Another New Studio

For those of you who are keeping track, this will be the fourth studio in twelve months.

This time last year, I lived in a tiny cabin. At midsummer, I moved the into the spacious downtown Wolf Creek studio while waiting for other members of the collective to come together. In October, we all moved together into a house in Glendale with a six-month lease, increasing the studio space again.

And here we are now. The six months are up and we've found the place of our dreams. This time we're signing a one-year lease, but the landlord wants us to stay longer. The new studio is even larger than the current one.

While I was at the show last weekend, some others from the group went and saw the place. I saw it for the first time yesterday when we went to sign the lease.

I was so captivated with the house and wanting to get down some measurements to figure out how the studio will lay out that I didn't take any photos.

The house itself is huge - even larger than the one that we're currently in, and much nicer. My studio will be in the detached two-story garage.

The tricky piece to lay out is the upstairs. It's a strange shape which dictates how the equipment can fit up there.

In this image you can see the shape, sort of. The two nooks that will house the looms are 8' high with the left and right sides sloping in. The dotted lines next to the looms indicate the area where the ceiling is less than 6' high, the height of the loom.

Those blue ovals give an approximation of the coverage from my fluorescent fixtures. It's important that I have sufficient light to work, even though the space has little natural light.

You'll notice that the two center fixtures have larger ovals. That's because the ceiling is much higher there, causing them the distribute their light much further and more diffusely.

And then there's the downstairs, the big, open garage space.

That will be storage for yarn, cloth, garments, and booth parts. It will also be the location of the yarn plying, cutting, and sewing areas. And somewhere in there, we'll be installing a kiln.

I did a poor job of measuring the downstairs so I don't know things like how much of the ceiling is covered by the garage door when it's opened, exactly where and what size the built-in workbench is, where the 220 outlet for the kiln is located, etc.

None of that stuff is really critical, though. The important stuff is all slotted into its place in the upstairs.