Creating My Knitting Studio - The Big Reveal

I'm calling it done!  If you have followed me this far, maybe you'll go a little farther.  

The cabinet is almost full...

a $25.00 thrift store mirror gets a little paint.....

pardon my "fluffy" self.....

and.....

another gift from my bestie!  An antique stroller to use as a photo prop for my baby blankets.  It awaits some new fabric on the inside.

I think I need to buy more knitting needles....not!

"Oh no, Mr. Bill"!  This is funny if you watched Saturday Night Live in the '70's!

A giant diamond ring paper weight, just because!

Some of my cross stitch dusted off from the attic....

and a white folding table, we use for summer parties outside, in the middle of the room ready for the yarn swift and winder.  The white bookcase we've had for years.  It was just holding junk in "the junk room".

If you look closely you can see the table folded up behind my basinet photo prop.

This is a very cool hologram type poster!  If you look at it straight on, it shows Des Moines, Iowa in 2005.  If you view it from the side.....

it shows what the city looked like in 1919.  No, I did NOT find it in a thrift store, but in a shop called Tandem Brick in Des Moines.  Cool isn't it?

I brought in an extra chair we had in the living room.  This was a hand-me-down from my parents when I first moved away from home 30 plus years ago!  I reupholstered in myself some time ago.  The pillow is the zip code I lived in when we lived in Des Moines, Iowa.  Some of my happiest years were spent there.

The music stand has been in the closet since my daughter took violin lessons for 5 minutes in middle school.  It works great for holding a book open for reading the pattern.

The area rug was rolled up and in the attic.

Oh, and the chandelier was free!  Years ago, a friend of mine moved into a new house and she hated it.  I told her I'd be happy to take it off her hands!  It was dripping with crystals, which was a bit much, even for me.  I removed three fourths of them and it has been in our daughters room ever since.  If you are just catching up, this was her room until she moved out a few weeks ago.

A wire dress form in the corner, another free find that someone had for the trash man!

The vintage, plastic trash bin was a thrift store find for $6.00 and the crystal stand next to the chair is actually an ashtray....

The dress form on the floor was found at a garage sale a few years ago for $6.00.  I still need something for that corner.

So that's it done!  It's not professional and the closet holds WIPS, baskets full of tools like needles, blocking paraphernalia and such, but it'll do for me.  The whole thing cost me $155.00.  The paint was the most expensive at $100.00 for one gallon of primer and two gallons of white paint.  The rest of it was for the thrift store finds.  Now, I did not add in the cost for the things I already had, like the white table, area rug, basinet, my cross stitch projects and so on.  

Granted, I had a whole room to work with.  Maybe you have a little space you can carve out for yourself.  A storage room maybe?  A basement or a large closet or even a corner of the laundry room.  You can easily do it without spending any money at all.  Look around your house for things to use.  

Poke around in your kitchen and dining room cupboards.  Do you really need all those coffee mugs in the cabinet?  Need a yarn bowl?  Use a large soup bowl.  Do you have china and crystal in your dining room hutch that only comes out twice a year?  What can you use in that stash?

Dig out old photos, posters, art work, baskets and such.  

If you store all your yarn in big plastic bins, stack them up and throw a tablecloth over them to use as a big table.  Or, get out your ironing board and put it to use.

Have your children outgrown their plastic toy box?  Give it a coat of paint.  Yes, you can paint that stuff!

Don't have an extra side chair around, bring in one of your plastic patio chairs and toss one of your throw pillows from the family room couch.

Paint does wonders for an old trash bin, too!

I really could go on and on!  Just ask any of my girlfriends.  I'm always helping them with conundrums like this and I LOVE it.

Thank you so much for coming along.  If you are just finding this post, I did two prior posts if you'd like to catch up!

Best,

Sheila