Month: May 2008
Organizing the hall
I have been on a sewing binge today. Three bags, a summer skirt and this organizer. It was a great way to use some of my stash of brown vintage fabrics. The back is made from old kitchen curtains, the pockets are from vintage pillowcases. I love how they look combined. As soon as I hanged it, I stuffed it with all the things that were looking messy on the coatrack and it’s kind of full already. Still need to declutter!
I'm really trying…
I started this morning by putting these parts of my furnace in the water to clean them, thinking I would go to my assignment for the newspaper, then take them out and clean the rest of the kitchen.
But the assignment took me way longer than I assumed, I had to call the taxoffice, which took me an hour and all I learned from that was that I had to write a letter to explain why I think they refunded too little. I wrote the letter, found out we had no envelopes and no stamps around the house, drove to the postoffice, ran some other errants, remembered I wanted to buy something special for DH’s birthday, couldn’t find that in the first nor in the second shoppingcenter I checked, landed myself in a traffic jam, got home, started my cleaning again.
Than the phone rang. DD M lost the keys to her bike. Could I come and pick her up? Well, I can’t let her walk 10 kilometers.
So I drove to the school, got into an other trafficjam, needed some fuel, bought M an icecream and was home around five.
Than I just took the stuff out of the water and just wiped it a bit. Cleaning thouroughly will have to wait for another day…
Planning my week
My work for the newspaper has been slow for some weeks, but now it’s back. I have appointments for Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday and I have to plan a big interview in somewhere this week or the beginning of next week. And next week will be busy since DH is having his birthday on tuesday.
Also I really, really need to clean the house (being ill for a week has it’s consequences) and there is some gardening to do. So I guess there won’t be much time to do some sewing. But as always in busy times, my head is buzzing with ideas…
New (to me)
Look what I bought myself! A real vintage (antique?) handsewing machine. What’s even better: it works and it works silently. That means I can sew (only straight stitches, but still, it’s a start) when dh is working at home. Maybe now I will be able to finish things…
Just me
When I have to take pictures of people that I have interviewed they usually get a bit nervous. “I really don’t like getting my picture being taken.” they tell me. And I answer that I agree and I do think I am on the good end of the camera…
But today I got an email from my publisher that I needed to submit a picture of myself for my book and their coming list of publications. So I gave dh my camera and he started taking pictures.
I really really don’t like my pictures being taken. I look so old on them (don’t we all keep an image of ourself in our early twenties in our minds?), my laugh is funny and my eyes… And there is the fact that I’m still a bit suffering from the flu. I can really see the redness of my nose, and the extra deep eyes. But dh says this is how I look. Oh well.
This is not the one we sent to the publisher, but I think I like this one best. This is just me, grinning because dh is making me nervous waving that cameralens at me. May be I’ll send this one too, even though I think the background is too dark to be printed.
So anyway, there you have it. Just me.
Potholders (and rambling about other things)
I keep finding these crocheted potholders in thriftshops and I’m fascinated by them. Such an intricate pattern, with those 3D rose petals. When I’m feeling really brave I think I will try to copy it. But for now I’m just smiling every time I see them hanging on the side of the kitchencupboard.
In the background you can see my ironing board with my branching out scarf blocking on it. I finished that in only four days! After all the blankets that really feels great.
Even further in the background (but I doubt you can really see it) is my lunch. A smoothie, an apple and a grapefruit. I have the very bad habit to eat too much when I’m feeling sick and I have done that the past two days. I even ate a lot of sugar while I usually do without. I have been having trouble to eat healthy for months now (I have been fighting colds all winter), but it’s getting worse. So I decided I needed a big change.
And since I’m already dizzy and feeling weak, and since I have already declared this a week of hanging on the couch and resting, I thought this was the best time to try to detox a bit. So no sugars, no cheese, no bread for me for a while.
And lots of knitting, because it keeps my mind off eating. I lost 70 pounds in 2007 by knitting every time I had an urge to binge. I gained about half of that again in the past year, so knitting it is…
I’m going to try this pattern now. Looks interesting and not too big a project. I want to make hats, berets, socks and sweaters, but most patterns ask for needles I don’t have. I have only one size dpn’s and only very thick circular needles, so for now I have to go projects that call for straight needles. Not a problem, there is so much to choose from on the internet, that I could knit all my life and still not finish everything.
I just realized today that this is one of the main reasons I’m having so much more fun crafting now than fifteen years ago when my kids were little. Back then I missed the interactive part: showing finished objects on Craftster, blogging about it, getting feedback and inspiration from other craftsters. I think that is one of the great things about the internet.
Cup of happiness
This is me, being ill. Not a real picture of me, I’ll spare you the details of my watering eyes, puffy face and red nose.
But this is the way I’m trying to cope with my body fighting the flu. Drinking lots of green tea (with lemon), knitting, trying to do only the most urgent things around the house (can a housewife and mother ever take a day off?)
I love how I unintentional color matched my lovely vintage tray (that’s not the one we use daily) with the tea and my yarn. Seems like my feverish head is desperately needing harmony and beauty…
Bed of daisies
My MIL gave me this bedspread for my birthday last Friday. She actually made it herself in the 70’s and thought I might like it cause she noticed “I seemed to have a thing for old stuff.” Uhm, yeah I do.
I really like it. And I’m thrilled to have some real homemade family-vintage. My family is not that much into homemade things, sadly. There were pillows my grandmother embroidered, but I think most of those have been donated somewhere when she died. And there was this tablecloth my other grandmother embroidered, but that has gone too. I’m ashamed to admit I think I gave it away when we had a temporary change of tastes from vintage and thrifted into black and modern, about fifteen years ago. I have some hopes that maybe my parents still have it somewhere. I must ask them sometime.
There is a downside to this bedspread too: I now feel like I have to make the bed everyday. Which I don’t. The bed is usually a mess and I should be better off with covers like Amanda’s that look good crumpled up.
You can see that’s not really simple, due to a lack of “walking-around-the-bed-space”. But the room just isn’t any bigger. That’s our closet on the left. I was sitting on the dresser that’s on the wall opposite to the window to make this picture. Yep, that’s tiny. All the bedrooms in our house are like that.
But we thought the rest of the house and above all the view were totally worth it. And we still do.
99 grannysquares
This was the third of the three big projects I started last year (the others: here and here). It didn’t turn out not as big as I intended, though (again: the logcabin is also a bit smaller than I would have liked). It thought it would be great to use as a bedspread for our own bed, but it’s not even half that size. And I’m almost completely out off yarn. It could be a cribsize or a lapsize. I’ll go for the latter, because there are no babies in my immediate future.
I know I could try to find more of that yarn, but I’m so glad I’ve used it all. I bought it when I first picked up knitting again, thinking I would make a nice sweater for myself. But it was too cheap: it’s not spun evenly so the knitting looked lumpy. When I started crocheting it looked like a good and cheap start to learn making grannysquares. And a good way to use it all up.
Ninetynine squares later, I think I mastered them… I did the joining on the right sight intentionally, thinking it would create a nice texture. It did, I had my doubts when I was about halfway through, but I like it now.
Next on the crocheting list: the ripple blanket. Yes I know, another blanket. But this one will be a good kingsize, I swear!
NOT A STATION 