Studio Progress

With three teenage children about to descend upon my home for the foreseeable future, work progresses frantically to re-house me in my new studio downstairs, also accommodating the industrial machines I have recently bought! Having combined my dressing room and studio upstairs in order to free up a bedroom, I'm currently working all throughout the house (not entirely unusual anyway!). My current World of WearableArt designs for 2013 are taking up most of the lounge! I'd love to show what I'm up to, but of course, I cannot. However, I can tell you that I am loving working with leather....

Back to the studio.... it's certainly come along way from the last update of the framework for the first wall! This weekend we have the framework for the entire room, and this afternoon the framework for my shelves and storage area for fabric bolts was completed.

Looking through the corridor - doors either end, fabric shelves to right.

Shelf framework, 1 more shelf to go on top, bolt storage area at rear around 1m wide.

It's starting to really look like a room!! Yesterday I spent sometime sitting on a deck chair within the framework imagining the space, and deciding what was what to go where, as when you are having a room custom built, these decisions need to be made early on! After an hour or so, I was satisfied that I had taken everything in to account, and made best use of the space. Remind me of that later, okay?!
Visible progress will slow for a while, as fiddly filling-in, and electrical bits happen. Sheeting won't occurr until the end to provide light and ventilation as long as possible. However, enough progress has been made to get me pretty darn excited!!
Last week, I had another great day on the road, at one stage ending up in IKEA (terrifying!!) where I intended only to check out the food market. I ended up having an early lunch there, so I experienced the Swedish Meatballs for the first time. The soft toy section then beckoned me, where I found these lovely mice and rats, (seen here perched on a saggy baggy elephant!), now ensconced on the sunvisors of the kombi for random throwing at people..... they should be cats, as I am known as the crazy cat lady in the kombi, throwing cats at people....

 and I ended up going through the store backwards. Not a good idea. When I wanted to go and find something I had seen earlier, do you think we could find it? Not a chance....

Since then, Matt and I have survived Christmas, and are soon to face New Years. I'm hoping to have a quiet one, celebrating New Zealand style at 9am Australian time, to wake with a fresh head and ready to perform my now annual ritual of felting my new diary cover for the year, incorporating all sorts of meaningful bits and pieces.
I hope you all have a pleasant start to 2013, and that the year brings creative goodness to all!
All the Best,
Svenja.