A Room of My Own ~ For Reals this Time

Before we built our house, I had a dream of a little room just for me where I could read, write, knit, sew, make art, and do yoga. But we didn't put a room like that into our house, and if we had it would have become a bedroom for one of our kids when we jumped from one two three in one fell swoop.

Over the years, I've tried to carve out a little bit of space for me here and there: a corner of the living room, (which I've frequently reorganized and rededicated to writing and other pursuits, and corners of my bedroom, where I kept my sewing machine and one writing desk or another.

A gallery of these various corners:

Looking at these little writing spaces lined up like this, they seem so sweet and cozy, which they were in their own way (at least when I had them all tidied up and in photo-worthy condition), and they served me well. I wrote my zines and my blog in these spaces, I did my masters degree and my master naturalist program. I wrote my book! (Technically, I wrote my book mostly on the couch, but the desks are necessary for holding all the supplies and materials for the writing.) But there's no denying it was crowded and cluttered, and the more I added to my repertoire--illustrating and researching and juggling multiple projects--the more crowded and cluttered it all got. I never gave up on that dream of a Room of My Own.

So when Z and E went off to college last month, I wasted no time in moving into the room that had been M's when he was small, and then all three boys' room after the twins were born and then just the twins' room after M moved to the basement and then just Z's, after Z moved E to the basement.

There's room for a futon/guest bed, my dollhouse, my sewing machine, a table on which to make art, bookshelves, and, most importantly, a desk at which to write. I can move from one project to another without having to move all my books out of the way to make room for my laptop, or put away the art supplies in order to sew, or set aside the notebook and laptop in order to have room to paint. I can even leave my yoga mat set up, which is a good way to ensure I actually do yoga.

It gets tons of natural daylight, especially in the morning (which makes it a challenge to photograph). It is also very, very purple (the color E, Z, and I compromised on when we repainted the room a few years ago--one of them wanted black and the other hot pink), and I'm not likely to have the energy to repaint it anytime soon. On the bright side, this mosaic shelf I made from pieces of broken Fiesta ware that have amassed over the years looks fab on the purple wall. I'll be adding more orange accents to offset all that purple.

The closet is also a bit of a mess, with all of Z's stuff tucked away inside, as well as a number of children's toys (the wooden barn and blocks and things I can't part with) and books. I'll be sorting through the books this winter moving my fabric and yarn up from the basement and into the dresser. But, I'm in no rush to get to all that. I'm just enjoying having room in which to spread out and work and think. Virginia Woolf was right!

Finish It Friday ~ The Everything Bookcase

When I was visiting my parents last November, I pointed to a bookcase in a magazine and asked my dad something along the lines of, "Do you want to build that for me?" Now, I say similar things to my husband all the time nothing ever comes of it (well, almost never), so I didn't expect to actually get a bookcase, but my mom mentioned sometime last spring that he was working on it, and then she sent me a photo of the finished product a month or two ago, and then last week a freight carrier truck was trying to negotiate my driveway with a heavy wooden crate in the back that contained this:

It's a round table with bookcases on four sides, set on casters (the original design had a lazy Susan mechanism for allowing it to spin, but casters were more practical from a building standpoint and, as it turns out, from a user standpoint as well). I'm not very good at spatial visualization, and I was expecting something end-table-sized that I could tuck into a corner of the living room (although I became suspicious that I had that wrong when I heard about the woes my dad had at finding a way of getting the table across the country to me). It ended up being much, much bigger than I imagined. At first I wasn't sure where we'd put it, but it fits perfectly in a dead zone behind the couch, which is close to my desk (and who am I kidding, I do most of my work on the couch anyway, so it's doubly handy). Since it's on casters I can move it around so I can access that big piece of furniture next to it or move it in a place where the light is better on a rainy day.

And, even better, it solved some major storage problems I was having--stacks and stacks of books on my bedroom floor from a new project I'm starting, which I'd have to dance around to avoid tripping over (and knocking over) every time I went to bed; clutter on my desk from admin tasks and works-in-progress as well as works-in-aspiration; boxes of Uphill Both Ways on the living room floor. There's enough shelf space (12 feet, I'm told) to solve all those problems with room to spate.

And the top of the table is high enough I can use it as a standing station, if I slip a little something under my laptop to raise it up a bit for extended periods of use. My new rule is to check email only when I'm standing, which I figure will help me achieve two goals: to spend less time sitting AND less time checking email.

Other people in this household had other ideas for how to use it--kitchen island, cookbook storage, drinks cart--but though it's rare I ever win an argument around here, I brooked no dissenting views. My bookcase; build your own island/cookbook shelf/drinks cart. 

While I didn't really have much to do with accomplishing this Finish-It-Friday project, other than a casual suggestion, ground-guiding the freight truck, and directing my kids to carry it into the house, I think it deserves a post of its own. And now that my storage and organization challenges have been resolved, I have one less excuse for not getting going on my own new project. Onward!

I Did It! 2021 (Apocalypse Year 2) Edition

For the past eight years, I've tracked my annual accomplishments via an annual I Did It! list, originally inspired by writer Lisa Romeo. Previous posts can be found here: 2020 (Apocalypse Year 1), 2019 (including decade-in-review), 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. 

This year has felt strange, like suspended animation (or, perhaps, like college friends and I used to joke, animated suspense). Part of that has been the ongoing (never-ending) pandemic, of course, but also the limbo phase between having a book accepted for publication and actually seeing it in print (for all of you who keep asking me, "Isn't it published yet?" believe me, I feel your pain). Book work over the last year has been marked by long periods of waiting punctuated by brief flurries of activity (copy edits, proof review, etc.), which makes it hard to feel like I've accomplished anything at all. Let's review the last year and see if that's actually true.

Writing I-Did-Its!

There were the aforementioned layers of review of The Book, as well as inroads into promotion, reveal of the cover, and corresponding updates to my website and various profiles. (Do go here to pre-order if you haven't already.)

I also finished drafting a second book, a collection of essays on nature and motherhood. For some reason finishing this book felt anticlimactic. Maybe because three-fifths of it had already been written and published, so most of "drafting" it involved revising words already on the page. Or maybe because I expect the road to publication to be steeply uphill. But none of that means I don't deserve a little pat on the back, so here it is: pat, pat.

As far as short pieces go, I'm still struggling to both write and submit/publish. My submission stats for the year:

• Submissions: 8
• Acceptances: 0
• Rejections: 6
• Publications: 1

"A Review of World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil" Literary Mama, May/June 2021

I know this is supposed to be a positive post, but oof, that's painful. Possibly the worst since I started this tradition. 

Other writing accomplishments:

• 11 Newsletters
• 36 blog posts (plus this one, which puts us one ahead of 2020)
• I worked on a novel (a different one from the one I worked on last year), getting to 14,000 words before deciding I can't stand it. One day I'll make it all the way to 60,000.
• I continued editing the Literary Reflections department at Literary Mama as well as being a senior editor, helping to bring each issue to publication.
• I started training to become a book coach. I didn't get as far into the program as I would have liked due to time management issues, but it's my goal for 2022 to complete the training and start bringing on clients.
• I got back into teaching nature journaling, with one remote workshop and two in-person, including one at a nature journaling conference in Acadia National Park, which was a delight.
• I gathered a group of Maine writers I know (some of whom I only knew from the internet), who all happen to be knitters, and formed a writing group called Maine Writers and Knitters. I hosted our first get-together in October, which mostly involved getting to know each other and eating, but also included a fun and slightly woo-woo writing exercise. We clicked really well and had a second get-together early this month, this time with actual writing workshops, and we have a third planned for February. It feels so good to have some actual writing community.
• I (virtually) attended a poetry festival and a crime writing conference.

Travel and Adventure I Did Its!

Again it wasn't much of a year for travel, but I got out a bit more than I did last year.

• We resumed our annual Hermit Island camping trip after a two-year hiatus (one year because of the pandemic and one because of work), and I resolved to never let a crappy job get between me and my family again (ultimately quitting that crappy job).
• We went on a fair number of kayak and canoe trips on local lakes and ponds (some of which I did solo).
• I swam across a nearby pond with a friend once or twice a week during July and August.
• I went on a solo hike to a tiny cabin at a nearby nature preserve.
• I drove all the way to Colorado and back, all by myself, to help out my parents for a couple of weeks in November.

Arts and Crafts I Did Its!

My word for 2021 was "finish" and I had a list of 21 things I wanted to finish this year, many of them craft projects (some of which were WIPs and some of which were mere ideas). These are the crafty things that got finished:

• Some handmade dollhouse furniture.
• That '70s quilt
• Wavy charms quilt
• Chalk painted furniture
• New bedroom curtains
• Birds & blooms quilt
• Little bird embroideries
• The endless knitting project that I'd started at the beginning of the pandemic I put down sometime last spring and didn't pick it up again until October. It's nearly done, but I'm at a stumbling place and not quite sure how to go on, so it will have to hold off until next year's list. I also have another needlework project that's so close to being done, but not close enough to make it onto this year's list.
• Finally, I started doing illustrations for my second book (mentioned above). I'd hoped to finish them up this month, but all of my time got sucked up by holidays, child transporting, and pandemic/ democracy anxiety.

Household I Did Its!

• My big accomplishment here was my bedroom refresh and reading nook. 
• I also deep-cleaned the living room and finally replaced our 1990s college student decor with a real couch and two swivel/glider chairs (I can't believe I don't have any photos or a blog post of these--probably because they are not the beautiful midnight blue velvet couch and orange patterned chairs I dreamed of but rather boring tan, gray, and beige). 
• I made some more inroads into basement cleaning (two steps forward and one back in that department, always--E moved out of the room he shared with Z to the basement; and lives sprawled between the main area and M's room; then this month M moved all of his stuff home from college in preparation for a semester abroad. And everyone throws anything they don't want down there.)
• I continued to expand my Fiesta ware collection, but at a more sedate pace than the previous year (I think this is a topic that deserves a blog post).
• I cleaned up the sunroom, repotted several plants so now almost everything is in a pretty, non-plastic pot, and repainted two ugly plant stands a lovely bright turquoise (again, gonna need a blog post on this!).
• I expanded my pollinator garden and kept it semi-weed-free.

Nature I Did Its!

• I did a lot of birding, especially in the spring (110 eBird checklists and 118 species), and C and I did the Christmas Bird Count for something like the seventh year in a row. I even got a couple of life birds right here on our own property, as well as one in Colorado.
• I did a little bit of butterfly-ing and dragonfly-ing, but not as much as I would have liked.
• I kept track of all of the wildflowers (starting with tree flowers) as they emerged in the spring and early summer (falling out of the habit in July/August) with a photo on Instagram.

Finish It Friday ~ Bedroom Refresh and Reading Nook

 

As you may recall, I spent the spring and early summer refreshing my bedroom. First I made a quilt, my first-ever queen-sized quilt made just for me. Then I gave a couple pieces of furniture a facelift. Then I made curtains from some stunning fabric. I'd thought briefly about repainting the walls (the same color, which I still love; it's just a little dinged up), but that wasn't going to happen in June, when I was working a gazillion hours a week, and once work was over I'd kind of lost the oomph to paint. I'd also envisioned spending the summer spent visiting art galleries around the state to collect new artwork to hang on the walls, but with the pandemic resurging, I didn't feel much like shopping. So, aside from those two items, which may still happen in the future, all that was left to do was wait for one last item on my list, which came home not too long ago. Introducing the Reading Nook Chair:

I ordered the chair in January, during what can only be described as a pandemic-induced retail therapy session. It took until late August to be ready to come home (the place I bought it from had it as a floor model, but couldn't let it go until its replacement was in the store), by then it had been so long, I let a couple of weeks go by before making the long trip to pick it up. But it was worth the wait--cute and comfy and completing the salmon color theme. It's a great spot to sit and read or write or carry on zoom calls or just hide out from the rest of the household. 

In preparing for the chair's arrival, and in an attempt to remove all possible obstacles to my getting writing done, especially during the summer when there were people underfoot all of the time, I turned my sewing table into a writing table and disappeared most of my sewing and knitting supplies to the basement. What remains is in this small cabinet and a few baskets, plus my machine, which is hiding under the cozy. (You'll note the poor dollhouse has been consigned--temporarily, I hope--to this corner.)

Finally, I did get one print  earlier in the summer. It's temporarily hanging over my dresser, but I have plans for rearranging things once I get pieces for the various walls in this room and (when I find the right piece) the living room. (It's called "Fog Below Cadillac Mountain, Acadia," and it's by Peggy Clark Lumpkins, and now I see it's a little crooked.)

I think my room is all ready for wintering--snuggling up in my new chair, wrapped up in my wavy charms throw quilt, with a stack of books, a basket of yarn, and a pot of tea at the ready--while the weather and the world does its best outside the windows.

Finish it Friday ~ Bedroom Curtains

I didn't really set out to give my bedroom a facelift, but things kind of snowballed from a sewing a quilt to painting furniture to making curtains, the previous set of which had gotten faded and tattered since I made them ten years ago, last time I gave my room a total overhaul. 

This fabric is Anna Maria Horner's Hindsight "sinister swarm" moth print. Because I bought it online, I had no idea how big the moths would be. They're enormous! But perfect for curtains. And, as you can see, they're carrying on that surprising salmon theme I mentioned last week.

I also did a major cleanup of book and sewing clutter (though not having reached any real storage solutions--there are boxes of books and magazines, temporarily, in the closet, and the bin of fabric I usually keep close at hand has moved to the basement. I'm hoping this will make the space more conducive to other activities--like yoga, reading, and writing. I'm just waiting on a comfy chair I ordered like a million years ago to show up, which will make this the coziest reading/writing nook. I'd also like to repaint--not a new color but a fresh coat--but that will have to wait till I have more time on my hands. And I'm still contemplating artwork. I think my way of celebrating vaccination will be to visit art shows and galleries this summer.

Finish It Friday ~ Chalk Painted Furniture

Most of our furniture is junk--either other people's castoffs or purchases from the unfinished pine shop. I believe I've referred to our aesthetic in these pages as "early '90s college student." All we're lacking is a cinder-block-and-board bookcase. I really believed that some day we'd graduate to grownup furniture, but that hasn't happened yet. In the meantime, I thought I'd give a little refresh to a few scraggly looking pieces in my bedroom, using chalk paint, a new medium for me and one I liked the sounds of (no prep work!).

1. The bookcase. An unfinished pine piece originally bought to house kids' toys in the living room. It has since served stints in my room, the kids' room, and then back to my room. When I first bought it, I slapped a coat of interior house paint on it (I think this is the periwinkle of the mudroom) and made back panels of foam core covered in fabric because the back is literally just four narrow slats of wood.

Anyhow, it was due for a new coat of paint--the knots in the cheap pine were showing through the inappropriate paint and it was dented and dinged from years of use. The paint I bought the paint was from Chalk It Up, and it was a dream to work with--easy to apply, great coverage, easy to clean up. The chalk color I picked for the bookshelf is called "blackberry," and it's a bit more magenta than I imaged it would be. I was afraid it would clash with the red fabric panels, and it kind of does, but I think I like it. 

2. The nightstand. This little end table came from one of C's relatives houses when they were moving. It was a badly finished ugly brown when it came to us, but I liked the spooled legs, the book storage area...

...and the groovy scalloped top. So, again, I slapped a coat on of paint (possibly the bathroom lavender?) and called it good.

It wasn't in too bad of shape all these years later, considering it was basically recovered trash, but I was ready for a change and went with "clay pot" for the paint color.

I've never been a pinky-pink girl, but for some reason this salmony color is emerging as a theme in my bedroom makeover (see quilt top and stay tuned for curtains). I think it's a reaction to the testosterone overload caused by being cooped up in the house with four men/manchildren for the last year.

3. Mirror. This item I think C actually did dumpster dive for, or maybe picked up on the side of the road. It's cute, and handy, but the wooden base was painted an anemic yellow of  peeling (probably lead-based) paint. (I forgot to take a before picture.) The purple is much nicer, and in addition to a fresh coat of paint, I gave the glass a good cleaning, so now I can actually see myself in it. 

Clay paint requires finishing with a wax coating. I found some at the craft store that goes on with a brush and is water-based and very easy to use. After the wax dries overnight it just needs a light buffing and then a week to cure, after which I put my books back on the shelves. These are my writing resource and current project books. I used to have them arranged by color (much to C's bemusement), but the sun has bleached the spines so much that the books aren't that colorful anymore. Maybe I should reorder them some other way...size perhaps (to continue to annoy and perplex the spouse, whose books I should mention are in the order of archaeological dig, with the most recent reads on top and a lot of in-situ dust)?

I have a box leftover of stuff that was cluttering up the top and fronts of the shelves. Not sure what I'll do with all that, but I kind of like this clean, minimalist look, and instead of books and papers and stuff taking up the top surface, wouldn't it be nice to have nice things, like an orchid and some sort of object d'art? And then there's the question of those babies--do I keep them or replace them with some fun art?

Finish It Friday ~ Birds & Blooms Quilt Top

This quilt top began with the leftovers of a set of fabric in the Alegria lin from Cloud 9 by designer Geninne Zlatkis that I bought about eight years ago and used to made a little spring/summer bunting. I had planned to make the rest into a table runner, but when I sat down to make a list of things to finish this year (this year being my year of finishing all the things), the idea just didn't excite me. Did I really need another table runner? And wouldn't it just get all stained and dirty from the sloppy people I live with? 

Instead I would make a quilt--a quilt for my own bed, which I've never made before. It would be both pretty and practical. C and I use a down comforter most of the year, but there are a few weeks in the summer where it's too warm for goose feathers. But even on those hot nights, when I lie down beneath a sheet and thin blanket an C sprawl on top of the blanket with a fan blasting him (which I turn off, because I can't stand to sleep with a fan blowing), he ends up getting up in the night and rummaging in the closet to find additional blankets, which inevitably don't fit my aesthetic--scratchy red wool things. I've been meaning to make a summer quilt to solve this problem for a long while.

I was able to find a couple of pieces from the Alegria line online, enough to make borders (albeit in two different colorways), but I had to find other fabrics to fill out a whole quilt. I went with another Cloud 9 line, Birds & Branches, as well as fabrics from Cotton & Steel and Rifle & Paper, all selected from tiny pictures on the internet, with great hopes that they would all work together, since the quilt stores around me are still closed. I added in some fabric from my stash, including a couple of Kaffe Fasset prints (there always has to be Kaffe Fasset) and then arranged them in 4-patch blocks, because I was afraid just random arrangement of all this disparate fabrics would be too much, even for me.

 

Since I chose a pattern of 4 and 8-inch squares, it came together quickly, and I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, even though it's more pastel than bright, which is my general go-to color zone. 

Dollhouse Renovation ~ Part III, The Upper Floors

I was going to do a slow reveal on the rest of the dollhouse, one room per post, but then I decided that might be a bit much, so here goes, the upper floors of the dollhouse, starting with the Yellow Bedroom. This was my favorite room when I was a kid, because yellow was my favorite color, and because I thought bunk beds looked like fun (that was before I actually had to sleep in a bunk bed).

I kept the original, macaroni-and-cheese colored wallpaper, replaced the carpet with a similar color, painted the furniture a creamy yellow, and added bedding: yellow gingham mattresses and bright orange and green afghans.

I drew drawers and knobs onto the dresser, but did an even worse job than I had with the kitchen cabinets. I might paint it again and try redoing the lines, but I kind of like the childish look for this child's room. The rocking horse was mine as a kid (you can tell by the repaired break in one rocker), the red dala horse is an ornament that lost its string, the blocks on the dresser are beads, the tiny wooden owl I was something I had, the Mickey Mouse book came from a friend, the butterfly art is a cancelled postage stamp, and the bunting is cut from decorative paper and glued onto embroidery floss.

The bathroom cracks me up--for the realism it offers, both in its mere existence in a house for dolls and its long, narrow design, like all 20th-century bathrooms.

It's complete with all the basic fixtures: sink, tub, toilet, which I painted the same cream as the bedroom furniture. For faucet handles, I added map pins, for the white porcelain look.

The painted fixtures brightened it up, but it could use some artwork, and maybe a bath mat. 

The Blue Bedroom was the only room where the wallpaper was in too rough of shape to salvage. I replaced it with origami paper in a similar color, which, at 6x6 inches, exactly matched the height of the room's walls and the width of the inner right-hand wall (hot tip for dollhouse builders).

The furniture in this room was in pretty good shape, so I left it the original brown-stained color, adding a mattress and afghan to the bed, and C and I built a little desk.

The map on the wall came from a National Geographic magazine order form, the sailboat picture is a sticker my mom sent, the globe and dictionary on the desk and the old-timey camera, rock collection, and rock hammer (all of which you can barely see) on the dresser came from a friend, the car I had since I was a kid, the cat my dad made (along with the cat in the kitchen and the dog in the living room), and the skateboard, which is a tad on the large side, was my kids' toy.

When C and I were planning our house, we for a time considered a design very like this dollhouse, tall, wide, and only one room deep, to maximize southern exposure. It would have included an attic room like this one, which I'd envisioned as my yoga/sewing/writing/art studio. Now I just have to pretend this mini attic is my all-purpose studio.

The original bed for this room didn't survive, so C and I built a new one, and I painted it green, with a little attempt at tole painting on the footboard, and added a green gingham mattress and a striped afghan.

We also built a little sewing table (the tiny Singer came from C's grandmother's house many years ago). The art in the back corner, original to the house, is a picture of a sampler that says "Love Spoken Here."

The remaining furniture in this room includes two dressers (original) and a funky plexiglass table my dad made for me a long time ago. I added two bird postage stamps to the back wall (I hope I'm not overdoing stamps as artwork, but I love them so) and, after several aborted attempts at weaving or knitting a basket, I made a little tote bag for knitting projects. After I post this, I'm going to make a tiny yoga mat from leftover felt.

And now, except for little additions to be made here and there, it's done! Here are the upstairs rooms:

And here's the whole house, all snowy and decorated for Christmas: