You may have seen my recent Instagram post where I shared some imagery of my lovely garden studio  - the place where I am typing this right now and where I design, knit, package and wrap and photograph your lovely Bow Tie, Suspender, Skinny Tie, Bow Tie Pin and Cat and Dog Bow Tie orders.

The company that made it, Solilux, sent Herbert, a professional photographer from Dijkhuizen Visuals round the other week to photograph what I had turned the little empty hut they craned over the top of our building last year into. They kindly sent the photographs to me so I can share them with you. For this blogpost I took a few more of the details myself...and it is not as tidy as when Herbert came over!

I am fully aware that this is the creative entrepreneur dream, it was my dream for years and after a lot of saving, research and planning I still can't quite believe we made it a reality!

It was custom built in the Solilux factory after we chose the dimensions, flooring, exterior materials and window placement. 

While waiting for it to arrive, I spent hours drawing the floor plan and playing with how to repurpose what I already had and how to get as much of my materials in without losing space to work.

I got Pegboards from Ikea and a lot of their handy little attachments for my hardware, threads and swing labels.

My old Ikea dresser now holds all my cones of yarn in colour organised fashion (that's my story and I'm sticking to it) and I re-purposed the wooden crates I bought for Wedding Fair displays as bookcases and more yarn storage.

Before moving in I really considered how I had worked in the last space - a small and dark spare bedroom in our old apartment - I thought about my work flow and how I could get as much floor space as possible and light! When you are a small indie brand, your space really serves a vast multitude of purposes.

So here it is, this little room is my Bow Tie, Suspenders, BowTie Pin, Skinny Tie, Pet Bow Tie factory. I knit and design in here, construct and finish the pieces, package and wrap them up ready for their new homes. I do my admin, teach my online lessons and sit in here to host my new Insta LIVE Curious Conversations. I also use it to join my online knitting club nights with friends and watch TV my husband isn't into (Hollywood and yes I have many thoughts on it, another post maybe). Last night, I sat in here and read my current book (Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge - which I highly recommend by the way).

It is mere meters from our ground floor apartment, my daughter now knows to wave 'Bye' to me when I head for the back door, and as you can see it sits in our somewhat bare garden...Thanks to 'Rona our gardening plans took a backseat for more important bills and such like but I have acquired the odd cheeky floral treat from our local Lidl to give it a little flourish until we can source pots and planting soil. On my original @woolandwhiskers Instagram post, the lovely Rebecca from Beehive Design kindly shared some great suggestions so watch this soon to be green space!

Right now I am sitting with the doors open as I type this, listening to the chatter of my surrounding neighbours and the birds in the trees - it's pretty ace....albeit ruddy hot!

I hope you enjoyed my Wool & Water Garden Studio tour - is it how you imagined?