Finishing Things

Everyone who knows me very well at all knows that I'm not too good at finishing projects. Especially when I have places to store these projects (as I now have in my house versus my 1-closeted apartment in Brooklyn) and so they're not staring me in the face at every turn. So, now that I'm working more frequently (for the best letterpress printer), I've decided that I need a list and a little accountability to get my list of UFO's under control. My goal is to have everything on this list finished by the end of October. I know that the list looks daunting but, just so you don't think I've lost my mind, I'll just point out quickly that quite a few of these projects are very very nearly finished already. Also, I'm not going to start any new projects except for those for people outside of my household until the end of October. Hold me to that one especially!

Here we go!

Throw Quilts:

Redwork Bitty Blocks

Patrick's Medallion

Blueprint Bento Box

Lumiere de Noel

Doll Quilts:

Around the World

Sunbonnet Sue

Woodland Bitty Blocks

Bed-Sized Quilts:

Either Rectangles and Squares Quilt

OR Sleepy Hollow Quilt

Daybed Log Cabins

Pillows:

Master Bedroom Pillow Shams

String-Block Daybed Pillow (using blocks like the top one from this post)

Pink Flower "Seed Packet" Craft Room Toss Pillow

3 Koigu Granny Square Crocheted Pillows

Painting:

kitchen cabinets

furniture to be charcoal grey (small dresser in study, kitchen chairs (3), Thea Table)

Curtains:

last study curtain

living room porch-window sheer

Clothing Sewing:

Amy Butler Tunic

Grey Linen Dress (from the same pattern as this dress)

Liberty Summer Blouse (from the same pattern as this one)

Knitting:

Patrick's Brown Cabled Sweater

Seaming for my machine-knit pullover

Black Kim Hargreaves Dress Sweater

Blue Sweater Vest for Patrick (ravelry link)

MadTosh Ink Socks (ravelry link)

Rosamund Cardigan (ravelry link)

Mosaic Throw

Misc Sewing:

Chesterfield Pincushion (like this one)

Cross Stitched Tiny House & Flowers

quilted potholders

Back to the sewing machine with me!!!

Quick Ikea Dash

Well we dashed until we hit the line anyway. Then we were a bit stalled. But we managed to pick up

A new light fixture for the downstairs bathroom. One without an extender pole meant to hold it down below the (removed) drop ceiling. Now if only we could finish scraping the room so it could be painted!

No, not the cat. New curtains for the living room. Most notably, the window in this corner is no longer uncovered. That had been bothering me for a long time. Now once I actually get them hemmed and the other sheer for the window looking onto the porch sewn up, this room will be entirely be-curtained.

2010 Crafting Year in Review

For the last few weeks, I'd been seeing all sorts of year in review posts on flickr and blogs. It made me think about what I'd actually finished last year. Mostly what came to mind was house projects or gardening accomplishments. But, in making a mosaic of my crafting from last year, I realized that I'd actually done more that I thought I had. Good reason to do this kind of exercise!

I think I knit that first sweater last year rather than the year before last. I made curtains for my house (and learned about printing by hand in the process), scarves for my etsy shop, pincushions, a doll quilt, stockings, and potholders for various swaps (and improved my applique, paper piecing, machine quilting, pattern developing, and quilt binding skills in the process), and a pillow just for fun from some fabric from one of my favorite illustrators/crafters. There was also a cardigan just for me, and a quilt for my parent's Christmas gift.

I suppose that I did more than I thought I did, craft-wise, last year! (Although I did turn out to have read just as few books as I kind of suspected that I did -- Julie & Julia, The Making of a Marchioness, and Cheerful Weather for the Wedding are really the only books that I finished. I'll have to work on finishing books in 2011 -- I probably started 10 that I never finished!)

Many Small Changes

This is a photo of our living room from last January, shortly after we'd purchased the house. All of the furniture shown was left behind in the house and has all now found new homes.

And now with our furniture. And my Christmas-Card-and-Mystery-Quilt-making mess on the table. It still needs paint and (the rest of the) curtains. And I'd like to recover that sofa. But I'm excited about the progress. Especially that the squashed-Smurf-colored shag carpet is gone.

This is, to me, one of the most dramatic before-and-afters from our house. Inspired by Patrick's work on that ceiling fan. Believe it or not, it is the very same ceiling fan in both the before and after photos. We just bought a new light kit for it from Home Depot and used some spray paint leftover from painting the kitchen cabinet hinges. And, of course, turned the blades over to their non-rattan side.

Happy Friday

Just a couple of photos from the past few days. The weather has been really nice here which has led to a few fun walks (and pinecone gathering) and some lovely light in the house. Autumn has come back after a few weeks of winter! Proof in the mixed nut bin in the grocery store (there are some nuts for that squirrel under those pinecones).

Persephone Grey

Progress has been made on the house! I'm not sure that I've had a major (positive) update like this to share since the hallway, all the way back in July. It's always tough to photograph our house, since all of the rooms are quite small, but I hope that I can do it justice. Our master bedroom, which was previously seafoam green, full of cracks and scuffs, and bedecked with frilly curtains, is now cleaned and patched and painted the color of grey of a persephone book cover (I just went to my paint guy, who is the best paint guy in the world, and asked him for a grey the same color that he'd made the primer for another room -- and it's lovely, don't you think?)

I realize now that that photo above may be a bit confusing -- that thing in the lower left corner, at the foot of the bed, is my cedar trunk -- it's just the exact color of the floor and so kind of makes it look like the floor overlaps the door somehow. The door up there on the right goes into the study and the other out into the second floor hallway.

Now for some before and after:

This is the "before" photo of the same corner as the photo of the chair at the top of the post. It was taken almost exactly a year ago, when we were just looking at the house.

This above little tiny pressed-flower artwork (which I love -- it's from my favorite antique store in my hometown) is hanging in the little space between the closet door and the wall with the windows which you can see in the "before" photo above, thus making these two photos a kind of set.

An immediate "before". The other before shot was taken just after purchase of the house back in January but this one is just from a few days ago. Those white smudges are patching of some of the cracks.

And the fourth corner (below). I don't have a good "before" photo to pair with this one so I'll just let it stand alone. This corner did have the biggest crack of all though -- it went all the way through to the hallway (the door to the hallway is just outside of the frame of the photo, to the right -- that's it reflecting in the mirror).

Rainy Afternoon

I'm in an organizing mode today and don't have very good light for photos so I'll just post this one photo of the leaves beginning to turn outside the study window. Have a lovely and cozy afternoon!

What Was Hidden Above the Dropped Ceiling aka Full Stop

Well, as horrible as it was, I guess that the schoolroom dropped ceiling in our kitchen did serve a purpose after all.

First, it covered the never-repaired holes in the plaster from when, apparently, there was a leak in the bathroom above. At least they didn't just plaster over a Dixie cup, as the previous owners of my parents' house had done to "repair" a bathroom leak!

(This second hole photo is of the twin hole inside the tiny bathroom next to the kitchen. The upstairs bath is above both the kitchen and the downstairs bath.)

Next, and quite importantly, it contained all of the flakes of paint that were falling from the ceiling. All of the flakes of most-likely-lead paint. . .

Third, it concealed the ever-pesky tops of the old cabinets.

And, lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it contained all of the wiring for the kitchen. Not just for the monstrously awful fluorescent lights in the kitchen as we'd assumed but also for the cute light above the sink, both light switches, the 3 whole electrical outlets which the kitchen contains, and who knows what else. The porch light and butler's pantry light could even be wired into this mess.

Now we are at a loss about what to do next. We don't want to put the panels back in, as it created a kitchen with approximately 7-foot ceilings but we also do need some electricity in the room.

There's an older junction box that's actually above the plaster (you can kind of make it out in the photo above) which we might just be able to tap into entirely. Although it would likely require that we make more holes in the plaster to hook all of the wiring to it properly.

Also, we have the option of encasing the wiring more efficiently and then putting in a bead board ceiling higher than the dropped-ceiling was. But that seems like just a new band-aid to cover the old band-aid.

Our plumber recommends that we not patch the existing holes until we're finished with remodelling the bathroom upstairs, which could take years. Maybe we should just knock down all of the plaster, do it all right, and live with a construction zone kitchen for however long it takes to fix both the kitchen wiring and the bathroom layout upstairs. We'll probably go with the last option, realistically. But, in the meantime, we just have to ask our guests not to look up when then come into the house (the door in the last photo is the one we use for most coming-and-going -- it's on the street side of the house). Ah, the joys of an old house!

My Vastly Improved (but Still Unpainted) Sewing Room

After spending most of last Friday better organizing the shelving in my craft room / sunporch, I decided that the time had finally come to post a few photos over here.

First, here is the room as we saw it when we looked at the house last summer. It was being used as a kind of breakfast room. Off of what was set up as a dining room (now the tv room). Off of the kitchen, most of which was taken up with a dining table. Hmm.

As you can see, my sewing machine is right underneath where that light fixture dangled (and, conveniently, looking out onto the chicken tractor!). I whacked my head on that thing about 1,000 times. Luckily, I have a husband who doesn't mind being daring with harmless little things like electricity, so he replaced the fixture with this milk glass one that we picked up at a junk shop for practically nothing. It lacked "guts" but he just put in the wiring from the old fixture. I didn't even have to paint it (it's kind of copper-patina-green)!

You might also recognize the curtains made for me by my mother and grandmother. These are pretty much two of my favorite things in the house right now!

Beeker likes to watch the chickens just as much as I do.

The fabric and books are all in there (with tons of miscellaneous other things). Obsessively organized, with red, brown, and grey fabric in the cabinet on the left, and blue, yellow, and green fabric in the cabinet on the right. That porcupine-y thingy next to the window, on the left, is my knitting needle holder. Being guarded by a monster I made in a silly craft workshop with my friend, Aryn.

I actually managed a decent shot of the yarn tower Patrick built for me from cedar (to keep the pesky moths away a bit). The room is so small, it's really tough to get a shot of it but here it is! (And this is all after not buying yarn for almost a full year!)

On the other end of the room, not as much is going on. I'm hoping to eventually be able to get my daybed which I've had since I was 10 years old shipped or brought up to New York. It will go down here with the quilt on it. In the meantime, at least it no longer contains a toaster oven and a television and I've been able to hang a few of my favorite bits on the walls. (The first photo is (hopefully obviously) a before photo.)

In the foreground is the cat-proof door that Patrick put up for me. It's one of the best things about moving from the bay window in our apartment to the sunporch in our house.

On the wall are (clockwise from top left) a funny clay head which Patrick made in high school, a very very cool fabric collage that I found at an antique store on Cape Cod, a shadow box I put together with a postcard from Paris, an antique crochet hook, a lace doily, some antique buttons, and my small vegetable ivory collection, one of Stephanie's pinecones, and an antique picture postcard of 3 baby bears in Maine.

The only (major) thing left to do is to paint the panelling. I don't know when it will happen as I have made it my goal to paint the living room, finish painting the kitchen cabinets, and paint our bedroom before Sheep and Wool (when I am having a party at my house). Some day, the panelling will hopefully be similar to what's in the adjacent tv room, only pale green rather than white.

Cozy Pieces of the House

Inspired by Amanda's Corners of My Home, today I have a few little bits photographed. Since there are few pieces of the house looking "nice" so far, it's fun for me to isolate the nice ones (or at least the ones that are nice, in my opinion) once in a while.

Please ignore the drop ceiling in the first photo. I do believe that it will come down over this long weekend. Something I do love at the top of that one is the door bell. It makes a horrible buzzing noise but it looks pretty cool. Being a real bell and all. It's called an "Edwards Buz-A-Bel".

The last picture is a few things on my mantel. There are other things on the other end of the mantel (mostly more silver stuff) but it will have to wait for another post.

Have a great weekend!

And Now for Something I Made

Although there have been few posts lately about things I've made, there has still been making going on. Most particularly, I made curtains (granted, they are more simple than roman shades but they're still curtains) for my kitchen window. Which is a very good thing because washing dishes at this sink when it is dark outside and all you can see are the ghostly white seed pods floating in space is not a fun experience. Now I'll be able to look at pleasant curtains instead!

I used Lena's book, Printing by Hand, for the basics on freezer paper stenciling (like which side to iron to the fabric and what kind of ink to buy) and then just had a fun time with the printing.

It was all as simple as the book makes it sound and her directions were super-easy to follow. The pattern is my own sketch, traced and repeated onto the freezer paper.

very before

after painting, before curtains

finished

As an added bonus, I now feel more confident to work on one of my proposed Alabama Chanin projects, having I've stenciled on fabric.

Lucky

Most of the reason I was so busy over the last week was because I had a visit from my grandparents and aunt. Which was very fun, of course, but busy as well. So the blog languished. But the house did not!

I am super-lucky to have a mother and a grandmother who not only are able but also willing to make roman shades for my very own craft room (I can't tell you how excited I am to have a craft room after my craft bay window for the past 4 years in Brooklyn). And this is no ordinary room. It is a sun porch so it has 5 windows. And I wanted to use in the curtains some lovely vintage French fabric I'd had on my ebay watch list for approximately 2 years. And I have a grandfather willing to help me string the said curtains and hang them in the windows. Now my craft room is infinitely brighter and nicer looking. As you can see from the "before" photo below.

All that's left to do is to paint the panelling!

Before

After (this is the window on the right in the photo above)

Da Da Dum!

As requested by Anna, what follows are photos of our bathroom. If you are faint of heart, you should click away now. Anna had no way of knowing, when I posted a comment about the loveliness of our bathroom the other day that I was being extremely sarcastic. But, as she requested the photos, photos you all shall have. It is sheer horror. Pepto Bismol pink, all the way to the very top (the ceiling is pink too), with a faux-marble, gold-veined wainscoting, and with gold linoleum on the floor. And, not only all of that, but the room is long and narrow, accentuated by the ridiculously large linen closet running along one side (the bifold doors on the right side of the first two photos is the closet) and the shower running the length of the room (on the short side of the ceiling slope, no less). Enjoy!


With all of that said, I do actually like the shelf/towel bar in the last photo which "came with" the house. It is pink (of course) but with some navy spray paint, it is one of the few things (other than the shaving brushes and my fabric window in the second-to-last photo) which figure into my visions of my new bathroom (taken straight from What Lies Beneath, of all places!)

P.S. In case you're wondering, I seem somehow, like an old movie, to have edited the toilet out of the room. But there is one! It's next to the sink (cabinet on the left in photo 3) and under both the window and this little shelf/towel bar -- and somewhat inaccesible as that radiator in photo 4 is immediately in front of it.