The Drawing Board…

I’m terrible about projects sometimes… You’ll remember how a few weeks ago, I showed you the lamps I bought that I wanted to do the neon + neutral bottle wrap project on? Well, when I went to Lowes to pick up the masons line (neon yellow and pink nylon) and twine to do the project, I didn’t like it! So now, I’ve got to back to the drawing board on that lamp project. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it now. I definitely want to paint it because brown is not a color I’m fond of (even though the brown on my lamp is a dark, glossy chocolate brown and not at all ugly). Since I’m bankrupt for a solid idea for the lamp, I’ve decided to try and do some planning for the desk I bought a while back:

Craig’s List desk.

It needs serious work! At first I thought that I wanted to do a standard white or ivory paint job on it but after seeing this room by Kimberly Ayres design (thank God for Google image search, btw! I actually first saw this picture on a blog without a photo credit and it took me ages to figure out who designed the room).

The main inspiration for my CL desk find is this room by Kimberly Ayres Design.

High gloss mint would look great on my desk, don’t you think? I think it would look awesome. I’ve been gathering paint chips for the perfect shade of mint green. Today I started looking for drawer pulls because I don’t really like the original pulls. I found these at Anthropologie:

Sardinia Knob, $12 each at Anthropologie.com.

I’m hoping to find some decent sized unpolished square brass backplates for the knobs to sit on. I think that’d look nice on the flat edges of the drawers. I’ve also wanted to use some of the metallic fine papers from Paper Source to line the inside of drawers for a while… I’m thinking this marbled gold would look good:

Gold on Natural Marble Fine Paper, $6.50 per sheet at Paper Source.

Well, that’s my wish list for my desk project. I’m hoping to find some inspiration for the lamp project soon as I think I’d like to tackle the smaller project first. Any suggestions for my lamp?

Project: Lamps

Remember these?

Two lamps that were a seriously ugly shade of plood (um, plastic+wood)? Well I sanded them:

Taped them up and spray painted them high gloss black with Krylon’s paint and primer in one. Super smelly but really pretty on. I’m thinking of trying their Cherry Red next… but I digress!

Here are the lamps now:

A close up of the tops (they need touch ups):

And the bases:

I still don’t have shades. I’m leaning towards a textured neutral to balance out the gloss of the bases. This one by Thomas O’Brien for Target caught my eye last weekend:

It’s kinda hard to tell but it looks like linen and has smart looking black piping across the top and bottom. I think the drum shape would look good with the lamp bases, don’t you?

So! That’s one down… many, many, many more to go. I’ll pop up an update when I find the perfect shades. See you tomorrow! Have a great day.

Pillow Talk

I promise this is the last time that I’m going to post about the office chair… but I had to share the final piece of the picture: two pillows a friend sewed up for me in a coordinating fabric. The print is called Barber by Premier Prints, the colorway is corn yellow/kelp slub. I think it looks really nice with their corn yellow slub Zigzag fabric. Don’t you?

So there it is! The final touch on the office chair. I’m likely going to put this piece up for sale in a week or two… so if you know anyone that needs a dashing office chair, point them in my direction!

I’ve got a meeting today (I’m on the Social Committee, planning fun stuff for my fellow coworkers… fun, right? ) and a few hours after that, more than likely spent stocking up the Swedish Food Market. It needs it after the crazy weekend we had. I’m sure we could have filled a football stadium with the number if visitors we had this weekend!

Anywho, I hope your Wednesday is a quick and happy one, everyone! Until tomorrow. :-*

I’ve Got Sunshine On A Cloudy Day…

The office chair project elements are coming together! Yesterday I scored this sunny egg yolk yellow chevron patterned upholstery fabric for $8.99/yd. I know, right!? I also picked up the floral that is hanging above it because, what chair doesn’t need a happy little pillow on it? I’m going to paint the frame Benjamin Moore’s Portland Gray.

So hats the quick update for the day! I hope you all are making it over the hump… I’m trying. Hard. LOL! Happy Wednesday, everyone. I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Thrift Store Score!

On Saturday me and my mom went by Value Village to pick up some wing back chairs we’d seen on Memorial Day. They were only $25 each!

The chairs side by side in the living room.

Close-up of the chair legs.

Detail of the flamestitch fabric.

They are really sturdy, solidly built, and really comfortable. The fabric is actually not that bad looking; it has a muted range of warm pastel tones in a flamestitch pattern. However, there is some shredded fabric on the back of both chairs so they’re  definitely going to end up becoming projects.

Lindsay Reid’s outdoor dining area with the Clarence House linen print ‘Dahlia’ gracing the table. -House Beautiful

I’d like to find a more affordable version of Clarence House’s Dahlia linen (as featured in Lindsay Reid’s cottage in the June 2011 House Beautiful). If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them!

Cardi for Mom

I mentioned before that I’m making a Big Bow Cardigan for my Mom, at her request. I did some work on it last night, finishing the front and starting on the back and the left front. It’s looking good! I should have it done by the time she gets here to meet Gabe. Still need to shop for buttons though!

I’m watching the Hawks/Dallas game now… more about Big Bow later.

Cardi! … and some scarves too…

So, I’ve been neglecting my blog duties.

I can admit it.

In my defense I’ve actually been working on a couple of projects.

First is The Millie Cardigan from Vintage Crochet by Susan Cropper . The pattern is by Alicia Paulson, and it’s worked from the yoke down, which is SUPER easy! It’s all single and double crochet. I’ve decided to use ribbon instead of fabric strips for the ties and I’m going to make “toggle” closures with the ribbon and decorative buttons isntead of just having it tie to close. I may also crochet some flowers and vines on it too. I really want to make it up special as it’s a gift for my friend Jen. It is the LATEST birthday present ever… she probably won’t actually get the sweater til sometime in August. Her birthday was in February. Oy.

Scarf pattern from Interweave Crochet Winter 2008.

Second, is a scarf project from my completely abused Winter 2008 issue of Interweave Crochet. It’s called Mitered Squares and it’s by a designer named Annette Petavy. The pattern is single crochet in the front loop only with a regular decrease in the center of each row. The name of the pattern pretty much says it all. Anyway, with a little counting and a stitch marker, this scarf works up in no time.

For the Mitered Squares project I’m using Jo-Ann Fabrics Debbie Mumm Traditions in Purple,  instead of the recommended yarn(South West Trading Company Karaoke). The Debbie Mumm isn’t very thick so I used a size G hook instead of a K hook (as recommended). I’m not having any problems working it up. 

I’d like to try using these mitered squares for a blanket. I actually think the Traditions yarn would work up nice. I’m so in love with variagated yarn right now! But that is also another post.

A Family Affair

I’m happy to announce to the world that the person who taught me to crochet was none other than my Gram Nash. I was just a wee girl and I thought the little frilly dresses she made for those once ubiquitous toilet paper holder dolls was the best thing ever. I wanted to do it too and my Gram showed me how.

I played around with crochet for a few years… into my preteens and even tried to teach myself how to knit. I was so proud when I finally learned how to do stockinette properly (Hey! Purling is HARD darn it!). But of course, as happens with so many of us I let go of it to pursue other things – bands and boys being chief among them. Still, if I picked up a hook, I knew I could always rely on my Gram, even though she’s a lefty and I have to reverse everything to get it right, to see me through any snarls.

Now cut to a few years later (no, I will not tell you exactly how many…) and I’ve once again picked up a hook. When I showed my Gram the project that I was working on her eyes sort of started to get a certain gleam… so I asked, casually, if she wanted to work on some projects together and she agreed! So we’re off tomorrow to go drool over yarn and hopefully pick out something cool… because you can never have enough yarn, right? I mean, a day of yarn stashing, working the craft, and hanging with your Grammy… what more do you need?

WIP, Part Two (and future projects too…)

In the days leading up to Seattle YarnThings first meeting, I’m working steadily on my cardi and hoping that it comes out resembling something close to designer Julia Vaconsin’s original idea. So far, so good. And the amount of yarn I have is looking pretty fabulous… I don’t think I’m going to run out before I’m finished like I thought I was.

So, now that Big Bow Cardigan is going so well, I’m looking toward my next project already. I’m still enamored of making clothing, which means I’ll probably make another sweater but I also looking at possibly doing a skirt or coat next.

Some possibilities:

Icelandic Turtleneck from Crochet Me edited by Kim Werker

Or:

herringbone-skirt by Elissa Sugashita/Knitscene Fall 2007

It’s kind of a hard decision but those are my top two picks for my next project. In the meantime, I’m continuing on my Big Bow Cardigan and it’s going really well. It’s amazing how calm and peaceful I feel after even a few minutes working on it. It’s nice to have a creative outlet back in my life again.

Personal Fabric

I was working my crochet on the bus today and my hands were dry… It seems like dry hands cause you to feel every twist of thread in a strand of yarn, doesn’t it? I know I did… and it got me wondering about something I thought about a few days ago while I was working on my project at home.

I was watching one of the CSI shows  and they were talking about epithelials, the skin cells that slough off our bodies when we touch things, and how they were found on some object that was relevant to their case.

It got me thinking this:

Every time I touch this skein of yarn and wind it around my hand, pulling up loops to create the fabric, I’m leaving a little bit of me behind. It’s not just my skill (or lack of it!) as a crafter that goes into, not just my time, not just my effort – but actual small bits of me that hold my very DNA are being woven in as well.

That might gross some people out… but not me. I was kind of awed by the thought. I don’t think anyone who picks up a crochet hook or a set of knitting needles ever thought of what they do as being anything other than personal. To me those little skin cells are physical reminders of the love, the heart, the soul we put into every project our hands touch. And yeah, they probably all get wiped away when we wash or block those projects but I’d like to think that just a little bit of me is locked in and will stay with whoever holds or wears that piece.

There is nothing more personal than that.