Moving mountains

My area has had three feet of snowfall this month (when it's on the ground, it packs down to less than that, of course), and one of my snow piles out front is as tall as I am, so I thought I'd dig up this post from a past winter (and a past house):

We got about four inches of snow today. We have fifty feet of wide sidewalk, two sets of steps, about one hundred feet of narrow sidewalk, and a short two-car driveway. I shoveled all that in thirty minutes of light to moderate exercise, using only these two tools:  a snow scoop (aka "Yooper scooper") and a grain shovel. The snow scoop is a wide metal box, open at the front and top, with a handle for pushing. It enables me to clear wide areas quickly by pushing the snow, rather than lifting it. I've seen both homemade and commercial versions. The grain shovel (which can be found at farm supply stores) is very handy for steps and for heavy wet snow. 

Melting down soap scraps

This is something I did a while back, and then waited to see what the final result looked like, before reporting on it.

I used to save scraps of bar soap for making homemade laundry soap, and after we switched to store-bought laundry detergent--for the sake of our landlord's front-loading washer--I kept on saving them.

Finally I had enough scraps to melt down and make bars of soap. The scraps were an eclectic mix, everything from motel soaps to fancy-shmancy handmade soap.

I loaded them into the old pan that I used for making laundry soap, and started heating them up.

The first problem I encountered was that most of these quite old, quite dry scraps of soap would not melt, even over high heat.

Solution:  add some water. It took more water than I expected, and I knew I was going to end up with melted soap with way too much water in it.

Even with the water, the soap was melting very slowly, so I turned up the heat a bit.

Next problem:  the water/soap mixture started boiling, so now I had melted soap with too much water and too much air in it. The scraps did finally melt...mostly.

I dumped it all into a plastic dishpan (for a mold), and let it cool down.

When cool, I cut it into bars...it was still quite gooey.

I decided to put them up somewhere and let them dry out for a few months.

I checked after a month or two, and they were coming along, shrinking and wrinkling quite a bit as they dried.

Now, after a couple more months, they are more or less shriveled down to the consistency of regular soap, and they seem usable.

It is probably possible to re-melt them now and re-pour, and have them come out more nicely, but I am okay with using them as they are.

 

A sewing week

Back to sewing!

I was so happy to have sewing time, that I chugged straight through all the mending that had piled up. Most of the repairs took only a few minutes each.

Then I kept on going into my stalled sewing projects. I made another couple pairs of homemade tights, and now I am working on the long-delayed underwear replacement project.

The delays worked out in my favor, as some fabric was handed down to me in the meantime, and also I worked out exactly which socks I needed to buy for the feet of the tights (which I wear with dress boots; fabric feet wear out too quickly for my liking).

Living room accessories

This final phase of cozy-minimalizing my living room went very quickly--I don't have many horizontal display surfaces in my living room, and I decided not to add any more; there is enough going on in there already.

Pillows and throws were already in place; check those off the list.

One spot that did need attention was the top of my kitchen cabinets, which is very visible from the living room.

The space there is very cramped because of a dropped ceiling, so I had to choose objects six inches in height or shorter. We had some large sea shells and pottery with interesting shapes and colors, so that is what I put there.

Then it took a few tries to get them arranged attractively.

Our other main accessories are a vintage sewing machine, minus its cabinet, and one of my husband's light-up electronics projects.

I made room for a basket of interesting things to read, and found a big shallow pottery bowl to hold all of the little things that seem to pile up while waiting to be put away. It helps a lot with keeping the room looking neat and tidy.

The last surface is a small ledge where collected pebbles tend to end up. I edited the collection a bit, and left it at that.

I still have rug repairs to complete, and then the room is basically "done". I have been letting the half of the room that is not the Sitting Area be used flexibly, and that seems the best solution; it gets used in different ways depending on what the family is doing. Often that means moving chairs in from the dining room, which is a bit inconvenient at mealtimes, but we do have multiple people who can move chairs back now, too.

Doily wall hanging

As promised, more information on the making of the doily wall hanging.

I did some digging to find information on the pineapple pattern that I wanted.  There were two crochet books in the library that had similar motifs, but used differently. I was able to track down an online pattern very similar to the pattern my  grandmother used, by doing an image search.

The pattern had eleven pineapples, while I wanted eight, so I had to do some math to estimate how far out from the center I should begin each pineapple.

Between the pineapples, I partly followed one of the book's patterns, and partly I improvised, based on what would help the doily stay flat. At one point, I had to unravel a considerable distance back, and redo several rounds.

Another complication was that I had a definite size that I wanted it to be, right around 24 inches in diameter. I used my homemade crochet hook to make a single pineapple swatch beforehand. It was too large, so I needed a smaller hook. I elected to whittle another one, this time from a chopstick, but I forgot the cardinal rule of crochet-hook-carving:  shape the top of the "head" first. So on the first attempt, I broke the head off as it was almost finished, and had to turn the hook around and carve a whole new head on on the other end.

The new crochet hook worked nicely, and at a nice stitch size.  The thread is cotton utility string.

When I got to the edge, after several experiments I elected to not make any scallops or frills.

The doily is stiffened and colored with latex paint; "Antique White" on clearance for $5 a quart at Walmart.  I put some paint in a bucket, added the doily, and gently kneaded it to get the paint through it evenly.  It took almost half the quart of paint, in the end. Then I laid it out on a flat surface covered with newspaper and waxed paper to dry.

The waxed paper worked nicely:  I was able to get the dried doily up without it sticking anywhere. The doily was stiff, yet still flexible. The paint color, however, turned out whiter and colder than I expected,  so I ended up doing a second coat, using the same paint but with some yellow artists' acrylic paint mixed in--yes, you can mix acrylic paint with latex paint; latex paint is really acrylic paint with some other stuff added.

I sponged this warmed-up paint over just the front of the doily, and let it dry again.

Then I had to figure out how to hang it; it was too heavy for the thin brass wire I have strung across the brick. I did, however, find some brass chain in our hardware hoard.

The next challenge was how to hang the doily on the chain. I elected to sew several D-rings, from my sewing notions hoard, on the back of the doily.

After that, I strung the chain through, and had a helper hold up the other end, to see how much the chain was going to sag, so I would know how high to hang the ends of the chain. I noticed that the doily tended to slide in toward the center, so I grabbed a short white tension curtain rod from the basement, and ran it through the D-rings as well--to keep the doily straight.

You can see the ends of the rod in the picture. I plan to replace this eventually with a wooden stick, which will blend in better with the brick.

To hang the chain, I drilled a couple of very small holes in the outside edges of the trim that runs up and down the edges of the brick, and inserted finishing nails, or brads.

Total cost was under $15:  three balls of string at not quite $3 each, and then half of the $5 quart of paint, plus a few bits of hardware that we already had (and that could easily be improvised).

I could have saved myself a lot of trouble with the crochet design, if I would have chosen a moderately-sized doily pattern, and stuck to it.

Rug repairs continue, and some knitting

I'm a bit more than halfway through the twelve or so feet of rug edges that need reinforcement. It is tedious...but not as tedious as weaving new rugs would be.

I did a quick knitting project, a simple headband in garter stitch.

I also bought some yarn to make a new winter hat for myself, since I shrunk the old one in the wash. The yarn was a brown with yellow undertones, rather than the red ones that work better for me, so I overdyed it with cherry Kool-Aid--just one packet was enough for eight ounces of yarn. The yarn took up the artificial color almost completely, and held onto it.  Now it is drying.

Kool-Aid dyeing instructions are here; I used slightly different ones, which called for 2 ounces of vinegar per ounce of yarn.

I had already knitted up a little sample piece and sent it through the laundry with hot water...it felted very nicely. I was careful during dyeing and rinsing to avoid sudden changes of water temperature; I didn't need the yarn felting too soon.

Rug repairs, and painting a lampshade

The rugs are showing a lot of wear around the edges, and are starting to unravel. I am trying to keep that from spreading.

What I've found works fairly well, with flat-woven rugs, is to take some strong wool yarn and run a line of running stitch or backstitch in about half a inch from the edge.  And then to use each of those stitches as a "base" for several stitches that run around four or five rug threads at the edge, holding them in place.

I think the backstitch looks better, because then the groups of stitches are close together.

One other thing I did in the living room was to paint a lampshade. It is very old, probably around my age, and it showed it. Plus the lamp that it's on is something of a family heirloom; not something that we can stick a new shade on easily.

So I mixed up a batch of paint to match the original color of the shade and painted it. The difficulty was that the shade fabric is relatively coarse, and soaked up a lot of paint--but not evenly. I did what I could with that by being more generous with the paint toward the bottom, so that at least the unevenness would look somewhat deliberate.

In daylight the shade looks about the same as ever, just cleaner. At night with the lamp on, there's a definite difference:  the top portions glow, while the lower portions with a heavier coat of paint don't.