Cabin getaway & recent finds

Thanks for all the replies and commiseration on my vintage hair funk post! It certainly sounds like it's going around. Spring fever, perhaps. What I have now is sort of grown out of the middy-like haircut I got in November, but it's definitely due for something. I still haven't decided on what I'm going to go for, but it will probably be just a shorter version of what I have (or what's grown out, rather). My best hair wishes to those of you who were also expressing frustration in your own hair conundrums!

♥ ♥

'Tis the season! Road trip season, that is. Mel and I love to take little road trips to Wisconsin, and spring usually starts road trip season (although in the case of last year, we got there even earlier in the year).

We spent the weekend in a cabin in southwestern Wisconsin with a small group of friends. Other than the overcast, chilly and drizzly weather, it was a fabulous weekend. Lots of fires in the wood-burning stove, food and drinks, games, walks in the woods, and I'm not sure I ever stopped laughing the entire time.

Here was the view from down the road of our cabin. Isn't it picturesque?  (That's our friends' dog Joey, who accompanied us on the trip.)

We spent awhile trying to identify the games hung up on the wall. Investigation led me to discover they are carrom and crokinole game boards, two games none of us had ever heard of.

I loved this bookcase in the cabin. If I had a cabin myself to decorate, I'd want pieces like this, I think...

There were cupcakes for our friend's birthday...

Which then turned into this.

A neat old shed...

Hunting for walking sticks, one slightly more Gandalf-esque than the other...

A great old tractor with over 4,000 miles on it...

We all took a turns. Pretending, that is.

Our friend's Jolene tea towel, I love this thing.

I got to do a good amount of knitting on the road and at the cabin (though the photo below is once we were at home, on our new IKEA shag rug for the den). These are the two sleeves for the pullover I started the last day in February, So Neat and Sweet from A Stitch in Time vol. 2. I made great progress on it until we moved, and then didn't pick up my knitting needles for over a month! Finally, I'm knitting again. I'd love to get this done quickly so I can start one of the thousand short-sleeved sweaters I have swimming in my head. (And hopefully sewing again will follow soon, too.)

It was a great weekend.

On our way home, Mel and I stopped at an antique mall outside of Madison to do a little hunting. I found a lovely scarf and two very inexpensive Bakelite spacer bangles that were tucked in amongst some boring-looking costume jewelry. Yay for the sniff test, taught to me awhile back by a local purveyor of vintage goods. (Unsure of the best on-the-go way to identify Bakelite? Check out Brittany's recent post on Va-Voom Vintage.)

I was happy with those little finds, and then we found The Lamp. You all know how we decided to go with vintage Southwestern as the overall theme in our den. Of course I've been daydreaming about all the rooms in our house, but particularly this one as it's already proven to be the room we spend the most time in. (The fact that our living room only recently got a sofa, still doesn't have the furniture arranged probably and is currently home to all the boxes of our patio furniture probably has something to do with that.)

In my head, I made up a lamp that I thought would be perfect in the room. It was white ceramic, with some kind of nubbly texture to it in some places, with colors that evoked the Southwest, and a fiberglass lampshade. I mean really, dear readers, I made this up in my head out of thin air.

And then we found this.

It took us about .05 seconds to decide it was ours.

I mean, c'mon! White ceramic! Textured sections in shades of brown, coral, and sky blue! A two-tiered fiberglass shade spattered with brown, white and turquoise!

And then when we saw this coral-colored working Westinghouse clock radio in the same booth, and we knew the room didn't have a clock anyway, well... the rest is clearly history.

And while this won't necessarily be the final arrangement on this particular end table (what you can't see is the ugly modern telephone base behind the clock radio), it's getting there.

A trio destined to be together, don't you think? Sofa, lamp, clock radio.

While we were leaning in that direction already, the lamp and clock radio pretty much cemented that a light turquoise or sky blue must be the wall color. Incidentally, that was the overall favorite amongst readers who chimed in.

Huzzah for when vintage decorating starts to come together!

Starting to plot my corner of the basement

Thanks for all the lovely comments on our new house! We are super busy unpacking and figuring out all the stuff we need to do or buy, but it's been awesome. ♥

One of the things I'm daydreaming about now that we've moved is my sewing and craft space! In our condo, my sewing "area" (and I use the term loosely) was the dining table. Not a very useful setup and annoying when we actually wanted to dine at the dining table.

Now that we have a house, holy crap! I get to have my own real sewing space! This thrills me to no end and is worthy of excessive use of exclamation points!!

It'll be roughly one-third of the finished part of our basement, which is all open. The other two-thirds? Mel will get art studio space, and we'll also have a lounge area. This part of the basement is more like partially finished... it's not very well insulated and is a wee bit rough around the edges, but at least there's peel and stick tile flooring, finished walls, and a bathroom. And it's totally not creepy at all (unlike a couple of what we dubbed serial killer basements that we saw during house hunting—egads).

Here's my corner of the basement. Pardon the dark Instagram pic, but the computer I use to work on photos isn't unpacked yet...actually it has nowhere to go because it's supposed to go in this space, ha ha:

You can see my sewing machine (in its carrier), dress form (wrapped in plastic bags without its base), rigid heddle loom (behind the boxes) and yarn bins have already made an appearance. ;)

Part of that space will be Mel's, but what I have to work with will be roughly 10.5 feet x 8 feet. I'm going to take the corner, so that I have two walls to hang up plenty of things (thread organizer, etc). The bright spot on the right-hand wall is a glass block window that does let in some natural light. To the left of the pole will be the lounge (about as big as the what you see above), which will be tiki-themed.

Now I'll admit this right now: while we're going to try and stay as mid-century and mid-century-inspired as we can throughout the rest of the house, the sewing and art areas...not really. If I let myself only go vintage with furniture, it will be years before I get it all together and make my mind up. To compromise, I'm going to try and accessorize with vintage seating and items, and incorporate vintage fabrics where I can. In my heart of hearts mid-century design is the ultimate, but I do think it'll be nice to just freestyle it in my basement nook and let my crafty geek flag fly.

What areas will I need?

1. Cutting fabric. I'm thinking possibly an island or kind of a dining table of sorts. I'm short and prefer table-height to counter-height.
2. Sewing. Doesn't need to be a big table, but maybe something long enough in case I one day get a serger (woo!), so I can have two work stations.
3. Working on the computer. I'll setup our older iMac down there for blogging.
4. Working on my loom. I may get a stand for it, or set it up on a table.
5. Fabric storage. I used an organizer from Target (Circo 9 cubes) in a closet in our condo, but the cubbies were not really suitable for larger lengths of fabric. I think drawers would be better.
6. Sewing pattern and crafty doodad storage. Not including yarn, which will remain in plastic storage bins in the storage area of our basement (not in the finished area). Space for my sewing patterns, buttons, ribbon, blocking pins, etc.
7. Book shelves. I'll keep all of my sewing, knitting and craft books in this area.
8. Seating. I'm thinking a chair and a stool so I can alternate, depending on where I'm sitting.

What are my obstacles to work around?

1. Fluorescent lighting. Not going to change anytime soon, so I'll need to accessorize with really good lighting. Fortunately unlike the rest of the house, there are lots of outlets in that area. I'm thinking at least a couple of full spectrum lights, and one or two vintage lights with fun shades for a mix of cozy as well as functionally bright lighting.
2. It's not really a room, so there are only two walls. I can float furniture to make it more of a square space, but will have to think about how. And then we have to think about how we can visually separate it a bit from the future lounge area.
3. It's not that warm. I'll need a (safe) space heater, for sure.
4. The floor covering is on cement. I'll need some kind of rug or maybe a big carpet remnant. And a dog bed for Pia to hang out, of course!

So what would you do if you were building a crafty space in a basement corner? Is there anything I'm forgetting about? Do tell!

Next time, I'll share some of the crafty spaces that are inspiring me, and talk more about ideas for furniture, storage and decorating!