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.  

Busy at home

I've been making progress on a lot of projects:  putting a new hanger on the back of a smaller mirror, braiding a rug, mending, knitting an oversized hat, yard work, organizing a closet; one thing after another.

I finally got an antique carpet runner that we were given months ago installed onto the stairs.  I didn't realize that it was going to noticeably brighten the space; the previous big-box-store landlord-special runner--which I left on the stairs as an underlayer--is very dark and it soaked up light instead of reflecting and diffusing it around the stairwell. 

I made progress on another project, ironically, by abandoning it:  making a lampshade for a small lamp.  It was complete except for figuring out how to make it sit securely on the lamp. 

Instead, I pulled out a cracked old lampshade that I had been balancing on an Ikea lamp, and tried it on this one.  The lampshade attached well, but it looked not so good, and was much too opaque.

There's little risk in maybe ruining something that is nearly ruined already.  I decided to poke a lot of holes in the lampshade with a sewing needle-after taking it off the lamp, of course.  Within one minute, that task was subcontracted to an enthusiastic tiny human, who did an excellent job.  Little pinpoints of light come through, and they are brighter or dimmer depending where you are in the room.

Later at a yard sale, I found an outdoorsy watercolor print that echoes the colors in our living room, and also the colors of the lamp and lampshade--and even of the frame of the mirror I fixed--and that exemplifies some of our family atmosphere.

I picked up a free pine bookcase headboard for a twin bed, which turned out to be the perfect size to become a header for two plywood shelf units, which were originally the "doors" of a closeable toy shelf that our church retired a few years ago.  The rest of the shelf is on the other side of our living room now.  The headboard is not as deep as the shelves, so there's a space behind it, and also it covers up the tops of the shelves by several inches, but it also lends them a lot more style than they had before, and it functions as a sort of mantel.   Although few mantels have a painted orange crate and a well-dressed half-mannequin preemptively parked on them.  

Outdoors, a child helped me install some garden edging that a departing neighbor didn't want to move to their new house.  Previously there was no delineation between yard and garden in that part of the yard.  It makes a lot more difference than I expected it would, and there's enough left over to replace some badly-deteriorated edging in another part of the yard.

Local writer James Lileks last week bid his beloved home Jasperwood goodbye.  It's homely-ness is something that I am now pondering, as a Christian and a renter and the mother of a large family.  I've seen Mr. Lileks in person at the State Fair a few times, and we've driven through that very expensive Minneapolis neighborhood once or twice.  

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.

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.

Boxes

I thought of various alternatives for making storage boxes for the shelf, and ended up with paper-covered boxes as a medium-term solution.

I happened to have a larger box on hand that I was able to cut apart and reconstruct as two smaller boxes of the size that I wanted.

For the paper, we did another round of shaving cream marbling. This time I tried mixing a base color all through the shaving cream, and then swirling in a second color. It turned out all right, but I think this technique works better if some of the shaving cream is left white, to help the gaps where it doesn't touch the paper harmonize with the marbling.

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A journalist finally got the percentage of Minnesota coronavirus deaths with a serious underlying health condition out of the Department of Health:  94%, with an additional 4% "unknown".

Slices

The "Quick bar cookies" recipe on this post, which is actually a recipe for chocolate chip blondies, is very forgiving. I've recently tried substituting vegetable oil for the butter. This works all right, but comes out a little drier, as butter contains some water that the oil doesn't. I also tried adding cocoa powder and peppermint extract to make something more like a brownie. The family liked the result, and didn't realize that it was almost exactly the same recipe. Rolled oats were not in the original recipe, but I almost always add them, for nutrition.

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We've been very busy, and I was looking for a quick and fun project, and decided to paint one of our stump tables. The stump is a chunk of a large pine tree that my husband brought home from the county yard waste site last year. The wood was very green, and quite wet, so I kept it in the garage for months to dry it out, turning it occasionally. It picked up some dirt during that time, and lost over twenty pounds of weight, maybe as many as forty--I weighed it early on, and then later, but I don't remember the exact numbers.

Eventually I brought it in, and debarked it in the kitchen. There was some mold growing under the bark, so it had to come off.

The stump found a home in our living room/indoor parkour course. I counted the rings; the tree was sixty years old when it was cut down, and more than two feet in diameter.

Anyway, I mixed some paint to approximate a color that would fit into the decor, and painted the sides, just wiping the paint on with scrap fabric. I very soon had several eager helpers.

The color came out a bit bright for the room, so I plan on wiping on another coat at some point.

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A child wanted to learn to make angel food cake, after a lady from church brought us one. I had never made a foam cake, but our efforts were successful.

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Our resident papier-mache artist is thinking ahead to Halloween, and has made a good start on armatures (support structures for the papier mache) for upper and lower skeleton jaws, made out of milk jugs and tape.

A maker family

I took two pieces of fabric left over from making skirts and cut and hemmed them to make handkerchiefs. Someday I am going to take the time to learn how to use a narrow hemmer attachment on a sewing machine, but for now I just fold, pin, and sew.

I also altered the collar on the blouse I just finished, by the most expedient method:  I cut off most of the excess fabric, ripped open the seams at the front edges a little, folded the raw edges in, and then topstitched them closed. It turned out well.

Then I took the blouse and a skirt I finished last year, and dyed them purple with the last of my dye.  (I don't like using dye because of its toxicity, and because most of it goes down the drain.) The two fabrics, both originally cotton sheets, took the dye slightly differently--one is a little more reddish than the other.

My mother-in-law was brainstorming about how to make a easel that she could spin a canvas on, vertically. My husband found a caster to use as a bearing, minus the wheel, and got it started for her.

She mentioned a sort of papier mache-like clay that is made of drywall mud and toilet paper. We may try that someime. 

Some of the children have been making stop-motion animations for a church activity, and they have been working like elves. Another child made a little wooden table, and painted it. I usually avoid painting furniture, because paint isn't durable enough, but the table's color (blue) is quite striking.

A fake bowl for the fake flowers

 I finished the coffee filter hydrangeas that I was making. Since I was using paper and paint instead of coffee filters and food coloring, I found that I had to paint each side of each cutout separately. And I air-dried them, instead of using an oven at low heat.

When I bundled them together, I just used a paper clip at the bottom of each bunch, and left the leaves loose. I have some spools of fine wire, but I didn’t need them.

With the flowers finished, I looked around the house for a good bowl to put them, but didn’t find anything suitable. So I ended up taking paperboard from a saltine box, and using strips from it to make a “bowl”.  The quotation marks are because it has no bottom, and is actually only a ring.

I made it by taking two long sides from the box, and making interlocking slots at each end. Putting them together made a shape that was more like an eye than a ring, so I did the same thing with the other two long sides of the box, and slipped the second eye inside the first, rotating it so that the whole thing was reasonably round.

I glued on some scrap paper to cover and hold down the protruding tabs, then I painted the outside with craft paint. The unprinted side of the paperboard soaked up most of the water in the paint, so I did the second coat right away, and from there went straight into applying white puff paint in a geometric design.

The puff paint dried with a shine, while the craft paint didn’t, and the shine contrasts with the non-shiny flowers, so I’m glad I used the puff paint, even though it did run downward a little on the vertical surface. Otherwise, I would have added a coat of something clear like Mod Podge for shine, since the bookshelf the bowl is going on has almost nothing shiny on it, and could use a little sparkle.

Finished the chair

The main difficulty was that the fabric I used to cover the chair has little ability to stretch, which made it difficult to ease it around the various curves of the seat and the back.

I also ran out of tacks, and had to do some hunting to find more staples for the staple gun.

Then one of the screws for the arms stripped badly when I was putting the arm back on; not one of the original screws, but someone's replacement screw that was a bit too large.

But now that the chair is done and in place, with a sheepskin draped over the back, it fits in with the rest of the room. The "too yellow" fabric just looks sunny. It has been a cloudy and dark winter.

For the padding on the back, I again crocheted a "rug"; this time of jersey fabrics. It used a lot of fabric, but not all that I had. The "rug" itself didn't look bad, but I wanted a surface that is more washable, durable, and not continually shedding little bits of lint. 

Cost for this project was zero, as I used only things that we already had.

Progress on the chair seat

Previously, I had stripped it down to the frame and springs.

Going by the careful notes I had taken while stripping off the old upholstery, I tacked on the new old burlap.

For the crocheted "rug" padding that I had made, I decided that the best way to attach it would be to crochet a round of single crochet 1, chain 1 around all four edges, doing slip stitches to get around the corners. That gave me a less-dense edge to tack to the seat frame.

Next came the thin pillow that I planned to put over it, which was a bit smaller than the crocheted layer. I decided to sew it directly to the crocheted layer, using some very strong thread that I have.

With that done, the seat is ready for the outer fabric, which still needs some preparation. It is a heavy canvas-like fabric, with a waterproof backing, which a friend of my mother's gave her along with a big load of other fabrics.

I made a page of little concept sketches for possible stamping designs, to be done with potato stamps, and chose one. After carving my two old, sprouting potatoes, and picking the best one, I mixed my two colors of fabric paint, and did some test stamps on a sheet of paper.

I did not like how it looked, at all. The paint was thinner and drippier than I expected, and the potatoes had become uneven in texture. Also, the paint color was not good--so I added a lot more brown to it, which gave a better color, but with a lot more contrast with the fabric than I was planning on.

Since I had given up on stamping, I went with scribbling on the fabric with a bamboo skewer. When I got done, I still was not very happy with the result, so I rinsed the pieces in the utility sink with hot water, which shifted around and rinsed off much of the fabric paint, depending on how much it had dried, leaving a combination of scribbles and splotches.

I hung the pieces outside to dry. Looking at them now, my first impression is that they are "too yellow", but really the color is only slightly brighter than a tablecloth I already have in the room. Hanging the pieces up made the splotches tend to turn into streaks. From across the room, the pattern looks like an unnatural color of marble.

This chair has wooden arms, and no skirt, so only the seat and back will be upholstered. I think this fabric will be tolerable for that, but I would not want to use it over a larger area.

If I find that I really don't like it, I can always make a slipcover.

Fall wardrobe tweaks

I did a quick assessment of my wardrobe for fall, and was happy to find that I already had just about everything I need. Most of what needed to be done was to forcibly retire some items.

From past wardrobe inventories, for example the one in my Wardrobe in a Week effort, I know that 95% of my daytime wardrobe needs to be "working casual".

I did sew one thing, a skirt from a synthetic fabric out of my stash. I have nailed down the style and length of skirt that I like best, but I'm still experimenting a bit with the fullness. For this one, I tried a narrower skirt than I usually make, and I found that I like the result, but that I wouldn't want to go any narrower.

The time needed to cut out and sew the skirt was about two and a half hours, including doing a zigzag stitch around the edges of all of the pieces, to keep them from fraying--which was very necessary with this particular fabric.

The fabric's color didn't go well with the rest of my wardrobe, so I overdyed the skirt. I have been trying to get away from dyeing things, because the chemicals involved are quite toxic, but sometimes it is the most economical solution.

The fabric took up much more of the dye than I had expected, but in the end it looks a bit chintzy. I think it could benefit from a lining to give it more body, but I don't think I have the fabric for that right now.

Nearly there

A few things remain to be done in our school room, but it is almost done.  My to-do list:

1.  Find or make a runner to replace the carpet remnants. I've found fabrics around the house with approximately the color I want, and have spread them out there to test it, and it does work well there. The challenge is that our budget is still basically zero. I have some materials that I could use to make a rug, but it would take a lot of dye to get the color I want.

2.  One of the lamps is a bit puny for the place it is in.  Also, its shade is beginning to fall apart.

3.  Make "an art" to go in that last empty piece of wall.

While I've been thinking about or waiting on these things, I've been getting back into some other projects, mostly sewing; the point of having the room "done" is so that the business of living can go on without having to think about it too much. I sewed some summer toddler clothes from my mother-in-law's leftover quilt fabrics, and turned an old knit skirt into a T-shirt for me.

Minimizing the smoke detector

This is the one that is smack in the middle of a wall that is one of the room's main focal points.  The smoke detector is still there, I haven't moved it, but what I have done is to bring in strongly-colored and more attractive objects at a lower elevation, to draw the eye downward, and to let the white smoke detector visually fade into the upper wall.

This approach I would say is partially successful.  There's some empty wall space at a middle height that seems to want to be filled.

On to the walls

The past couple of days I've made only incremental progress in our school room.

First I had various misadventures trying to do touch-up painting on the walls, starting with using the wrong color of paint--not hard, in a house that has three or four different shades of beige on the walls. Then, after I found the paint can with the right color, it was still the wrong color, because the paint was so old.  Those Magic Erasers for walls have been very helpful.

Then, I pulled out the things that we used to have on the walls, and tried them in various places to see which ones I wanted to use. The results were inconclusive, because most of them are too small, except for one or two that are much too large.  Also, the nails in the walls are much too high, and I am very reluctant to make additional nail holes, now that I know that I can't touch them up very well.

Today I did something that I should have done earlier, and moved my homemade coat hook rack into the school room. It fits in well, somehow makes that wall look much more finished, and connects the colors in the school room with the ones in the dining room. It is also needed there, since my husband has decided that parking the car in the relatively warm garage in the winter only makes the road salt eat holes in it faster, so we use the front door in the winter.

I was curious and measured the width of the coat closet, which is about two and a half feet. That is fine for a family of four in California--ranch style house--but not for a much larger family in Minnesota.

The other thing I accomplished was that some small assistants helped me determine that next to the front door would be a good place for a mirror of moderate size. I have one that would work, but I am very reluctant to move it off my closet wall.

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.

Six approaches for dealing with Too Much Beige

The Cozy Minimalist method gave me the assignment of going to Pinterest to collect inspiration. I have some issues with Pinterest, but I did it, and I found some repeating themes in the rooms I liked.

Those themes, though, didn't readily transfer to the room that I have to work with, so I went back a second time, and searched for specific solutions to its specific decorating problems:  way too much beige, and way too much 1980s.

Possible solutions for the beige:

1.  Bury it under paint or Stuff.

2.  Use white for almost everything else in the room.

3.  Use neutrals for the rest of the room, and use a variety of textures and patterns to add interest.

4.  Treat the beige as a pastel, and use a lot of other pastels in the room.

5.  Think of the beige as some kind of coffee or chocolate flavor, and use other food-related browns for the rest of the room.

6.  Treat the beige as a neutral background, for "pops" of color, or art, or high-quality furniture to stand out against.


These can for the most part be combined; in my living room, I am burying most of the beige carpet under rugs, and treating the dark beige walls as a backdrop for art, furniture, and colorful textiles.

I can't do the second option; far too much unpainted woodwork and wood furniture. Number 5 would give me a depressingly brown room.

As for the heavy 1980s vibe, including the black-and-brass fireplace front, I am just living with it, but I'm trying to incorporate a few newer and more modern things into the room.

More sewing

More mending.  Trying to finish up an embroidery project that I've been working on for almost twelve years.  Trying to figure out the next step in a sewing project that's been stalled for a month.  Testing a baby clothes hanger to see if it'll work to support a wall hanging.

Plus I got an idea for a quilt:  a quilt made of squares based on the color schemes that I've been thinking about for years for the rooms of my someday-maybe "forever house".  I have some smaller pieces of fabric that I've been wanting to use in a project.

Hearts

In the quilting fabric I was given were a number of fabric hearts, ready for applique.  The hearts were in our dining room colors, red and green, and there were as many of them as we have children.

I had an empty spot on the dining room wall, where I had taken down some things I was getting tired of.

So I stuck the hearts up there (just with tape), and I'm fairly happy with it.

Summer hat

I had a plan to crochet a summer hat out of cotton string, and then scrunch some paint into it to stiffen it.

But Walmart didn't have enough cotton string, when I went.

What they did have was about 400 feet of hemp string (in the crafts section) for $5, so I went with that.

I started at the brim, made a long chain, and worked upward, with a single crochet (**American terminology**) stitch to start with for the first two rows--for firmness--then switching to half double stitch, which is a bit faster to crochet for the area covered.

I did scattered decreases, as needed, trying the hat on as I went.

I finished up with a few yards of string left over, worked in the ends, and then gave it a bath in some strong tea, to dye it browner.  That was yesterday, and it is still drying.

WiaW: Day 6

My final day of "Wardrobe in a Week"!

What I did today:

artistically repaired several small holes in a T-shirt

sewed a T-shirt from new fabric

overdyed a skirt that I sewed this week with brown dye; some of the previously printed portions took up the dye less than the rest, leaving it with a subtle pattern that I like

experimented with dabbing acrylic paint onto my solid black swimsuit; happy with the colors I chose, but not happy with the final result--but likely I can improve it with one more dabbed-on layer of the first color, just mixed with white to make it stand out a bit more


Next steps:

REST!

Put away the piles of fabric that are taking up half of the school room,

Get the house vacuumed,

And get on with my life.