitted a design for another knitting mag to be mailed off today
• Had a giant BBQ in my backyard with over 30 friends and a live band.

Whew! and I thought summers were supposed to be slow!

I'll post about the BBQ later this week, but today I wanted to show off my newly revamped studio space.

As you may recall, when we moved in, the first floor bedroom looked like this:

In the early days of moving in, we stripped the wallpaper and I'd been using it as a studio in this configuration.

While the hearts and bears stenciling was an improvement over the baseball wallpaper, I still wanted an update. So my big birthday request was to paint the studio (I ended up with a much bigger gift than that, but more on that later this week).

There was a heat wave the weekend of my birthday, so we waited to paint until the next weekend.

Steinbeck was very helpful and only stepped in paint once.

The color is Yolo Colorhouse Water .02 - a fantastic blue that looks at alternate times of day anywhere from periwinkle, to lilac, to grey. The trim is the same Air .01 as in the living and bedroom.

The other major change comes from hanging things on walls, particularly the addition of the pegboard.

Pegboard makes me feel so organized.

Some other notable items - the original Ms. Cleaver portrait by Sharon Barto and three old knitting magazines courtesy of Bristol Ivy.

I still want to put some kind of yarn storage on the wall to the left of the loom, crates or hatboxes maybe and eventually all the carpet in house should be replaced, but other than that, I'm pretty darn happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to start making stuff in there!

With Brush In Hand

At the start of the weekend, the master bedroom looked like this:

Now it looks a little something like this:

The bad news: I don't like the color, it's just too saturated/bright. I was going for a robin's egg blue and this is much more tropical than I was aiming for, if that makes any sense.

The good news: The paint only cost $10 on sale, so it's no big deal to buy a different can and try again.  I'm leaning toward the following color.

Water .01

[polldaddy poll=4405228]

In the living room things are more certain.

Before:

Primed:

Painted:

Both Mr. Cleaver and I absolutely love the transformation. The original color made the room so dark and den-like - it's so much brighter and more modern now! Eventually I'll make some curtains to cover the lower bookcase and we'll paint the doors to match the trim, but aside from a few touch-ups and painting the built-in's shelves, we're done in this room - which is huge.

Once again, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to our friends, who helped out enormously!!