Boosting our Creativity - Reorganizing the Craft Room

This past month, we took all of our craft supplies outside and reorganized our craft/music room! A daunting task, but one that has freed up space and created an energy flow, giving us a "boost".

On a daily basis, we are in this wonderful room, filled with art supplies, fiber arts tools, musical instruments, and a work table that Rick built years ago.

There is even space for a silk fort!

Now, our craft magazines, music, patterns are in files. We can quickly locate yarn by color. Art supplies are organized and easy to reach. 

We can find what we need for fiber arts workshops, lessons and sales. The room has a sink and a door to the backyard...both practical elements for painting and dyeing.

To keep from spending a fortune on this endeavor, we spent $30 at the local thrift store, getting baskets and magazine holders. We pulled out old food jars and wood bowls. We did splurge on chalkboard labels from Bradens Grace on Etsy to label the nooks, baskets and jars, and love that we can reuse them over the years.

We love this hanging fruit basket that we found at the thrift store.  Perfect for little balls of yarn!

Bits of leftover roving get their own space and baskets and can be used for felting or carding batts for spinning up Junkyard Fairy yarn.

And, we finally have a place to put our works "in progress".  It is much easier and neater to grab a basket full of supplies for the doll that we are sewing or the gnome that we are knitting when the supplies are all together.  

Space for the drum set and keyboard, various guitars, as well as our work desk and computer was carved out. There was space for one spinning wheel, but not our floor loom or second wheel.  So...perhaps the ultimate room would need to be an entire house for just crafts, music and art?  

Making a Silk Tepee

Tepees are great fun for outdoor and indoor play!

As we've found out, they also can be an abode for curious pets....

If you are studying Native Americans this year, you can work on creating a more authentic tepee and and incorporate this into lessons.

Learning how to do knots and lashing to create a sturdy frame is wonderful, too!  Look at scouting manuals for help.

Maybe sleep in it overnight?

Play clips, yarn, twine and clothespins are helpful if you want to reuse the silks or fabric.

Rainbow Silks in our Etsy shop.

Wood play clips from this Etsy shop, and this one.

Natural Dyeing with Indigo

We love to do natural dyeing at home, but there are some dyes we only use when we are at the Griffin Dyeworks Dye & Fiber Retreat. Indigo is definitely one of those unique, natural dyes that is best done with masterful dyers around!

Dyeing with indigo is unique -- you can see in these pictures how Ricky is dyeing his handspun yarn. First, he dips the yarn into the blue dye pot, then he pulls it out right away. The yarn looks green! Oxidation occurs. Eventually, the yarn turns blue. If he wants it darker, he can dip it again.


We dyed our own handspun wool yarns, some silk ribbon and a few silk scarves with indigo dye this past week while at the retreat. Some were redipped for a darker color, while others were first dyed with other plants, and then overdyed with indigo. Here are some of our creations:


1. Brazilwood, then Indigo = lavender, purple, indigo colors

2. Broom, then Indigo = blue-green, lime green colors

3. Onion Skins, then Indigo = med.-deep green colors

4. Broom, then Indigo, then in the Brazilwood rinse water = aqua color

Mommy had fun using the rinse waters to change the tones a bit and ended up with some light, fairy colors! Can't wait to make the yarns into a family project. The silks will be used in our nature table and around the Dell for homelearning activities and play.