Back at home

A lot of my focus lately has been away from home.

I finished a braided rug, and put it in the bedroom at the foot of the bed under a chest.  The laminate flooring has a tolerable color, and ordinarily I wouldn't think that a rug would add much to the room, especially since I was using up colors I don't like, but it does make the room feel more finished and grounded. 

The rug's colors are medium tones, as is the floor, so the rug adds pattern and softness without standing out.

I went on from there and leaned a long board against the opposite corner, and then draped a long section of quilt top over it.  It's a bit theatrical, and wouldn't have been practical when my children were smaller.  It also is pushing me to incorporate a little more green into the curtains.  That might be as simple as lacing some crochet cotton through the holes in the lace trim, except that I really should wash the curtains first.

Eldest child has been taking remnants of Christmas-themed fabrics and other fabrics, and making reusable gift bags.  Not only reusable, but also reversible, with one side Christmas-y and the other not.  They look very nice.

The yard has greened up, thanks to plantains covering most of the bare areas.  The corner of the yard where my husband's dried mustard? plant from his community garden plot ended up last fall is coming up all mustard.  The flower beds are becoming jungles.  Children have planted things in various places--potatoes, lemons, carrots, and probably also apples.  

Still pouring...

...and too utterly ridiculously to write about yet.

However, we still had a good Christmas.  I was crafting little presents up until almost the last minute.

The washer got fixed enough to be functional.  At one point I had a whole system set up with two sturdy plastic bins and a bucket.  The second bin is for having a place to move wet laundry to while getting water out of the first bin and out of the laundry itself.  The bucket is for bailing out the bins.  

It worked okay as a temporary solution, but for a longer term I'd want sturdier laundry tubs.  I don't need a binful of laundry graywater flowing across the floor.  We do have a legless utility sink we trashpicked once; it would need to have the drain hole plugged securely against the suction of the laundry plunger (Rapid Washer).  Currently it is a holding pen for dirty laundry.

I set up a drying rack in the bathtub, to let things drip-dry enough so they could go into the dryer.

We even went to the laundromat once.  Almost deserted, probably because of the threat of a visit from ICE, which was good, because there were hardly any chairs--to keep homeless people from camping there.  A sign on the wall said No Sleeping.

Finally feeling crafty

Last-minute Christmas projects, after yesterday's cookie-baking and caramel popcorn:  a book weight with a rock in one end and beans in the other; a sewing kit; individual quotations cut out of an unreadable gift book and laminated; a piece of fabric laminated; an upholstery fabric remnant sewn into a tote bag; a broken necklace that I double-restrung.

For the sewing kit, I took a small, ugly basket and covered it with fabric, gathering it at the inside bottom and stitching through the fabric and basket under the rim.  It was quick to put together, although I think the gathers will tend to collect dust and odds and ends over time.

Recently we were given an elderly woman's extensive stash of braided rug materials and tools.  I've made a good start on a braided rug, and I plan to work straight through my share of the rolled strips, so I don't need to find storage space for them.  It will be a series of smaller rugs.  There's also a bin of uncut fabric, which I will probably use in clothing projects.

Eldest child has reported difficulty in distinguishing the woolens from the synthetics, even with burn testing.  Perhaps some of the fabrics are blends. 

Some of the fabrics were rather musty, so I washed them and hung them out in the back yard--including throwing long, unrolled strips of fabric up into the trees.  For some reason my husband doesn't approve of the look.  The red strips look festive, the gray and tan ones not so much.

Merry Christmas!

The table leaf worked out very well, although we had to turn the living room into a dining room with two tables to seat everyone.  A little too much work to set all that up again for Christmas, when it is just our own family.

Christmas is also going merrily.  The family sculptor improved on a gingerbread house's chimney by adding two Santa legs sticking out of it.

The oldest child has improved rapidly, and is scheduled for surgery in a few weeks to prevent a recurrence.

Christmas stuffed

Every year I start to get the house into reasonably-decluttered order in the fall...and then the holidays hit.

This year, I had the idea of filling up the Christmas decoration boxes with regular decor and other stuff, once the Christmas decorations were up.

It's only two small boxes, and within a few minutes I had found enough items to fill them both.  This was not just swapping regular displays for Christmas decor, but also making some areas downright austere to compensate for ornamental elaboration elsewhere.  

There were a couple of small items that I just put up on the Christmas tree.  A few days ago, I moved a wall hanging to the undecorated back entry, to make room for my Christmas sign.

Another idea I had was to put a tray on top of our toaster oven.  We don't use it often for toasting, but it always has lots of smaller things on top of it because we have very little counter space.  Now it can be cleared off and used much more easily.

Similarly, I put a tray on top of the painted crate we hold to hold tea and teacups, which will make it much easier to plug in the toaster oven when we want to use it.  

Cozy cottage

I made progress on the mending pile.  It is not the easiest or most fun kind of sewing, but it is gratifying to see an entire garment ready to wear again, after putting in much less work than making a new item would take--or than shopping for a new one would take, either.

I also was able to fix a zipper.

I'm been putting off most of my Christmas crafting, aside from a knitted towel experiment, and I'm giving some already-completed projects as gifts instead.

Today is Yooper Scooper weather:  shovel early, shovel often.

I have a pile of used materials to make into a coat.  The most challenging part will be fitting the arms so that the recipient has enough freedom of movement for sparring with siblings. 

Our second mannequin torso was released from dress form duty, so I found an outfit for it and put it back with the other one.

I couldn't find a good place to display Christmas cards, so I've been putting them on the Christmas tree.

A child found a doughnut maker at the thrift store--it's like a waffle iron, but with two doughnut-shaped cavities.  This one was brand-new and unused, and at least forty years old.  An elder sibling bought one at a yard sale a decade ago, and has used it occasionally.

Cutting up, and weaving

I went through my mending basket, and decided which items were worth repairing.  The remainder I cut up, and filled the kitchen wipes jar, and a bag with more wipes, plus I filled a drawer with larger rags that I can cut up as needed, or just use as back-up towels.

I also unearthed my homemade loom and got the project on it going again.  I'm going to have to build up some muscles in my arms and upper back before I can weave for very long at a time.  There is a lot of reaching involved.

I have a plan to make a couple of little Christmas ornaments from juice can ends.  I try to make some kind of ornament every year, in sufficient quantity so each child has one of their own.

We made room for our Christmas tree, somewhat complicated by the fact that my improvised living room table will not fit through any of the interior doorways.  It is going into the back corner, which is a popular napping place because of the heating vent there.

   

Braided rug repairs

Both of my braided rugs had spots where the lacing was breaking.  Not surprising in the larger one, which spent most of winter outdoors a few years ago, while I was deciding if I wanted to keep it.  The wool in the braids came through that fine, but the cotton rug warp yarn that I used to lace them together didn't.

The repairs were simple, but tedious:  pull out the lacing back to where it is good enough, tie on a new piece, thread the other end into a blunt yarn needle, and re-lace until the other end can be tied.

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We have a door where the doorknob assembly has a loose plate that won't stay up against the door like it is supposed to.  There are no screw holes, just two tiny spikes on the back, which won't hold at all, unless I pound on it.  I figured out a way of winding leather lacing around the doorknob shaft so the plate can't slide.

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I also began working on the edge of the living room rug.  I'm doing a row of whip stitches along the worn edge, using crewel-weight wool yarn, to cover and protect the bare threads. I happened to have yarn that goes well with the rug.  A lot of our things are survivors from the '80s when country blue was a trend, and they coordinate well.

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We had a good Thanksgiving, just ourselves, and then on Saturday Grandma came in with ten dozen homemade sugar cookies and everything needed to decorate them in a well-planned operation. Those cookies are in her garage in tins now, waiting for Christmas. It will be fun to see them again and recognize who decorated what. She also brought some cookies just for eating on the spot--store-bought cookies that she mostly bought for the tins.

Mostly good

The holidays went well for us, aside from me discovering that the freezer plug had been knocked loose, and that the food in the freezer was well above refrigerator temperature.  It is not a large freezer, and it was only about half full, so it was not a huge loss, just disappointing.

I set up a sewing station for myself in our library, and have been working on a sewing project using a commercial dress pattern.  I used an old sheet to make a "muslin" version first, for fittings and pattern adjustments, which turned out to be a very good idea, as the initial fit was poor, being far too small in several places, and large in others.  I did find a zipper in my stash, and I had the fabrics and thread already, so the only cash outlay was for the pattern.

I ignored my mending pile from about Labor Day until Christmas, but after that did most of the easier repairs.

Last month I also made a batch of homemade laundry soap, using scraps of bar soap, and borax and washing soda (recipe should be in one of the posts under the recipes tag), now that we are no longer living in a rental with a high-efficiency washer.  I've previously worked out that this laundry soap does tend to leave a thin build-up of soap scum over the laundry, but that that probably protects the fibers to some extent.  I still use regular detergent for my husband's clothes.  The grocery store was out of borax for several weeks, but eventually restocked.

Preparations

I got my Christmas shopping more or less done, and most of it in one round of going into one store after another right before closing time.  I was blessed to be able to find some good things in the limited time that I had.

Last weekend we had 8+ inches of snow, most of which melted as the thunderstorms came through.  No storm damage here, although there was an unusual and oppressive feeling in the air as the storm approached.

I've done a few little experimental projects, aside from gift-making.  One was to flatten a peach can and play around with shaping the metal.  It was easy to cut with tin snips of the giant-scissors style.

Another was to do a quick little crochet snowflake using string, in the same style as this hanging, where the crochet is colored and stiffened afterward with paint.

I am planning to run some more scraps of fabric through the laminator, and perhaps to do some more woodcarving for gifts.

An embroidery I am working on is proceeding, although I've not put much time into it:  a little scene of a shack in the woods.  It will probably turn out well just because I am too busy to overwork it.

One child has ambitiously planned and made the gingerbread for a gingerbread village.  Another is preparing for a cooperative Christmas craft booth effort with friends next year.

Assembly lines

Every year I try to make some kind of a homemade Christmas ornament for each child, that they will be able to take with them when they grow up.

This year I took a torn-off notebook cover that was foil-printed with a abstract design, cut out shapes from it, and backed them with aluminum foil.  I embossed the backs using a small glass bottle that had a ring of little dots around its base.  Then I ran them through the laminator--just because I could--made holes with an awl, and put strings through them.  I didn't have enough string, really, and it was too thick, but I was able to partially separate the strands and turn it into four thinner strings.

For another project, I've been working on sewing up a bunch of pieces of cotton, some of them very small.  I was stuck for a long time, until I decided to adopt a simpler and more modular scheme for cutting them and putting them together.

I took a piece of paper, folded it in half, and tore it along the fold.  I did the same thing with one of the halves, and then again with one of the new halves.

I ended up with three pieces of paper:  one at full width, one at half-width, and one at quarter-width.  These became width templates, although I had to remember to always add extra for seam allowances.

With the templates, I was able to cut the fabrics according to the widest template that would work, and on to the smaller ones from there with the remaining scraps.

In putting them together, I worked from the narrowest pieces to the widest:  make a long strip of the narrow pieces, find the middle, and cut it there.  Put the resulting two strips side by side and sew them together.  Then add medium-length pieces on to the end, making another long strip, find the middle again again, and cut and join the two side by side again.  Then add the widest pieces.     

The largest pieces of fabric I set aside, but now I'm at the point where I need to know how much longer the strips (I have four, in different color schemes) need to be.  

That means I'm stuck again, waiting for my laundry helper to wash the blankets I'll be using as quilt batting.

Tis the season now

I haven't been feeling the Christmas spirit much, but I finally just turned on some Christmas music and pulled out our two boxes of Christmas decorations, to see what I could put up around the house.  I also pulled out my Joy sign, which can be seen in this post.

I have several ideas for Christmas crafts, but am only just getting started on them.  

The one I did complete wasn't one that I planned.  My husband found a bagged-up broken necklace in his office.  I took the beads, and I strung them on memory wire to make a bracelet that I will give as a Christmas gift.

The memory wire is from a package that I bought at Hobby Lobby quite a while back.  It has a lot of flexibility, but when it is released, it returns to a more or less flat coil.  It's not suitable for younger children, because it will only take so much abuse before breaking.  Also, some beads are too heavy for it to really support well, and some beads have rather sharp edges around their holes that will likely weaken the wire.

I had a tiny helper for this project, and it appears that we have another child with exceptional fine-motor skills.

Usability testing

I paid attention during the holiday gatherings at our house, to see how the re-arranged spaces were working.

For the most part, things went well. The wisdom of simplifying furnishings and of using fewer, larger pieces of decor was confirmed. Even during normal times, there is a lot going on in our house; the background needs to be beautiful, simple, and easy to maintain.

We don't have many Christmas decorations, only two small boxes plus the tree stand. I didn't buy a pine garland this year; last year's was nice, but really too much for our house. Our Nativity set, Advent calendar, Christmas tree, Joy sign, and Christmas cards hung up over the fireplace were enough seasonal decor, when we added Christmas music and food and guests; basically the same decor as in this past Christmas tour post.

One thing I did notice was that the conversation area that I made around the fireplace was cramped, when we were using it as a gift-opening space for the entire family. But we managed. There were enough places for everyone to sit, but the floor space just disappeared under gifts and wrapping paper.

Holiday interlude

I spent a bit of time thinking about how to spend my Christmas money, and ended up at the used book store.

Most of the time, I buy books from a thrift store or from the little book sale area at the library, so going into a real bookstore is like a trip to the candy store--except better, because you can read a book more than once.

Within the wider selection of books, I found a number of books that related to areas that I want to branch out into more.

My second stop was the craft store. I don't visit these very often either, because so many of the things in them, I could make for myself, if I wanted to put in the time and effort. What I did buy was basic materials:  leather remnants, wool roving, and fabric paint.

My third stop was for the really mundane things:  socks and a new toilet brush. I've had a remarkably hard time buying socks in the past, either because they weren't quite what I was looking for or needed, or because they were beyond my budget. I've settled on buying ankle socks a few pairs at a time, and using them as the feet for homemade knee-high tights.

I decided not to buy a new dish drying rack yet, but to just turn the old one around, so that the more worn-looking parts are at the back.

Also, I received a box of garage sale fabric from a visiting relative. There is a large piece of fleece that should be good for one or two pairs of child-sized pants, one and a half bedsheets, and more than enough upholstery fabric to cover the chair that I brought home from vacation. While I was busy with holiday preparations, my mending pile outgrew the small amount of cupboard space that I allotted for it, so I'm going to have to get to work on that again sometime soon.

Bedwetting hack

A book I have on natural remedies contains testimonials from several people on the power of honey to stop bedwetting.

The treatment is to give the child somewhere between one teaspoon and one tablespoon of honey before bedtime.

I'm pretty sure that the way that it works is to raise the child's blood glucose levels far enough that their body has to keep additional water in their bloodstream to keep their blood sugar from going too high, instead of sending the water to the bladder. So I don't consider this a very healthy solution for regular use, just one that is useful for those I-really-don't-want-to-deal-with-this-today situations...such as during the holidays.

Since the active ingredient is a form of sugar, plain table sugar should have this effect as well, and so should Christmas candy.

Santa's workshop

I finished making three Christmas gifts today, and while I was out Christmas shopping, I had ideas for about four more projects.

I have to balance those with cleaning the house before our family gatherings, and also some rest, though.

Surviving February

February is my least, or second least, favorite month of the year. This year I stowed away two things from the holiday season, to save them for the last week of February:  a gift card, and a few pounds of berries in the freezer. I think I will have to make a tradition out of this.

Very simple holiday banner

We have a fireplace, but it is set in a wall of brick with no mantel. I've dealt with this so far by stringing a wire across the brick, and hanging things from it. For a good year, it was a set of prints (intended for a classroom) depicting different kinds of butterflies. Over the Christmas season, I hung up Christmas cards. After I took those down, I left the wire mostly empty, and just hung a few pieces of ephemera and children's art, as they showed up.

For Valentine's Day. a child made a last minute banner by cutting a big heart out of red fabric, and stapling it to a square of white fabric...simple and charming. The staples aren't very noticeable because the heart is so dominant.

Last minute gift crafting: decoupaged pens

A family member had writing utensils on their Christmas list. My Christmas shopping is finished, and all we have in stock at home are promotional giveaway pens and beat-up pencils.

But I had an idea:  take some pretty paper, and cover some not-pretty pens with it. I had some green marbled paper from my first try at shaving cream marbling. I also had decoupage medium on hand (although clear acrylic varnish or even white glue would work).

So I cut strips of the paper, painted the back sides of them with the glue, wrapped them around the pens like cylindrical wallpaper, smoothed them out, and then painted the outside surface of the paper, as a sealer.

After doing a few pens, I also grabbed an old pencil, sawed off the used-up eraser, and covered it in the same paper.

They came out well, although not perfect, as I was in a hurry, and damp paper tends to wrinkle.

I used to do this with pens and pencils for my own home, but at some point I got busy and forgot about it. I'm going to start it up again, though, instead of just living with ugly pens.

Preparing for Christmas

I am enjoying this Christmas season a little differently this year. Having a new baby, I am taking things much more slowly and simply.

My Christmas shopping is mostly done, and mostly will be done at the thrift store and the grocery store--but not during the baby's third-week and sixth-week growth spurts.

Our Christmas decorations are exactly the same as in past years (follow Christmas tag on the sidebar to see posts with pictures), except that I haven't made any paper snowflakes.

I've been taking a moment here and there to stop and enjoy the Christmas lights in our house and neighborhood.

I did one fairly quick papercraft:  shaving cream marbling on some index cards.  How:  make a pile of shaving cream, stir in paint until partially mixed, flatten the surface of the cream, and press the card down onto it. Then carefully lift the card, scrape off the excess shaving cream, and set the card aside to dry.  I used bronze acrylic artists' paint, Golden brand, which had the unexpected effect of leaving a verdigris color where the paint was thinnest.

Christmas baking will happen next week. I usually make caramel popcorn, and will attempt to make a batch of cookies from an old family recipe (full batch:  10 dozen cookies). My husband usually makes some kind of a sugar cookie for the kids to decorate.