A Dream Fulfulled

So this blog has been remiss, apparently, in mentioning one of my chief Partners-In-Crime, my darling mother who helps out a TON with getting things done around this house. Cheers to Mom, who is so good about putting up with her crazy daughter.

Anyway, on to the main bit (sorry Mom! ;)). Yesterday I mentioned that I was thinking of making a yarn closet. Today I decided to make it happen with the help of my best friend and other Partner-in-Crime, Jeanne. There's the old saying that a good friend will bail you out of jail at 2:00 am, but a great friend will be sitting next to you in jail laughing about what a good time you had. This is not true. A great friend is willing to do construction projects with you.

Here's the closet before doing anything to it:

It's been the sort of random storage closet. Anything I didn't know what to do with went in there. It's also one of the scariest closets in the house, as it was never painted. We affectionately referred to it as the home of Zoonga the Demon Spider. So at 8:30 this morning I was vacuuming and scrubbing the icky, icky walls.

Then it was off to pick up Jeanne. Her dad helpfully provided us with a stud finder and a square to find out if my walls are square (they're not - big surprise). As we left, I swear her Dad was laughing about what we were about to try (when you pick your friends, it helps if they have handy parents - trust me on this! ;)). We measured and fortified ourselves with lunch and coffee, and it was off to Home Depot. Jeanne found a gorgeous pine that was perfect. We picked up drywall screws, shelf braces, and figured we'd be done in a jiffy.

Somewhere, the Gods of Construction were laughing. Our drywall screws were too long, so a return trip to Home Depot was in order (at this point, we fortified with coffee once again). Then the braces were the wrong height. By now it was around 3pm, and I was feeling weepy. Jeanne and I persisted, though, and ended up with this:

A nice, clean, painted closet with level shelves. You'll note that they may appear to not be level, but that's actually because the closet itself is tilted. We ran for the yarn and filled the shelves.

Here's Jeanne, with that look of construction triumph:

And here's a general view of the yarn closet:

Sock yarn and laceweights are on top, general yarn is in the middle, and the acrylic crap and scraps from leftover projects are on the bottom.

Then we fell on the couch and stayed there for about an hour recuperating. Thanks again to Jeanne for putting up with me, and the foul mouth I develop when things go wrong. ;)

Finally, the light was a bit better today, so here's the best picture I could get of the Tulip sweater:

It's still not a great photo, but as good as it's going to get.

All right, I promise I'm going to to get to the Simple Knitted Bodice story and pictures soon. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see.

Until then, beware the urge to construct!