The New Office

Lattes and Llamas is still in its fledgling stage. And by “fledgling stage” I mean, run out of our living room. One day we’ll have that cute office between a coffee shop and a yarn store in some adorable suburb of Philadelphia, but that time is — or, at least feels — far off. The problem is, we’ve outgrown the couch.

(I would share a picture of our computers, yarn, and works-in-progress taking over both the love seat and the couch, but even I draw a line in the amount of knitshame I’ll share with you.)

In a house that is occupied by two adult couples (since housing isn’t cheap in Philadelphia when three of you are back in college and the other is pursuing a writing career), space is at a premium. And no matter how many times we “fire” our husbands from Lattes and Llamas, even if they were never hired in the first place, they still show up at our planning meetings for cookies and commentary. So, Megan and I have taken to having the more important meetings out at diners and coffee houses, but that isn’t exactly cost effective. Something had to give and after much deliberation, it was out guest bedroom.

We couldn’t sacrifice the guest bedroom entirely though, even if that’s what we really wanted to do. It wasn’t an option since most of me and Megan-Anne’s family lives over 600 miles away. Our little sister needs a place to stay when she comes out to stay for summers. (How else will we convince her that the East Coast is better than the Midwest and she should move her like we did?)

Enter IKEA.

In case you were wondering, YES, we did sing that song almost the entire time we were there, which was about three hours after we combed through every inch of that place twice and ate Gambit’s weight in Swedish Meatballs.

Like the true Renaissance Women we are, we assembled the shelves and desk ourselves while watching the new Carrie. (Not as good as the original, in case you were wondering. Although, I’m probably biased. Nothing can take away that magical day when we sat on the living room floor, watching the original Carrie while Mom did our hair for Prom and we stuffed our faces with nachos before doing our make up. Yes, our mom is cooler than yours.)

I’m not going to lie. I was supposed to spend the morning confirming April’s Lattes with Dr. Llama interview, scheduling tomorrows podcast with Stephanie of Tiny Owl Knits to post, and photographing the horde of yarn and prizes Cascade Yarn generously donated to support the Geek-A-Long. Instead, I spent the morning decorating the new office and thinking about which fabulous things I would knit and crochet for it.

Maybe some kind of adorable mobile like Planet Penny’s Hearts and Flowers Mobile?

Or some kind of Spring Bunting? I’m a sucker for garlands and I’ve been dying to make my own. Here is a Granny Square version A Conversation with Moo posted a while back that I like.

Or maybe I’ll go crazy and make a crocheted wall mural to hang in the blank space above the guest bed. Or a colorful rug to cushion my toes on the hardwood floor like the Rope Swirl Tapestry Free People shared a while back and has since made the rounds on Pinterest.

Here is what the office looks like so far.

The sad part is that those six bins don’t even come close to containing our yarn horde, much to the ire of our husbands. One holds Cascade 220 while the other has Lion Brand’s Wool-Ease (our two favorite two yarns to work with), while the other four contain the yarn and notions for upcoming projects. Maybe one day we’ll knit/crochet our way through the large plastic bins hidden in the basement, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

What do you guys thinks I should design/crochet for the office first: a mobile, garland, tapestry, rug, or some other awesome thing I haven’t thought of yet?

~ Jac
Now, if only I could figure out where to put the espresso machine…