Remember I said that

1. I had rescued my knitting things from the storage cubby;
2. I was bound and determined to turn a rather dingy basement room into a needlework retreat; and
3. I wanted to?outfit my haven?on a budget as close to zero as I could manage.

I can report progress on?all three?fronts. I’m sure you don’t care about seeing six stacked Rubbermaid storage tubs, but this is slightly more interesting:

I’ve kept the large table shown in the before shot. The ceiling tile is replaced, the floor is scrubbed, and?all debris is gone. I moved the white wardrobe to the same wall shown in the new photo, above. The white drawer unit is now further down the wall, and the mesh cubes shown here?are betwen it and the gas pipe, which you can see sticking up between it and the other white cabinet in the before photo. My storage tubs of yarn are stacked in the corner of the room where the wardrobe used to sit. No progress on a comfy chair yet, but we’re replacing my daughter’s desk chair this week, so I’ll probably snarf up the abused cast-off for my workroom.

As you can see, the el-cheapo Home Depot storage units we brought over?from the old house are not good candidates for relocation. The drawers are out of the unit you see because?during the move it?shifted from true, and the tracks are now too far apart to hold them. Some minor carpentry is in order before it’s useable again. If you’re thinking of buying this type of peg-together pressboard storage furniture at a home center or discount store, ?remember that it’s build-once-and-leave-it stuff. Regardless of the low cost,?I don’t recommend it for people who are still in the nomadic phase of life, especially?if re-using the piece in a new location is a consideration.

The wire mesh cubes however are a new acquisition, and bode to be both durable and capable of being taken apart and put back together many times. Last week?these?units?were on special at Target. One box of them makes a stand-alone six cube unit, and the cost (on sale) was just under ten dollars. I snapped up two boxes in white (they also come in black). They can be assembled in any of a number of ways. I’ve done my installation in 2, 4, 4 stacks to work around the?large gas pipe on that wall. Because of the geometry of the thing, I’ve got two mesh units left. Not enough to make another cube, but enough to jury-rig two half-height shelves or dividers in existing cubes by using?some nylon cable-tamers to do the attachments.

The stuff in?my cube unit isn’t there for any particular reason. Mostly it was miscellaneous knitstff that got packed separately from my storage tubs. There’s my swift and ball winder; my collection of single-malt Scotch containers housing needles and other tools (upright on the white dresser, and horizontal in a top cube); various UFO bags; a stack of some rustic-type wools that in violation of my own stash-management rule, has overflowed it’s allowed tub. My small black box of sock yarns; and various coned oddiments. I believe that cone of raspberry is in fact Believe, a find from the Classic Elite mill ends outlet up in Lowell, MA. Books, mags,?and leaflets are elsewhere in the house, in their own bookcase; with mags and leaflets?sorted more or less haphazardly into several plastic magazine files.

Eventually I’ll sort through the tubs and pull out Yarns of Immediate Inspiration to put on these shelves; stowing the ones I don’t plan on using in the next fifteen minutes. My stash management rule??

If it doesn’t fit in my existing containers, I can’t buy it.?

That means I either have to knit up new acquisitions immediately, or make room in a tub by using up something that’s already there. However, eyeing the tubs I see that they are increasingly filled with odd lots of leftovers rather than full-project amounts. Perhaps it’s time to organize a yard/yarn sale/swap meet, and invite the world over so we can all redistribute our holdings to better effect. Hmmm….

Another quiet day here at String Central. Yesterday we had no power in the house because the electricans were installing the new whole-house panel. Today power is up and down, as they do punchlist things around the place.

Progress proceeds on Filet of Dragon. I’ve started the left hand edge panel, but have not yet decided on the whole-piece frame. There’s not enough yet to make an interesting picture, so I’ll spare you.

Instead I post this:

This is the spare room in the basement. It’s a former summer kitchen/laundry room. There’s a plastic?tub sink just to the left of the work table. There’s also a recycled kitchen countertop?with a?shallow dish sink, the corner of which you can see just peeking out on the right. The three white storage cabinets are Home Depot $19.99 specials that (miracle of miracles) managed to survive our move. The table is a legacy from the former occupants. There are two gas lines – one on each wall. Plus some dismal dropped ceiling panels (stacked on the table but shortly to go back up), grungy linoleum flooring, and ancient beadboard paneling, painted sloppy white to cover pea green some time during the Eisenhower administration.

This utopia, this palace, this vast expanse will be my sewing/knitting studio and the family’s laundry room. Eventually. Once we’re done re-wiring, I’ll be able to clean it out. Then I get to relocate my stash of six Rubbermaid storage tubs. Some time when we can afford it we’ll be redoing the room completely, moving the washer/dryer back downstairs from the kitchen (I hate listening to?them upstairs). ETA on the greater rehab plan:? plus or minus 6-8 years from now.Until then, we have to make do with what we’ve got.

I know there are all sorts of great re-do suggestions on HGTV. Ellyn’s studio transformation was incredibly nifty, but way beyond my price range. Plus it seems so wasteful when we’re planning on gutting the entire basement in the future. So my question is – given the space at hand; the three cabinets and the table, plus six Rubbermaid containers; and a budget of as close to $0.00 as possible – ?does anyone have suggestions for making this a useful, creative space?

Some of you asked about my de-beeing. Here’s a photo summary of what happened.

The problem – an active honeybee hive of unknown age, in the walls and floor of a stucco-finish sleeping porch:

The solution – Jeff from Bee Busters – a company in Acton, MA. Jeff is seen here about to cut a one-foot square hole in the porch floor to get to the hive’s probable location:

It turns out we were lucky in most respects. The hive was relatively new (in a 95-year old house anything is possible). It was mostly in the wall as opposed to being in the floor. While that was unlucky in that it required knocking an additional three foot square hole in the stucco, the hive was easy to remove. Here’s one large piece. The queen is under the scrum of bees at the bottom corner:

The overwhelming majority of the bees were captured, including the queen. Some of the stragglers?were caught using a bee-vac, a juryrigged crate fitted out with a dust-buster engine and a three-inch wide flexible hose. The hummers are now?off to quarrantine to make sure they harbor no parastites, then after that – to work as productive little droners working away in local orchards and fields.

I’m delighted that no giant comb system existed. If it had, we’d have to go through a ton more demolition and restoration to get at the hive. The down side of it being a young colony is that I didn’t end up with honey. Honeycombs are two-sided. If a comb has honey stored on both sides it can be harvested for extraction. These combs had bee larvae on one side and honey on the other, typical for newer hives but not suitable for people-use.

The gaping holes in my porch now sit open for several days to dry out. A few foragers out shopping when the hive was removed remain, but Bee Jeff assures me that they’ll load up with pollen and follow another bee home to a new hive. He said that if they arrive "with groceries" they’ll be accpeted by their new foster family.

All in all the experience was interesting, highly educational, but expensive. Now of course we have to repair those gaping holes…