What a day ...

The sun was shining, I had a whole day to start on my studio and tonight I am going shmoozing with the World of Wearable Arts crew at the Michael Fowler Centre but first in continuing with my 'keeping it real' theme. I saw on Nina's blog (you can visit by scrolling down the right hand side of my page and clicking on her name/link) yesterday photos of her home, lovely quilts on her bed, paintings by Misty Mawn, her own art works and artifacts and was so inspired. My home however has a few areas that don't look great and I show these humbly knowing also that my darling friend Wini is coming over to help me sort out my studio today. Thank God because quite frankly, I don't know where to start. So here, my dear friends, I humbly present the before pictures of my home so that you can all feel good and normal about your own homes.

So come journey with me. First we start with my studio where all my work was thrown in here at the end of last year as I got all excited about sewing craft over Xmas vacation and the last thing I wanted to do was clean. And so now it looks like this.

Piles and piles of stuff.
More piles. What to do when piles start falling over? Shove it in a box of course.
About six loads of CLEAN washing waiting for someone to care enough to fold it.
Boxes of woollen jerseys waiting for me to felt them and make creatures with them.

Unmade bed, washing to be folded and put away (yes more) ...

My pile of books beside my bed for late night reading and my journal on top for random thoughts that might occur in the wee hours ...
A pile of fiction for when I don't want to think about anything too hard, sits leaning against another wall ...
My husbands side of the bed with his suitcase ready for another three day trip next week to Christchurch. He is busy these days. We fly past each other. It is nice to have these quiet days at home so I can gather my thoughts and pull my home into some semblence of order (unless I distract myself with other more creative and fun pursuits) ...
The bench in the kitchen. Do you have one of these? As soon as I clear it, we stick stuff on it. It is always a jumble with things literally flowing onto the floor ...
The garage which is supposed to be my studio ( see I got the carpet here, vintage shag for $10 from Trash Palace). The garage is too run down for me to work in during our Wellington winters. No power for lighting and heating. And running a lead is not an option cause it would short out our home. Plus I want to extend the bench that exists so I can have a decent size workspace. Would love to extend it down the other side of the garage so light could pour in through the window.
The drawers I started to refinish and then stopped. I got a bit of work to do in here ...
The roof is mouldy and I need to recover it with some nice fabric.
But there is always a silver lining ... and here were mine ...
This basket and woven flowers are the product of a summer holiday with my mother-in-law several years ago. We use harakeke, New Zealand flax which is a traditional fibre resource used by Maori for lots and lots of things. It's a funny plant because the blades are not symmetrical. I love weaving with her. We play and try out new things, and some of these flowers are results of our play.
And then my friend Liz left a gift for me yesterday. These two gorgeous dishes. I love green or red dishes, I think food looks amazing on these green dishes. That is a rather large and old capsicum. These platters will join my collection in this range. How lucky am I?
So here are the before pictures, I will post the results of my springclean later as it happens. But Wini and I spent five hours today just sorting through things and throwing out lots of things from the studio. There is more but it will have to wait ...