quick fix…

Tags

cover, diy, iron, ironing board, sewing, update

… it has been on my to-do list for ages, but somehow I never remembered to buy the fabric, despite coming home with all sorts of unplanned projects every time I even walk past a fabric store…

… it was cheap, ridiculously cheap, and rather nasty… For some reason a friend bought me an ironing board not long after I moved to Belgium, I think I had asked her if she had a spare one when she told me she was clearing out a lot of stuff from her basement. She didn’t, but then one day she turned up at my place with a plastic wrapped ironing board, with 10€ scrawled on the plastic wrap. It wasn’t pretty, but it would do the job, and has done for the past 2 years.

… but not only was the cover swirls of red, and I really don’t like red at all, the cover was too small, so every time you ironed it would slip off. I knew it wasn’t complicated to make a cover, I planned to make a cover… I just needed some suitable fabric.

… finally, another trip to the fabric shop yesterday with another friend – who wanted advice on some future projects – and I remembered to pick up 50cm of brightly patterned heavy duty cotton. This afternoon after finally plucking up the courage and tackling a belt for a friend’s wedding dress, I needed a simple project to decompress. I followed this tutorial for dimensions, but as I didn’t have elastic in the house, I used string, and one of those squeezy toggles.

… what a difference a piece of cheerful fabric makes!

sparkle and color…

Tags

carpet, cushions, diy, home, living room, sewing

… when I bought my beautiful orange Moroccan carpet home I decided I should tone down some of the other colors in my living room. For a year I have lived with a sober palette of beige and brown, with just a dash of lime green…

… last autumn at the fabric store, in a dark and dusty corner, I came across a bolt of brown corduroy – with a pink and orange sequinned design – I knew it would be perfect to bring a bit of sparkle to my living room as a cushion cover. I brought home half a metre, whipped up a simple zipped cushion cover and there was some missing sparkle back in my living room!

… last month, accompanying a friend to the fabric shop, with no intention to buy anything, I somehow ended up purchasing a couple of metres of soft fluffy cream fleece… and then, as I was waiting to pay, I spotted some gaudy pink and gold Chinese style material. The magpie in my couldn’t resist the shininess. Fifty cm in my pile, a pink zipper, and now I have 2 bright cushions cheering up the sober browns and beiges.

counting down…

Tags

christmas sale, cowl, diy, etsy, gifts, handmade, scarf, wallet

… tomorrow is the day…

… my first attempt at a craft fair, with a couple of friends, an opportunity to sell a few of the things I have made – maybe! I hope people will come, it is informal, it is a bit last minute, but I am always the optimist.

… suddenly I wonder if I have enough “stuff” to fill a stall, whether I am going to sell out in the first hours, it would be nice, it strikes me as unlikely, but just in case, I decided I should make a few more things.

… a few more scarf/necklaces as I seem to have given away almost all of the ones I have made to date, a couple more wallets that were made, but needed fasteners, maybe later, if I manage to fuse more plastic I can make some more wallets. And a couple of key rings, to use up scraps…

Finally some paper to wrap them… and I should be set!

fighting the crowds…

Tags

brussels, christmas, crafts, diy, etsy, sale

… the weekend before Christmas, it is going to be madness out there, wherever you are…

… a group of friends (and friends of friends) who decided to avoid the masses – or create their own madness – with a weekend sale for friends (and friends of friends).

… if you are in Brussels this weekend, do come along. And if you can’t make it, you can find a lot of my items in my etsy shop…

who goes slowly…

Tags

basement, bikes, diy, home, mountain bikes, organisation, wisdom

… bath time. Always a fight to get the kids I babysat years ago into the water, and then again to get them out of the water. One day in a moment of absolute exasperation Salvador, aged 8, turned round to me and told me in all seriousness “who goes slowly goes far”… Perhaps not all together true at bath time, but it seems to apply to me rather too often these days – at least the slowly bit!

… new apartment, new organisational strategies, new homes for the detritus of my years, it is part of the fun and one of the biggest challenges each time I move (rather often). One of the questions is always where to keep the bikes, I am an avid(ish) cyclist with a modest 3 bikes, but they take up space. I have walked away from beautiful apartments that just aren’t bike friendly, and have always found a spot for them in the kitchen, hallway, spare room, living room. In one place they even lived in the garage!

… October 2010 – over 2 years ago – setting up my new home in Brussels, the bikes stored in a corner of the living room until I found a solution for them. Reluctant to leave them in the basement without having some way of securing them, or a better lock on the door, I got used to them, my cleaning lady not so much!

… a short time later, an evening spent in an online bike shop (yes, whole evenings can go that way!), and I found some nifty looking hooks that you could lock your bike to. Three ordered, delivered and left out until I had an opportunity to hang them. At some point they were put away in the storage cupboard, they were never forgotten.

… the lack of power socket in the basement was one of the hurdles that stopped me installing them straight away, but it is a long time since I had to buy an extra long extension cable that reached the basement.

… a new cupboard waiting to be renovated, that is going to lead to a furniture shuffle, suddenly the bikes were in the way. Wall measured, bikes measured, maths done, distances calculated, marks drawn on the wall, holes drilled, hangers hung – with a trip to the hardware store mid-operation to get shorter screws as I couldn’t screw the long ones all the way in – and bikes moved to the basement and safely locked to the wall and each other. It took half a day!

… my living room seems huge!

how to knit a basket – kind of…

Tags

basket, diy, knitting, string

… a trend seemed to be appearing on my “things to make” pinterest board – knitted baskets. I have a weakness for stylish storage solutions, the knitted baskets I kept bumping into on the interweb looked good, and surely they couldn’t be that hard to make?

… I like knitting – quick and easy projects – I soon get bored when I start losing count of slipped stitches and pssos and k2togs, but I probably need to move on from my favourite cowl pattern which I made 5 times last winter. My friends all seem to be wearing similar neckwear to me.

… I had been on the lookout for the perfect material to knit a basket with for a while. I had thought old fashioned cotton washing line, I couldn’t find old fashioned washing line. I was curtly told in the local drugstore that they had been selling plastified washing line for several decades already. That really wasn’t going to give me the look I was going for. I kept looking…

… in the craft shop to buy material paint for my tea towels, and I spotted some rolls of twine, 4€ for 25m… that would do. At home, out came the circular knitting needle, 35 stitches cast on, work joint to knit in the round paying due attention it wasn’t twisted. I have done that once, and it wasn’t even a little bit useable, I had thought it might make an interesting cowl. It made a froggeable project (I love that expression!).
… knit, knit, knit… round and round I went for about 12 rows, until I had a decent depth basket, then I had to make it go in at the bottom. I seemed to remember some pattern I had looked at a while back mentioning k2togging (knitting 2 together) every few stitches… I did every 4. At some point I had to transfer to my double ended needles (DPNs – knitting has almost as many acronyms as working for an NGO!). I didn’t use them from the start as last time I used them I struggled to stop the stitches falling off the ends until I decided to hold them all on with clothes pegs, which was hardly an elegant solution! I kept k2togging until I only had 4 stitches left, then I bound off, tied a knot in the end of the string and pulled it through to the inside of the basket…

… it isn’t perfect, but it looks pretty cute when it is full… I think I might look for a better pattern next time though 🙂

Instructions for a string knitted basket
Materials:
ball of string
European no 10 circular needle

cast on 35 stitches
join to knit in the round making sure the work isn’t twisted.
knit, knit, knit to desired height (I did 12 rows)
k2tog, k4, repeat until it gets awkward – at some point you may want to transfer to DPN
when you have 10 stitches left k2tog, k3, then k2tog, k2
to finish bind off, tie a knot in the end of the string and pull it to the inside of the work.

mapping the way to gift giving

Tags

diy, gifts, maps, wrapping

… part of the pleasure of gift giving is the wrapping.

… when i was growing up maps were almost on par with books in terms of sacredness. They were bought, used and kept, even when roads were built, countries changed names and new maps were bought for return trips to a favourite place.

… I had carried this habit into adulthood. Many moves from country to country has made me more rational about the books I keep. If they weren’t written by a friend, or a book I know I will likely reread, they are passed on, donated, left in a public place for someone else to pick up. My box of maps wasn’t staying so streamlined.

… looking for inspiration recently for a number of gifts I wanted to wrap, I pulled out the map box. A map chosen of a country that we had visited both together and independently, cut into pieces and used as wrapping paper. The creases and wrinkles, marks and fadedness adding to the story behind the wrapping.

… One day I might run out of maps, as like so many people, I have adopted modern technology, and the gps won’t be much use as gift wrap!

rinse, repeat…

Tags

diy, fabric, painting, sewing, tea towels

… I was so pleased with how the tea towels I made last week turned out (even though they were a bit small), I decided to make another set. I had more linen, plenty of paint, a fresh carrot, another ikea pencil and a free evening.

… seams sewn, tea towels ironed, grid drawn, dots painted, carrot whittled, triangles painted, paint left to dry, pattern ironed (for exactly 5 minutes), tea towels washed and ironed and ready to use…

… soon in a kitchen near here!

 

carrots and sticks

Tags

diy, fabric, painting, sewing, tea towels

… or maybe a pencil instead of a stick. There are so many fabulous ideas for crafty wonderful things you can do and make, some days I wonder if I will ever have time to work again, even now I keep running out of time, not able to do all the things I want, to make all the things I imagine, to use up all the supplies I keep buying…

… I have always loved material, fabric, cloth. I spent hours craving one piece or another from my mother’s stash as a child – I was finally given a particularly special piece in my early 20’s, I hold onto the dress I made with it, I am not sure I could get into it any more even if I did still wear dresses! I can spend hours in fabric shops, running my hand over the rolls of fabric, dreaming up projects as I drift onto the next roll and the next…

… the internet opens up a whole new world, new temptations, new ideas, places where you can get your own designs printed on material, and people painting and screen printing all sorts of incredibleness…

… I decided I wanted to be part of this. A length of linen bought, washed, ironed, cut and sewn into tea towels. A word of warning – some people out there are selling you tiny tea towels! For some lazy reason I decided to use measurements from some of my favourite listings on etsy, rather than walk all the way to the kitchen to measure my own towels. They ended up smaller than I expected!

… two blank canvases, three bottles of paint, a million ideas, a grid drawn onto the linen in chalk, and now for a repeating pattern… first the dots, something small, round, disposable… what else but the ikea pencil. Then the triangles, triangles are all the fashion, but I wanted them to be small… I remembered this amazing blog post, where a wall was painted with a potato… a look in the fridge, no potatoes, but carrots – perfect. I whittled my best triangle from half a carrot and was all set.

Repeating rows, fading into nothingness, different heights, vaguely inspired by this painting. The finishing touch… a random dot with the triangles and a triangle in the dots. Left to dry overnight, then ironed and ironed and ironed to set the paint. Another spin in the washer to check they were colour-fast and to wash away the chalk, and now they are wrapped and ready to go, a present for someone special.

black soap for black sheep

Tags

cleaning products, detergent, diy, natural

… under the sink there used to be an army of bottles and containers, so many colours, each containing a different cleaning product, each with its own special function: one for the floor, one for the walls, one for the sink, one for the taps, another for worktops on greasy days, or sticky days… The aisles in the supermarket led me to believe this was the only way to keep my house clean. I suspect advertising on TV and in magazines would have reinforced that message, but I don’t watch TV or read magazines.

… somewhere along the line someone introduced me to vinegar, then to baking soda. I haven’t replaced any of those coloured bottles under the sink when they have run out. Not only are baking soda and vinegar cheap, they clean well and are also good for the environment. Seems like win win.

… occasionally I still need something a bit more specialised for a specific job, like cleaning the windows (alcohol and corn flour with vinegar seem to be the secret) or laundry detergent (I have already talked about that), and then I need to find “exotic” ingredients for my magic potions 🙂

… this search has led me to new outlets, Aladdin’s caves I probably wouldn’t have found if I wasn’t hunting for the ever elusive borax, baking soda by the kilo, glycerine. The good old fashioned “droguerie”. I am not even sure if this translates to drugstore, as I seem to remember from American books I have read and films I have seen that people used to go to drugstores to drink soda in the 50’s?

… men in white coats, powders in bins and bottles, scales and ladles, hand written labels, skull and cross bone stickers on small white paper bags. The droguerie is a disappearing institution, I hope people realise what they risk losing and change their shopping habits before it is too late and they are all gone.

… a recent trip to stock up on “powders”, my attention was drawn to a window display of old fashioned white bottles with striking blue labels “the authentic black soap made from olive oil“. I was curious, I picked up a leaflet – this stuff can be used to clean everything from indoor floors to house roofs, from your silverware to your boat’s hull, from rose bushes to washing your dog, the list seems endless. It is natural and biodegradable. How could I not pick up a bottle?

… even if it makes me even more of a black sheep, the lone family member who veers away from the products made by the company my father worked for all his career!