Every Kind of Craft Check-In: Workspaces

[yourlibrarian]

I was thinking that our monthly check-ins might take place near the start of each month but with a few other things going on the past week, I've left it until now to kick this off.

The idea is to prompt everyone to share what they have been working on, are working on, or want to be working on 😉 And I thought for this first round I might offer a challenge. What does your workspace (or spaces) look like?

This was a photo of mine a few months ago. I have not actually done any beading work in the last month due to various other things going on. But I do currently have a few beads laid out in hopes of using them for some necklace drops.



We'll see how soon I get back to this. How about you?

Comments

[matsushima]

I'm away from home for the summer (visiting my family in the States over summer vacation) but here's a photo of the kotatsu I use as a work desk, mostly to arrange pieces rather than sit there and work, since most of my crafts are portable (by design).

[yourlibrarian]

I definitely envy those who have more portable crafts! It's not impossible to pack up and cart around beading supplies but it really limits what I can do. I do a lot of trial and error, or testing colors and placements so I really need everything at hand to explore all the possibilities.

[jasleh]

mostly I just work sitting in front of my computer >.> easier to have my pattern on the screen than trying to wrangle a printed sheet most of the time. also I just. have no other usable space other than sitting on my bed lol

currently in a crafting lull tho, haven't touched any of my projects in a while

[yourlibrarian]

What are the patterns for, is it knitting or...?

[jasleh]

knitting or crochet, usually! cross stitch patterns do work better as physical paper even if it is harder to juggle on my computer desk lol

if I'm doing something with a chart, I'll use a notepad window shrunk down to only the top bar as a line marker on the PDF (or did before I switched OSs, but I assume the same trick'll still work it'll just be a different text editor program)

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, I could see that it would make a difference if it's cross stitch. And yes, a good way of keeping track of location.

My cramped little workspace

[darkdanc3r]

Laptop and a second monitor, beads to the left of me, crochet to the right and here I am, stuck in the middle with yarn.

Re: My cramped little workspace

[yourlibrarian]

Ha, you really are! That's interesting, I didn't realize it was so common to have something on the screen, though I can see the advantages. So much easier to enlarge and zero in on something.

Re: My cramped little workspace

[darkdanc3r]

It's infinitely easier to see what i'm doing have the pattern up on the bigger second monitor. I like being able to mark up patterns in paint or even just through pdf markups. helps me keep track of where I'm at in the project.

I'm using a cross stitch pattern to crochet a pillow cover and i have chunks of the pattern (top half and bottom half, mainly) open on Paint.net so I can draw lines through each row as it's completed.

Re: My cramped little workspace

[yourlibrarian]

Oh didn't think of that -- yes, of course the image could be worked with further!

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> The idea is to prompt everyone to share what they have been working on, are working on, or want to be working on <<

I've been working on my gardens, and writing poetry. A major challenge is poor internet access; it's been spitty for a month and I'm losing hours most days. :/

However! Today I picked peas and made pretty good stir-fry.

>>What does your workspace (or spaces) look like? <<

Indoors I have my office for writing. Crafts are done wherever there is space. I've been using the top of the chest freezer for photos of crafts in progress.

The old picnic table is where I've been assembling flowerpots of plants. I have bags of potting soil, compost, etc. on the benches.

Also I'm prone to picking up craft materials from the yard to use as needed. Often it's as simple as "I need something to pin this" and ripping a twig off a volunteer bush to use.

Re: Thoughts

[yourlibrarian]

Oh, that must be hard to deal with, the spotty Internet. Is it weather related or...?

I imagine the outdoor area varies in its usefulness. These past weeks I'd prefer to be anywhere but!

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

It is at least partly weather related. Yesterday was rainy and the net was down most of the day.

[badly_knitted]

I craft either sitting at my computer desk or on my bed, my position of choice at the moment is sprawled untidily against the pillows, or on the edge swaying back and forth to whatever music I have on, tapping my feet, and singing badly.

Current project is a set of 6 smallish cross stitch designs of seashells which will go in my stash for making greetings cards for friends and family. I'm on the last one, and I'll be glad to finish them because as pretty as they are, they use a rather limited range of colours. The plan for the next project is to pick something with brighter colours.

Last year I went through all my cross stitch magazines, picked out the designs I most wanted to stitch, cut and prepared all the aida fabric for them, so now all I have to do is pick what I want to stitch, get the threads together, and stitch. The pieces of aida are all tucked in correct magazines, so there's no searching for them.

[yourlibrarian]

Oh what a lovely idea, cross stitched cards. I'd love to see those when you're done.

What you're doing sounds very organized!

[badly_knitted]

I won't be making them into cards right away, they'll join my other cross stitched pieces to pick from when there's a special occasion, then I can tailor the card to the person I send it to, but I'll post pics of the finished stitched pieces once this last one is done and I've taken photos.

It's annoying having to find the fabric, cut and prepare it when all I want to do is stitch, so I decided last year to get a few pieces ready for stitching. My thought was I'd pick out a dozen or so magazines with designs in that I liked, mostly sets of small designs, anywhere from three to eight in a set, but then I got carried away. Ended up with I think over 60 magazines set aside, each with at least one set of designs I wanted to stitch, so every evening I was cutting and preparing the aida. It was a boring task, but it's paying off now.

[yourlibrarian]

As I am currently working on jigsaw puzzles, I was thinking of how true that was. I find sorting the pieces tedious, but a well done sort helps a lot when I'm putting things together.

[badly_knitted]

Yes, jigsaw sorting is horrible, but it makes the fun part more enjoyable because you can get stuck in without fiddling.

[uncaged_butterflies]

Workspace? Sounds like an interesting concept ^^""" I do everything sitting on my bed, so I don't really have representative pics because I move the supplies away to sleep.

Current plan for the month is two friendship bracelets (one I really want to finish before August, the other less important), and one crochet amigurumi for a house-warming gift.

I had do drop a pattern-making project because my brain was too mushy for it. I hope to pick it back up later, but I don't know when that'll be.

[yourlibrarian]

Well the pattern making will keep, I imagine. Sounds like you have other work in the mix!

Yes, the downside with crafting stuff is the constant taking out and having to put away. I'm very glad of the desk and light but it's the sort of thing that gets very spread out. Not in the picture is the nearby bed with still more boxes on it. It's one reason I tend to do stuff in bursts because it's much easier to keep things out when I'm working and then after everything goes back in the storage containers, it's often out of sight out of mind.

[ladythmpr]

I knitted 15 baby hats in June:



I am also working on my craft storage space. I have spent a number of afternoons this past month sorting beads, enough time that I have put yet another moratorium on bead buying until I get it all the sorting done, unless I have a specific project for which I discover that I need something that I don't have.

[yourlibrarian]

Aw, I love those pastel colors -- that was a really productive month!

Yes, I have also sometimes bought more of something I already had because I didn't check my stock first. This has been especially true of E beads and smaller ones.