Decisions Are Hard

I've been thinking a lot about my knitting room, and what I want to do with it. The first thing I did was poke around the forums in Ravelry, hoping for ideas. But I quickly learned that most people's idea of a craft/knitting room is just a place to store things. Almost all the photos I saw were all function, no form. I want my room to be a knitty oasis... I want it to be a room that I really love spending time in- not just a place to dump my yarn. Besides, my stash deserves nothing less than the best accommodations.

I decided to start with a few ground rules.

Rule #1: No plastic storage. None.

Rule #2: No fucking laminate furniture. I can't stand it- especially if it's white!

Rule #3: No furniture painted black (this seems to be a trend). I don't like it.

Then I thought a little more, and decided that it would probably be helpful to choose some sort of general "look" for the room. So I listed some things I like in decor: Warm tones. Deep, rich, stained wood furniture. Soft lines and edges. Muted colors.

I lean towards antique, traditional, and such. But the word country makes me gag. Hard. Shit, I can barely type it. I hate it that much. Anyway, in thinking about all those things combined with the room's purpose (knitting and spinning), I felt that a sort of Colonial look would be nice. Or at least my version of Colonial- with simple, clean lines and a New England feel. Now we're getting somewhere.

I needed to start thinking about furniture. I need a small table for my sewing machine, a bookcase, and a place to put my yarn. There also needs to be a space for the spinning wheel I plan on getting one day. And I have my rocking chair, too. I measured the room (10'2" x 7'8") and thought about where things could go. Eventually I made a little sketch, which I have reproduced for you here with MS Paint:

Awesome, no? The top is a bit cut off, but oh well. The doorway is in the upper right corner, and the other door leads to the closet (which is already pretty full). The thicker line at the bottom left represents the window, in front of which is my rocking chair. Those four tiny green dots represent outlets, and the big orange dot is where I will likely put a floor lamp, if needed. The other areas (green, blue, red and pink) represent available furniture areas. And you can see my chosen wall color at the bottom, a soft muted blue.

Here are my problems: The room is small. Really. Small. The initial plan was to put a buffet/cabinet in the green spot, a bookcase in the blue spot and a sewing table in the red spot. And hopefully I can find a good wheel that would fit behind the closet door (which I'd keep closed but don't want to block it). All this furniture might not fit in the room. So now I'm thinking that I'll have to combine the bookcase and yarn storage. The other problem is that I can't find a sewing table that doesn't suck. Everything is either way too big or a total piece of crap. Guess I'll be spending a lot of time searching local antique shops for the perfect pieces! If I find anything good, there will be pictures.