ANNA BOO’S HOUSE JOURNAL
Sarah Shrimpton, the busy blogger behind Annaboo’s House, wonders what a hookster’s creative workspace is supposed to look like ....
of “It’s a little room FULL yarn, which regularly topples from the shelves”
Oh, how I laughed when a lovely journalist from The Telegraph came to interview me and asked to see my ‘studio’. She was writing a regular article for one of the newspaper’s weekend supplements, which featured craft makers from all different trades and professions – potters, milliners, seamstresses, florists and well, er, super-size crocheters.
In our correspondence, she told me she would bring a photographer, so they could get some shots of me and see where and how I worked. Slightly embarrassed, I showed them my workspace. You see, I really wish there was a spacious studio with copious amounts of yarn storage and daylight, but I’ll just keep dreaming. Instead, I have a rather pokey little room at the top of the house.
HER UPSTAIRS
According to the estate agent when we bought the house, it’s a ‘spare bedroom’, but my golly, you’d have to be a pretty small human to want to sleep in there. Quite simply, it’s a little room FULL of yarn. Yarn which regularly topples from the shelves and tumbles out of boxes. Yarn in every colour of the rainbow and every fibre known to mankind. There is a kind-of logic to my yarn storage: cottons in one bookcase, mega-yarns across my desk (the 4kg balls are just too big and heavy to store anywhere else), hand-dyed skeins in a special box and others stacked on top of one another, organised by brand. Anything precious or with a wool content is wrapped in clear plastic bags to protect it. It’s a shame really, because I’d love to have them open and be able to squish and touch them, but the local moth population has other ideas.
AMIDST THE CHAOS
The Mister wistfully refers to this upstairs room as ‘The Study or ‘The Office’, but neither much studying nor admin get done in there, and although there is a desk, chair, printer and all those office-y sort of gubbins, I don’t sit there to write. In fact, as I pen this journal I am sitting downstairs at the breakfast bar in my kitchen – radio on, my daughter Annabelle decorating butterfly cakes across the counter from me. And I think this explains my relationship with my ‘studio’ quite well – it’s a wonderful space and one which I regularly escape to for hours, to look at colours, to ponder textures and to simply explore the yarn I’ve forgotten about.
But really, I like to be at the centre of the house, surrounded by my family while I do my design and writing work, not locked away upstairs on my own. Not that this is
always easy: sometimes, I might be working on a crochet design project for a magazine. This means it needs to remain super-clean and pristine, and therefore be kept away from sticky fingers and the dreaded dog...
Now, Lola is the sweetest little pooch (just look at that face!) and doesn’t run away with my yarn balls any more (thank goodness), and neither is she a particularly dirty pup, but boy, does she moult! ALL year round! I completely despair of course, vacuuming the lounge far more often than should really be sensible and regularly reprimand the Mister and our offspring for allowing her on the sofa in the first place (not that they listen).
SUPER SIZING ON THE SOFA
Then there are the HUGE balls of yarn I am often found to be crocheting with. These Goliaths of the crochet world are not easy to manoeuvre and so I usually sit with one tucked into an enormous bag at my feet. This is not an easy task when I’m trying to wrangle with a 40mm hook while we’re all elbow-to-elbow on the sofa, watching some family TV together. They don’t mind at all.
But while I love working on new designs, I always try to find time for the projects that are just for me: the multitude of WIPs I have half-begun and never quite finished – the socks, jumpers, hats and scarves, to name but a few. For these, I relish sitting in the middle of the sofa, hook in hand, yarn by my side, surrounded by my family, and enjoy not having to keep everything too clean and not wondering how the dog has managed to get on the sofa again.
And that visit from the journalist and photographer? They weren’t at all perturbed by my lack of a big professional studio space, and loved the fact that my craft is portable, taking some fantastic photographs of me crocheting in the garden instead!
See more of Sarah’s work and pick up some free patterns on her blog at annabooshouse.blogspot.com. Look out for her on Instagram too, as @annaboos_house.
“Lola is the sweetest pooch and doesn’t run away with my yarn”