Livin' La Needle Loca

 ...blog and run. This week, it's all from the garden. We have baby persimmons: Lantana: A gladiola And a yellow dahlia.

...yeah, it's been a minute. And there's been a lot going on. My life has been consumed by trying to shove stuff from a 480 sq. ft. room that was very stuffed into a room with 40 sq. ft. less. Ack! Each time I open a box, I have to look at each item and make a choice whether to keep it or donate it. I ran into more handspun along the way. I got another under-the-bed bin and rearranged the bins under there to fit the additional one in. Whew! The two storage benches are crammed full of my fiber stash. Thankfully there is no overflow. We discovered that our plan to add casters to my worktable was not going to work. It would make the table too tall for short me (5'2") and the bookcase bases would not support the casters without reinforcing them with more wood. Scratch that. Instead, we found an 8-Compartment Mobile Backpack Storage Cabinet from ECR4kids, a school room product provider. The cubicles are the perfect size for 11x11 bins. ...

...and there continues to be progress in the studio. We moved in some furniture and unpacked the handspun and spinning fiber.  I spend the good part of two days searching for my sewing thread. I finally found it and was able to start working on one of the quilts. Yay! In the garden, the squirrels have decimated the apricots. I was able to eat a few of them. Score 1 for the squirrels. I'm glad that I took photos of them when I did. Our garden path: We have clematis blooming: Society garlic: Calibrachoa and purslane: And lots of blackberries:

 ...no photos, sorry! I've been busy trying to get my room set up so I can sandwich the 3 quilt tops that have been waiting since September. The biggest problem I have is that I can't find my thread. Before I packed up everything for the remodel, I kept a couple of spools of thread in two shades of gray. Gray works for many things, but not for black fabric. Two of the quilt tops are primarily black and other colors.  I went on a quest in the POD for my thread. I opened all the boxes except the ones marked "books." I can't find it. 😱 Today, I pulled out all of the boxes that are handspun and fiber. With the loss of 5' x 8' of the studio, I need to come up with some alternate storage places. I am purging as much as I can, but I am not purging handspun yet. There's a lot. For now, I've stored the handspun in the under-bed storage containers that I had been using for some of my office stuff when I had my computer in the bedroom. I'm in the process...

...I've been a little busy in the studio! First, some eye candy. There are dahlias blooming: Hydrangeas: and the Blenheim apricots are almost ready! Hope we get some before the squirrels completely strip the tree! In studio news, we received our new IKEA Kallax bookcase and assembled it. We moved it and the Expedit bookcase together and I was able to load my fabric. Hooray! I also was able to move the photo boxes containing small tools, craft supplies, and office items into the room. The space above the bookcases are perfect for them. Yesterday, we built the new cabinet that will house the cat litter box in the studio. It has a door that will hide the box from view when they are not in there. It also has an odor control feature. The studio is my biggest WIP right now, but here's the WIP update that I missed posting on Wednesday. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Morgana (cross stitch) Working up the torso to the upper body. Studio Star...

...and a first look at the studio! Technically, it's all eye candy to me but we'll start with the garden first. We harvested the first blackberries of the season: And the dragon fruit has set flowers: The Husband wasn't sure whether these flowers would get properly pollinated. They are usually pollinated by moths and we don't have a lot of those. The Husband pollinated these two at night when the flowers were fully opened. When the third flower emerged, he noticed that a fat black bee was on the job. Good to know for the next season! On to the studio...while it's not quite finished, it's finished enough that I could take photos. The only things remaining to be done are installing the retractable screen for the slider and some clean-up. Before and After of the main area:   Before and after of the alcove area   Before and after of the slider   Before and after of the outside   The bathroom! I can't wait to reload my stuff in there!...