Exciting, New (and really dirty)

I can finally start telling people. Yay, I suck at keeping my own secrets!

My husband has wanted to own or co-own a game/hobby shop since high school or earlier. We have often discussed this for an option in our 50s after an early, well funded retirement (yah, good luck us). But an opportunity to join with another friend (with the same dream) without all the pesky waiting. Great timing, No. Once in a lifetime chance, Yes. The shop is established but has been left to stagnate for the last few years. The owner, a wonderful friend, became a father after years of trying and just wants to be with his sweet little girl. This is lovely for them and he has been wonderfully helpful and supportive. But damn! That place is a pit! The whole place is like the floor and wall behind an old fridge when it finally breaks and you have to get a new one. It's a shock every time I look closely. And nothing is organized. At all. Eeks!

Now yarnporn for you: Sorry I put all that dirty store/dream opportunity stuff first. It's been bursting to get out! This is what I'm putting in the shop today. More than originally planned. I have an emergency room bill to cover now. We used to have better insurance, but it was cut so that people could keep their jobs, so that's OK. Last time our insurance was cut it was due to a budget issue from the Reps giving themselves a raise. grumble, grumble, grrr... Back to the yarn, the ones in the center on top are the new silk/merino single. Yummy. The right side is mostly my new colorway: Talon.

Yarn and Kitchen Demo

I can no longer be accused of not dyeing blue. See?

Top to Bottom: Lizardman, Angst, Giles, Neapolitan.
I love dyeing yarn. A lot. I played with some new colorway ideas last night. That was fun too. Currently I monopolize the entire kitchen when I dye. That's all gonna change. A while back I took over the small rental apartment on the back of my family home. The main loft area got a small makeover and was transformed into a lovely studio where I currently do all the dry parts of running a small dye house. There's a lot more than you'd think... skein from cones, reskein dyed yarn, print yarn bands, attach the yarn bands, all the computer stuff like listing on etsy and yada yada yada.

Now it's time to redo the apartment kitchen into a proper wet side. So naturally we went to IKEA. The ceilings are only 70 inches tall (the apartment is the old servent's quarters in my 150 year old house, they must have had some short staffers!). We had a time of it getting all the shelving I needed that will fit the size dye bottles I use and all that for the money I could spend. But my husband is a super-wiz at that kind of thing and so he's sweating his ... butt off putting my goodies together. He took out all the old kitchen bits: fridge, stove and 3 or so feet of cabinet/sink. Yah, it's dinky. And now it looks like this:

Scary.

We need a new subfloor in one area, there is mystery pluming and it's really, really ugly. Other than that it totally frickin ROCKS! I will get a huge boost to my efficiency and we'll be able to eat at the kitchen table again. Woo Hoo! I think my family is particulary looking forward to being able to use at least one of the three sinks in our kitchen without having to move yarn, mostly empty bottles of dye or whatever out of them first. And yes I do use all three sinks. We only have three because one of the more recent owners of our home was a soap maker. I'm following in the footsteps of a cool indie-artist/work-at-home mom. It's all kinds of good around here.