My Workroom

This is the result of organizing after the water leak. I can see everything at first glance and find what I need without digging through piles of boxes and bags and moving one big plastic bin to get to what I need that is in the bin on the bottom of the stack.

The two built-in shelves on the left are full of Indy dyed combed top from a couple of suppliers. The two top shelves on the right are full of bags of hand-spun yarn. The wire shelving holds commercial yarn and other supplies including a drum carder and three inkle looms. The free standing skein winder has a place to hold a bobbin off my spinning wheel so I can wind a skein of plied yarn instead of using the swift which doesn’t make a good skein right off the bobbin. The swift is good for holding an already wound skein while winding it into a center-pull ball on the winder.

These bins used to sit on the floor and I had two more of them, all stacked one on top of the other. Now all I have to do is slide one off the shelf to get at it and I can easily tell what is in each bin at a glance instead of looking at the narrow end of a stack of bins and trying to remember what they contain.

The bins on the top two shelves contain fiber for spinning. The bins on the lower two shelves contain commercial yarn that I have sorted as to weight and quality. The pillow case on top contains a scoured BFL fleece that needs to be combed prior to spinning and the big basket is for drying freshly scoured wool. The wire shelves also work well for drying racks when the bins are removed.

When the Herald floor loom is not in use it sits against the wall out of the way. When I need to use it I can easily slide it out into the room to work and move it back against the wall when I’m not weaving on it. Beside it is my floor model inkle loom, specially made by request from the same man who made my smaller looms, Jared of the Wiener Dog Ranch.

I had purchased my first inkle loom from him, the larger one on the desk, and emailed him asking if he could make a floor loom version. He replied that he had actually been thinking of doing just that and said he would let me know when he had one made and in the shop. I later bought the one in the middle, then he offered the smallest one and I purchased it as well.

This a better view of the floor version, the very first one he made. If memory serves it holds almost sixteen yards of warp. You can see the specs here: Floor Standing Inkle Loom.

Now I have a winding station for my yarn. When I need to use one of the sewing machines or the serger it is easy enough to move the skein winder and the table holding the swift out of my way. The two sewing machine cases sit on the floor under the table and the serger is on top of the plastic roll-out drawer unit to the left near the window.

This plastic table, drawers and plastic shelving units will eventually be replaced by built-ins after the flooring is replaced in a few months. It also makes a good place to set up my laptop when the grand-kids are visiting and want to play computer games while I am working.