The Basement

In October we moved to a lovely little house that we're renting in the Mission. There is a dark, dank, low ceilinged basement which Adam has generously "given" over to me to do with as I wish. Of the two rooms, I originally claimed the larger one till flooding and ants chased me out of it. Now I'm in the smaller section, near the door, with the window. Not bad. The whole "unpacking" thing still hasn't finished and I've not enough carpet to cover the floor... but despite that, I have begun to "move in" and make the space feel more like my own.

I'm quite fond of my growing wall 'o things. Pictures, a skull, some bullet bugs, fabric creatures, things. Since the basement wall is unfinished I feel no qualms about sticking a hundred and one nails into it. The only thing holding me up is my lack of frames (apparently only Ikea has non-tacky yet still cheap frames! Curses! I had hoped not to need to return so soon!) and the knowledge that I want to have some sort of ... useful tool hanging "things" above the desk. I've ideas & supplies, just not the time to pull it together.

Having my sewing machine out is pleasing, along with all my books and thread available. My fabric and yarn collections are still abandoned in the other room, which needs to be corrected. I've been making good use of the desk though, cluttering it up with pins and soldering supplies. My old iMac is practically useless (I can upgrade no further) but it does at least play music and let me search for reference photos. You can't really tell from the top photo, but beyond the ironing board (which I was using to iron plastic, thread, beads, and wire together to make wings!) is my lovely futon bed for those who are bave enough to stay over.

If we owned the place I'd put forward efforts to actually improve the basement (like finishing the fucking walls!) but we don't and so I can only hope to cover and work around its "quirks". One thing that isn't horrible is the metal pipe? that runs over the wall and on the ceiling for the SINGLE outlet in the room. Sticking monsters to it via magnets makes me happy.

So, yeah. Some horrible photos of my "crafting cave".

Other things: I've been playing the Starcraft Campaign! I <3 Abathur! Expect to see related crafts soon. I had my butt handed to me at Dr. Sketchy's last week, could not get in the grove. I appear to be momentarily tapped out on the letter writing front. Need to recharge. Have been crafting a magnetic wall butterfly monster... thing... educational, but it's not quite coming together as I had hoped. I bought the thumb drive of stock poses from Senshi Stock but haven't found the chance to sketch anything from it yet. Am excited to do so at some point. Went to Angel Island for the first time and loved it. Saw the movie Stoker. It was... kind of fun? Watched Strage Days again, it was also rather fun. Both have horrible dark parts to them though so I can't broadly recommend. Also saw Pitch Perfect which was delightfully silly & fun. Have been quite enchanted with one of the songs from it. I was compelled to sketch the scene it's from and you can listen to it below.