Part 4 of 4: Weird Houses I Live In

At any given time, I have an awesome (and I mean that in the original sense of the word) list of things that I intend or would like to do. I’m not talking about the Sisyphus-like round of weekly and daily tasks that keep life running. No, I refer to the things I would do should I not have to wash dishes, make dinner, walk the dog, do laundry, clean the ______, etc.

Ssometimes I get to some extra thing. One task on the Extra Time List was to do some fabric prettifying of the bathroom. I have a shower stall (no bathtub) so my pretty shower curtain was way too wide. So I cut off the extra fabric from the curtain and made a little decorative curtain, trim for the rug, and a tissue box cover.

You may remember that the walls in my bathroom are concrete, so I couldn’t use a curtain rod. Instead I made buttonholes and used micro Command hooks. The tissue box cover I saw on Kirin Notebook and again on My Paper Crane (it would have worked better if I’d remembered to add a seam allowance). Just simple little things, but definitely a good impact.

While I’m on the subject, I’d like to make a note about this “house” I live in. I can’t remember if I told you guys, but this place was built around 1932 and was a garage that was added onto. As nearly as I can figure, whoever owned the house did all the work himself. He had pretty good intentions, but (a) no discernible sense of style or aesthetics, (b) no professional skills, just amateur ingenuity and a hardware store, (c) a whole lot of time on his hands.

You may note the “privacy glaze” on the bathroom window. That stuff is just weird and old. And you can see a bit of the tile there under the rug, but that’s the most normal tile in the house. I’m not kidding when I tell you we have a yellow brick road in the kitchen, a sun in front of the bathroom sink and a triangle in front of the toilet. It was clearly a custom tile job. It makes Jeff crazy to look at it.  And there is that spot in between the old garage and the addition that’s not quite sealed, where occasionally a vine from outdoors starts growing inside.  Not to mention the kitchen that still makes me think I’m camping half the time.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is more odd, one-off, inexplicable, uneven, painted over, hacked together, jerry-rigged, not-quite-functional crazy shit in this apartment than I can begin to tell you. I mean honestly, who else among you has a bedroom that’s like an underground bunker but with a vaulted ceiling? I have no idea what this guy was thinking while he did some of these things.

Ah well. I have a 10 minute walk to work, and I share no walls, and it’s not permanent. I keep telling myself that.

Up to some quilting, cooking and stuff …

Prepare for an extremely random post of different stuff. The annual fundraising luncheon I co-organize is happening in 1/2 a week. Six hundred something people for lunch. So not only am I tired, I’m feeling sort of scatterbrained as well. Coherency is not my strong suit at this point. Collating large quantities of data is.

So I’m really, really excited because I finally bought a walking foot attachment for my machine, and a 1/4″ walking foot. Can you tell I’m thinking of making another Large Size Quilt? I must be crazy.

I’m not sure if I should admit this, but I’ve never gotten any extra feet for my machine. I’ve been shy of learning new techniques for my machine, so for a long time I just stuck to the standard metal machine foot. Eventually I graduated to the zipper foot and others. I’m behind on learning machine gadgetry because I am self-taught. I figured out four feet by myself, and honestly some of it, well, it never occurred to me that some of the attachments existed (a ruffler foot? honestly!).

To educate myself about feet and what they do, I bought this book one day when I found it at Half Price Books. <– the Sewing Machine Attachment Handbook. It’s pretty good. There are a crazy number of things that you can do with machine attachments, as it turns out. Ruffling, pleating, smocking, hemming, cutting, darning, whatever. The book has quite a bit of history about machines and their attachments, which I found really interesting, partially because one day I’d like to own an antique machine. Anyway, if you’re interested in crafting gadgets or maybe you’re self-taught like me, it’s an interesting read.

In other news it’s farm market season again, so I brought home a bunch of leafy greens (I love lettuce with the roots still on), beets, eggs, fennel, zucchini and more! I’m (as usual) not thrilled with the hot weather, but I am excited that it’s produce season again. This year I’m going to join a CSA if I find one I like. I’m also starting to cook more again. Yesterday evening I cooked a really nice sweet asparagus and lentil soup – has carrots, onion, peas, roasted garlic and red bell pepper with prickly pear jelly and hot curry. For lentil soup, it’s on the pretty side, and it’s spicy and sweet. I made about a gallon of it, so it’s good that I like it.

Wesley has completed Obedience Training part 2. He took his test with two very excited Staffordshire terriers, a funny Corgi/bulldog mix, a crazy dorky Husky and a chilled out Labrador. Everyone passed the test, which was staying in place while the owner was out of sight, and then coming to the owner on command past a plate of food, sitting in front of us, and then heeling back to home. I must give most of the credit to my mother-in-law, who spent a lot of time training him while we were on vacation. Next I think we’re going to do agility classes since he has the basic commands down. This apparently involves lots of running around and using equipment (for me as well), which I think he will find awfully fun and interesting. He still has tons of energy that not even walking 3-4 miles a day can burn off.

Anyway, I’m 90% done with my new Memory quilt, I’m excited to say, and when I have some spare energy I’ll explain my rather abstract concept for it and how it ended up looking.

Woo! Back to … well, I’m going to sleep actually. Ta!

Grand Freaking Finale

Comments from the cheap seats:

My mother-in-law said, “Soon you’ll be so organized you won’t be able to find anything.”

My brother Jeremy, when writing about the sewing machine pad, asked “Where is the snack drawer?”

Clever, clever folks.

This is actually my last post about all the organizational items I’ve been making, because I finished the LAST 3 ITEMS. Have I bored you to tears yet with my quest for organization? Did I do enough sewing? I promise, there is a reason I’m doing all of this. One day it will make sense! Eventually you will all look back and say ohhh, yes, I see what amazing forethought she had.

If that’s not foreshadowing I don’t know what is.

So this is 2 small pockets for Stuff. The green one is for crocheting and holds things like my gauge measure, stitch counter, stitch holders, plastic and metal needles, that sort of thing.  The purple one is for embroidery & hand-sewing, and has things like a seam ripper, adjustable measure, measuring tape, chalk, thimble, etc.  Each has two outside pockets and one main pocket. I haven’t decided whether to put a button close on or not. I think not.

I made myself a needle book, designed from the initial issue of Stitch in 2008. There are 8 felt pages for all sizes of needles and you know what? I own a lot of needles. And many of them are huge. Why do I own so many dagger-type needles?! Well anyway – each felt page features a sewn piece of bias tape written on with a fabric marker.

There you have a bit of detail. On the back of the purple pocket is elastic for holding whatever spools of thread I might be using at the time. Nice, right?  It will also hold embroidery bobbins. Then there’s the needle book stitching, there, I was happy about that – there’s a piece of fabric in between each felt page of needles.

Finally, THE BAG. The bag that holds all this stuff I’ve been making lately. The bag that holds every last little fiddly notion, tool and do-dad that I could possibly want whether I’m sitting on the couch or sitting in a car. Fact is, I do more handwork than anything else, and I HATE continually getting up to get things, and I also HATE losing things.

The bag has a top zipper in a very nice casing. But it’s the lining that makes this bag. It’s got three compartments.

YES THREE. Now, all you sewers out there, please take a second and try to imagine exactly how you would make a T-shaped three-compartment inner lining for a bag. It isn’t exactly easy. But I insisted. One pocket is for crochet, the other for sewing, and the end one for general STUFF like eyeglasses and pens.

And you know what? I’m not great at visualization or anything, but I am quite pleased with this.

Before and after. Haha!

I should mention I got the yen to make a chatelaine in the midst of this craziness, but I think I’m done for now.