Painting Week Begins

On Saturday, the plan for the coming week was to finally get to painting our bedroom.  On Sunday, we found this cabinet at a vintage furniture store, and the plan changed a bit.  (Summer days are long, so a short attention span is okay, okay?) 

The cabinet was in definite need of a makeover, but it had definite potential: all of the drawers slid smoothly and had stoppers to hold them in place.  The door hinges and latch worked well...and it had a complete set of hardware.  Also, it fit into the back of our 2-door hatchback, which I took as a sign that it was meant to come home with us.

Yesterday was Part One of the makeover process.  I removed all the hardware, scrubbed everything down with dish soap and water, sanded, applied wood filler, sanded again, and washed the whole thing down with TSP to prep the surface for painting.  The prep work is the hardest part: I took about 3 hours to get the furniture ready to paint, but hopefully that time was worth it!

I bought my first can of Benjamin Moore paint for this project.  It wasn't exactly inexpensive but it's a specially formulated product that can be applied over oil or latex, and it doesn't require a primer (and less expensive primer plus less expensive paint starts to equal more expensive paint, anyway).  Also, the colour (Peacock Blue) is gorgeous.

The dry time between coats is 16 hours.  I'm painting it in the living/dining room so that I can have the TV on while I work.  Add to that the fact that we currently have two full sets of dining furniture in there (more on that later) and it's cramped quarters in our cozy cottage.  That's a definite motivation to get this project finished!  

In the meantime, Paint Week continues.  While I'm waiting on this project, I can start the next one.  Project number two is to paint the bedroom.  I'm picking up the paint today and keeping the paint roller rolling!

How To Gift Wrap An Afghan

This post is the response to a repeated request from family, friends and fantastic blog readers.  I firmly believe that half the fun of gift-giving is in the gift wrapping.  Presentation counts for a lot...and blankets can be tricky to wrap.

Crisp wrapping paper + soft blanket corners = a frustrating time.

Solution: head to the dollar store or the mill end store and wrap it up like this:

A dollar store table cloth, a roll of satin-y dollar store ribbon, and a dollar store glittery butterfly clip.

...or like this:

One metre of mill-end fabric, 1.5 metres of gros-grain ribbon, and a dollar store Christmas tree decoration.

Here's the step-by-step breakdown from my most recent wedding afghan.  This one includes an outer layer of cellophane wrap, which I included to keep the snowflakes out. ;)  The wrapping ended up being Christmas-ier than I intended, but I guess I was just in the holiday spirit. ;)


1.  Roll out the entire roll of cellophane gift wrap.  (Yes, you can get it at the dollar store.)

2.  Lay the tablecloth or fabric wrapping down over the cellophane and lay the afghan on top.  (If the afghan is larger than the table cloth, I recommend folding it in half before you keep wrapping.)

3.  Fold in the excess edges of the table cloth on either side.

4.  Holding both the tablecloth and afghan together, fold in to the middle.  Both sides will be folded in, so it's helpful to think about folding in thirds.

4.  The top and bottom ends of the afghan/table cloth combination are still loose, like this:

5.  (Here's where I seem to have missed a photo.)  Fold in the other side of the afghan and table cloth, holding both together.  You should now be looking at a big long rectangle of tablecloth with no afghan visible.

6.  Wrap the cellophane around and secure with clear tape.  (I needed an extra set of hands to do this part.)

7.  Fold in the top and bottom overhanging ends of table cloth and secure with a bit of tape.

8.  Fold in both ends of the wrapped "tube" to meet near the middle.  (Leave a bit of a gap, as shown in the picture, to make the final folding step easier.)

9.  Make one final "fold," right along the gap from step 8.

10.  Secure your wrap job with ribbon.  (Sometimes extra hands are helpful at this point, too!)

11.   Add a bit of bling to the top of your package.  :)

These bells were Christmas decorations that came in a package of 12 from the dollar store.

12.  Take a photo of your wrap job (...because I totally want to see it).





p.s.  Apparently this is the 50th post on my blog.  I guess I'm officially a blogger now.  I think I'll celebrate with another cup of coffee before I return to my New Years organizing blitz.

Blanket Donation (...the making of...)

Remember the post about my frustration with working in ends?  Well, the frustration is over...and the blanket is complete!  This undeniably pink baby blanket will be donated to the annual Breast Cancer Fundraiser Luncheon on November 10 in Drayton.

Now, here's the play-by-play of how a blanket like this gets put together:

1. I followed the Double Diamond Blanket pattern on the Bernat website.  I used Patons' Bamboo Baby yarn and a size H hook. Each square is worked individually...

2. It takes 25 squares to make the blanket: 13 in the main colour, 8 in a second colour, and 4 in another colour.  What I should have done was work those ugly tails in at this point so I didn't have to do them all later.

3.  The squares are then sewn together using a darning needle and a whip stitch.

4.  After I added a border of two rows of white sc (AND worked in all the ends!), I soaked the blanket in a bowl of water (with a very small amount of detergent) for a few hours.

5.  I forgot to take a picture of the blanket before it went in the water, but you can see from this photo that even the wet blanket needed more than just a flat spot to dry.  (The problem with patchwork is  that it's bound to be lumpy.  But there is a solution...)

 6.  ....pins!  I  started at the centre and pinned the corners of each square into a foam mat to help give it some shape.  (Looks like tiny hydro poles in magical pink farmland, doesn't it?)

7.  About 3 days later, the blanket was finally dry.  I removed the pins and was pleased to see it was looking much more square...with no ripples in sight.

I'm very pleased with the finished product and honoured to have it featured in the Breast Cancer fundraiser.  (Who knows?  Maybe someone I know will win it...)

A bit ruffled, but busy as a bee.

An early morning and several hours in the car (driving stateside for some back-to-school bargains) left me with a lot of time to craft today.

Before hubby got out of bed, I had the ruffle finished on baby blanket below that I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. (I didn't want to do anything loud to wake him, sweet and loving wife that I am, so I had to--just had to--sit in a chair for an hour and a half and work on the ruffle.) This blanket is for no one in particular...yet...but I'll be all ready for the next friend who shares any baby news. Since the tent sale two weeks ago, I've been trying to slim down my yarn stash and make room for my new purchases. There is a lot of baby yarn in there. I'm predicting a few more baby blankets will be created in the near future.



The afghan is crocheted in Bernat Softee Baby (the pink) and Bernat Satin (the white). Both are sport-weight yarns. The basics for the pattern were gleaned from Lion Brand's website, but I turned the pattern on its side and made my own border.

The ruffle is a VERY simple border:
1. I crocheted a row of sc all the way around the perimeter of the blanket in the pink colour.
2. Then I switched over to white yarn and crocheted 4 hdc in each sc stitch. That's it! The ruffle just....appears. It's pretty neat.

But now on to my car project of the day. I've been puttering away at yellow hexagons. I think I've perfected the pattern I want to use for the larger project. Here's one.



Can you guess why? What, oh what, might this bee?