The curtains are gone, but before I put them in the fiber recycling bag, I took the diamonds with birds off of them so that I can repurpose them as part of the new valance.
As I was planning the renovation, I realized I never shut the curtains in the bedroom because I had a shade, so it made more sense to make a valance.
Here, I have cut out the backing material (it was an old sheet of Matt’s) and am testing the best layout for the birds.
Here, I have put the official material over the backing material, but I have not yet moved the birds.
This will be a project that is done in fits and starts.
When I got the bright idea to wallpaper my closet, I wondered if the fact I watched my mother wallpaper thirty to forty years ago meant that I had absorbed skills and that I could also wallpaper.
You know what doesn’t exist anymore? Wallpaper stores. I wanted to go to a store and flip through some books like I did thirty to forty years ago. I made an attempt, visiting a paint store whose website said they had wallpaper, but it turned out the wallpaper had moved to their Lake Oswego location and no one had updated the website.
What does exist now that didn’t thirty to forty years ago is the internet, the place where I bought my wallpaper, and the place where I watched five to ten videos about how to wallpaper.
One of the last videos I watched said, as if this was common knowledge, that if you have textured walls, you need to skim coat them before wallpapering. Cue watching several videos about skim coating.
My painting friend S. North pointed out that this was one and a half walls in my closet, and maybe I didn’t need to skim coat? Because I had to buy two rolls, I figured I would do one panel to see how it went with textured walls.
It was fine. If I was wallpapering the main room, I would have to skim coat, but for my purposes, the textured walls were fine.
Having put one panel up, I kept going and two to three hours later I was done! I did have the skills!
Here’s the wallpaper. I liked the trees and the autumn colors, plus there was orange to go with the green, and orange is good to work into everything.
One of the videos I watched suggested using painter’s tape to mark where the drop was, and that worked very well. This pattern had a big drop, which was annoying.
But look! Done! I hadn’t thought about what to do about that shelf support, but I took the screw at the bottom out and had Matt hold it away from the wall when I was hanging that panel. It worked great.
I probably should have watched a few more videos about turning the corner, because that was a little rough, but overall okay.
This was a super fun project (that I dithered about for quite some time before starting) and I’m pleased with the results.
Now to put the closet back together. In that first picture you can see most of the closet contents waiting to go back.
Back in May, I tackled the second task on my unemployment to-do list: painting the front of the house.
Something went wrong with the previous paint job, and the paint bubbled on the right side of the door. This was fine (I mean, not really, but it looked fine) until pressure washing peeled off the paint on some lower bubbles, leaving the cement siding exposed.
Matt had previously had the paint matched, and in May I sanded things down. Sometime in July, I borrowed my neighbor’s extension ladder and used Krud Kutter in lieu of pressure washing to clean the surface. That undid my sanding efforts.
And now, in September, I have sanded again and painted! I’m pleased with the results. I didn’t paint all the way up, and used the porch shelter as a demarcation point. But the colors look fine and point where the paint changes is blocked by the bush on one side and the upper porch on the other.
Most all of the bubbles flattened out and while you can see the outline, they blend pretty well.
This is one exception, but we will put back the mailbox and it will cover that right up. You can also see where the wood has rotted. It was very spongy when I did the initial work in May.
Rather than try to replace the wood, I’m thinking of this as a stop-gap measure. the house is up for repainting in the next few years, and the painters replace the boards that need it when they paint.
While scanning slides, I find it interesting to note that the slides my grandfather purchased (probably at the giftshops of national parks etc.) have mostly degraded and turned a red color. It’s very apparent when I hold them up to look at them, and somewhat less apparent in the slide viewer.
Whereas the slides my grandfather created still look great.
My coworker Sarah is due in February, so there is a baby shower on Thursday. I made this little blanket for the new parents.
I think this is the first baby blanket I have hand monogrammed and I’m quite pleased at both the chain stitch and how swoopy the C is. I did not draw the C, but I grabbed it from one of the alphabets I had squirreled away.
The theme of the party was Space Dinosaur Cowboy and I was trying for all three things, but JoAnn’s was not connecting me with any cowboy stuff. But I did like the stars and then the not-at-all concerned dinosaurs hanging out in the snow.
I ended up making the bias binding. When I do that, I always make extra because it’s a really mood killer to come up a few inches short of bias binding. (How do I know? Because I’ve done it.) But then what to do with the extra bias binding? I had the idea to poke two holes in the plain brown wrapping and make a bow with it.
When I bought my little loom, it came in a plastic bag I had to cut open to get to the loom and accoutrements.
This means that all the things fall out of the bag all the time.
I did some measuring and sketching.
And then I made my own pattern.
Et voila! The holder is finished. It has a handle and an off-center example of what the darning loom can make.
Inside we have a few things to hold things in place.
One pocket for each part of the loom and a center pocket to hold the long needles, the bands, and that thing I don’t know what to do with. I also sewed a piece of felt onto one pocket to hold some of the shorter needles.
Everything comes together nicely.
I’m quite pleased with how this turned out. Now I need to make one for my bigger loom. To do next time: carefully center the front image and watch a tutorial for best practices in attaching snaps.
Well, I nearly had my holder for my darning machine done, but it turns out that stacking the filler between the two things that are supposed to go on the outside means that when you go to flip it, the filler is on the outside.
I got out the seam ripper.
Much like it’s not a building project until you have to stop what you are doing and go to the hardware store, so is it not a sewing project until the seam ripper comes out. Thank goodness podcasts are there to keep me company.
Attempt No. 2 will be better.
Can we also talk about how much I love this see-through ruler I was first introduced to in a pattern manipulation class. It’s so much easier to measure things and make them square.
Internet advertising on Instagram did a good job targeting me. I saw a reel of this little device, and after some obsessive research, I bought two of them, one big and one small. Mine is not as nice as the one I would have bought from Snuggly Monkey, if they had them in stock. And I may yet upgrade. We shall see.
Essentially, the device is a loom that allows you to weave a bit of a rug over your holes. Here’s a sock with two holes in the heel.
Setting up the warp yarns. (I used sashiko thread for this one)
After that, you weave the weft yarns back and forth, reversing the direction of the hooks after every row. You end up with a little checkerboard that looks like this:
My first attempt shows some shoddiness, but that’s what first attempts are for, no? At the last row, you remove the loom and tack the loops from the warp yarn down on the sock (otherwise you are left with a little pocket) and then weave the ends into the sock.
I wasn’t sure if the darn would me distracting to me. It does add an additional layer to your sock. I’ve found that I can feel it when I first put the sock on, but after about two minutes, my body adjusts and I don’t notice the rest of the day.
Hooray for this fun new thing! I’m excited to see what else I can do with it.
Aside from the message, there were some other fun things in this sampler. I loved the curtain made from embroidery floss just hanging out after being woven through straight stitches. I also enjoyed getting the chance to embroider script (hard!) and keep working away at my satin stitch. (It took forever!)
I also learned that when filling a diamond with French knots, it’s best to start from the middle and work outward rather than doing the edges first.
A close-up of my satin stitch. It looks rough, but I’ll get the hang of it. I outlined in backstitch, which I don’t think was the best choice.
