Yarns at Yin Hoo listeners, here are some photographs of my home interior, including my knitting space, spinning space, and recording “studio,” also my home office.

Yin Hoo Cha Yuan (Silver Lake Tea House) is a 1922 replica of a Chinese tea pavilion located near Shawnee-on-Delaware and Delaware Water Gap, PA. It sits very close to a busy country road, and overlooks a waterfall and non-funtioning mill. We firmly believe that the structure was inspired by a much more ornate tea house on the grounds of Marble House in Newport, RI -- a structure planned and used by Alva Vanderbilt to raise funds for the women’s suffrage movement. We have reason to think that Elizabeth Hogg, who, with her husband, owned a farmhouse across the street, and arranged for Yin Hoo’s design and construction, was a friend or acquaintance of Alva’s and was moved to build her own, more rustic version of a tea house after visiting Newport.

The structure is about 900 square feet, with a 5-6’ deep porch around the entire first floor. It was not built as a home, but functioned as a tea room with a second story gift shop. It’s possible that the tea house could have been a place to obtain spirits during Prohibition. Its location, near Shawnee golf course, meant that there would have been influential and monied visitors in the area, especially during the summer months. The second floor was accessible only by an outside staircase until the place was renovated (very shoddily) into a home in the mid-70’s.

Samuel and I are the first people to own and live at Yin Hoo. We have been working, very slowly, to renovate and restore Yin Hoo, making it comfortable to live in, while respecting the principles of feng shui.