Wow, it's been a while since I posted. But with the past month I've had it's not surprising. Here's a quick recap before I move on to new things. Since July 2nd:

Got a dog
Mr. Cleaver turned forty
Released the Smocked Tank

Tour de Fleece happened and I have about 600 yards of handspun yarn
Turned 28
Saw the final Harry Potter movie
Helped write and turn in our major funding application at work
Took a business trip to Buffalo and spent inordinate amounts of time in the Philly airport

Saw an Elvis Costello concert
Released Alaria with Quince & Co.
Submitted a potential project packet to a knitting mag
Painted and revamped my studio
Knitted a design for another knitting mag to be mailed off today
Had a giant BBQ in my backyard with over 30 friends and a live band.

Whew! and I thought summers were supposed to be slow!

I'll post about the BBQ later this week, but today I wanted to show off my newly revamped studio space.

As you may recall, when we moved in, the first floor bedroom looked like this:

In the early days of moving in, we stripped the wallpaper and I'd been using it as a studio in this configuration.

While the hearts and bears stenciling was an improvement over the baseball wallpaper, I still wanted an update. So my big birthday request was to paint the studio (I ended up with a much bigger gift than that, but more on that later this week).

There was a heat wave the weekend of my birthday, so we waited to paint until the next weekend.

Steinbeck was very helpful and only stepped in paint once.

The color is Yolo Colorhouse Water .02 - a fantastic blue that looks at alternate times of day anywhere from periwinkle, to lilac, to grey. The trim is the same Air .01 as in the living and bedroom.

The other major change comes from hanging things on walls, particularly the addition of the pegboard.

Pegboard makes me feel so organized.

Some other notable items - the original Ms. Cleaver portrait by Sharon Barto and three old knitting magazines courtesy of Bristol Ivy.

I still want to put some kind of yarn storage on the wall to the left of the loom, crates or hatboxes maybe and eventually all the carpet in house should be replaced, but other than that, I'm pretty darn happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to start making stuff in there!

I feel like I haven't blogged in forever, but it looks like it's only been a week. I think it's because I generally feel behind the ball because of this:

For about three to four weeks now, I've been suffering from limited mobility and mild pain in my right wrist. I've had it checked out by a doctor and it seems to be work-related, but thank goodness it is mild muscle strain and not carpal tunnel. That said, it's basically kept me from too much typing as well as severely limiting my knitting, embroidery, and sewing abilities. I can do all them, but not for long without making my wrist tired. Not being able to knit has been especially hard.

So in lieu of actual crafting, I organized my fabric stash by size (and yes, that is all of it, aside from some gallon bags of scraps).

I also put together this little box bag this weekend, to hold my toiletries for my relatively new foray into twice-weekly lap swimming (the tutorial was from drago[knit]fly - though I'm going to admit, I wish it was a bit clearer). This was maybe pushing it a bit to do all the sewing in one day.

For someone who rarely doesn't have some project in her hands, its been difficult to have to slow down like this. Still, I'm lucky that I had my wrist checked out early and we're modifying my work station (an ergonomic keyboard is on the way), but in the meantime I'm struggling to be patient and let myself heal and not make things worse.

In any case, if things are a little quieter around here than usual, the wrist is why.

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