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In my craft room:

The top shelf originally held a clock I didn't like, and the bottom the collectible Maxwell Smart figure James had bought me. Max is now tacked up next to the phonograph and I may rework the clock if I can find a new clock face for it. But I have a clock for the room now, so maybe not. And the "me shelf" now has a place besides on my art desk.


Closer look at the "me shelf," which is supposed to be a collection of miniature items that represent my interests. Almost all of these came from the Country Pickin's people who show up at the Yellow Daisy Festival, including the little shelf itself, some as purchased and some repainted, like the slate that's become a tablet, or the two big books on the second shelf which were painted and had printed covers put on them. I made the cross stitch frame out of toothpicks and a piece of linen. The drawing pencil is also a painted toothpick, and the box it's resting on should say "art supplies," but I haven't done that yet. The one that talks about stitchery was originally for sewing; I took the little spools off it and replaced them with "skeins" of floss. The books stacked up under the drawing pad have printed covers; one is "Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot." The encyclopedia volume at top right was a Hallowe'en spell book, repainted. The map (of Great Britain nonetheless—what a lucky find!) and the smaller stacked books in blue, brown, red and green are from the miniatures collection at Michael's. The little sheep and the cottage seemed to fit, although the cottage isn't done yet. I want to give it an autumn tint, and leaves scattered about.


The "art wall": an original Alice Spivey at top, Andy Runton's print of Owly and friends as some time traveling favorites, the stag print I bought at DragonCon this year, and a Mary Bloemker print which was included in one of her fanzines, "Faces of Time." Plus Mom and Cousin Anna Furtado smiling down at me at right.


And the recent redo of the wall in the spare room. I figured the poster fit the travel theme. [big wide grin]

Labels: decorating

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. . . . . Linda at 3:23:00 PM

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A "Gnedby" is what Ikea has renamed the narrow CD towers once known as "Benno." I bought two of them about a month ago for use down in the library. Yes, they are very narrow, but I thought they would be perfect for use with regular paperbacks, small trade paperbacks, and even small hardbacks like Whitman books. I'd planned to put them together the last Friday I was off, but I had a stinking headcold and a low-grade fever instead. I'd worked through most of both and was damned if I was going to assemble shelving while blowing my nose every five minutes.

Ikea stuff is simple to assemble, especially if there aren't drawers or doors, so these went together easily. Annoyed to find out, though, that the "lock screws" they're now using are plastic. How cheap. Bad enough they quit making all the nice Leksvik stuff—glad we got our china cabinet and bed and the side table and James' night table when we did!—and stopped making the CD dividers for the Billy shelving.

While the shelving didn't take me long, the book shifting did. I love my books, but not having to shift them around in large quantities. The first Gnedby went into the narrow space between a Billy bookcase holding biographies at the top and travel books at the bottom. and the door to the library, and I moved any paperback biographies and small-sized biographies, like the Dell Yearling book of Jean Fritz's biography and the two of Beverly Cleary, into it. A few health books went on the bottom and now there is biographical room again—well, until I finish all the books I have about Theodore Roosevelt, etc. at least! To top it, a foam pumpkin hollowed to hold fall flowers.

The second Gnedby went into the bay between the children's books on the right and my Christmas books and bound volumes of "St. Nicholas" on the left. Again, I picked paperbacks, small hardbacks like children's books, small trade paperbacks, to go on these shelves. I could then rearrange the bookcase so that the World Book Encyclopedia Christmas books and my big Augsberg Christmas annuals, which had been on the floor between two bookends, were shelved.

I tried to arrange the little shelves with some kind of a theme. The topmost shelf is fiction. The second shelf is all my favorite Christmas fiction, the stuff I read every year, from The Cottage Holiday to Christine Kringle. The third shelf is some other fiction and the next is some books about Santa Claus, from the Jeff Guinn trilogy to When Santa Was a Shaman, and the rest are nonfiction books about Christmas history, origins, and customs. You can spy the "St. Nicholas" statue that my cousin Deanna made for my mom on the bookcase to the far left—what better place for it than with "St. Nicholas" magazines?

The library's still pretty crowded; at some point I'm going to buy six of the 15-inch wide Billy shelves and put them up at the end caps of the stacks to add more space. My history books runneth over!

Labels: books, bookshelves, decorating, organizing

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. . . . . Linda at 5:39:00 PM

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