Monday, April 30, 2007

The Veiw from Here




Craftyness for today:
I have been a big fan of old window panes as art or decor for a long time. I have several of these things lying around waiting to be turned into objects of beauty and wonder. The main one, a 6 pane thing, I started painting on ages ago and have yet to get back to. It will have birches in the wind, 'cause I love birch trees and their delicate little leaves. But that's someday.
Today I pulled a glassless one out and used this paper I got at Art/Media (one of the places here to find lovely papers and stuff.) that I LOVE and tried to put it in the frame. It was unfriendly, but I got it in. I think I would much rather glue stuff onto glass next time. And I am not super happy with the little flower doodads that I painted. But 1) my paintbrushes are in very sad need of replacement and 2) I was to lazy to really put the effort into making them look better. They will do. But this project is definitely more craft than Art. The other piece will be a work of Art. Like many of my works of Art, it's definitely in the right place, unfinished, and in the closet.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Automobile-less?

I am contemplating selling my car. I do not particularly like my car. It's an SUV. And it didn't cost me a penny and it runs well and it's handy for carrying large loads... But gas in the PNW is over 3$ a gallon, I live 1.8 miles from work (20 mins walking). I live less than a quarter mile from one grocery store and about .5 miles from another. I live about 600 ft from a bus stop. and less than a quarter mile from the MAX (light rail) AND the trolley (in the other direction.)
I spend 45$ a month on insurance (how is it only 45$ for me? PERFECT RECORD for the last 15 years and I drive less (a lot less) miles than the average person in my geographic region, and my car is not new.)
I spend between 40-80$ a month on gas. I fill up only 20$ at a time and if I am not driving out to the suburbs often, that lasts almost 2 weeks. 2 weeks on less than half a tank of gas.
Anyway that's at minimum 85$ a month. A bus pass is 75$.
So economically I save between 15-50$ a month by not owning a car.
And I gain some exercise and the stressless-ness of not driving.

But I like driving. I like having a car. I like being able to carry large loads of stuff from, like, the nursery or home depot or the grocery store when we need to buy cat litter and cat food. I like the freedom to pop over to friends' houses or across town. Or to the coast.
But I hate the car I own.
I can sell it for about 4 grand and pay off some bills AND save money each month by not owning it.
And then I can save for a GOOD car, something I won't be ashamed of owning.
I can rent a flexcar if I need to go to home depot.
so, do I go carless in one of the best cities in America to do so? Am I ready, me, a California born and raised driver, ready to not have a car?
I don't know.
But it's on my mind, and I am leaning towards not having a car, for now.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Friday, April 20, 2007

and the total is

449- four hundred and forty NINE.
Good thing I have Children of Hurin on the way. (just have to have a 1st ed. you know.)
I guess I have had more books in my life that have moved on. I have certainly read many, many more than this. But still...I thought I had more. There are a few in the basement, but I think they are outdated textbooks.
Someone out there has 90 of the same books as I ( and she has like 1200 books) so I may be perusing her library for new books!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Craftyness

Tank top, finally, a pic, here:















The Harry Potter shawl, looks more like a sparkly bat ray right now:












And cupcake and card making for volunteer apprication week at my work. We made 90 cupcakes and two kinds of buttercream and about the same amount of cards. Here are some I did today( We didn't get em all done last night.)












freezer full o' cupcakes:

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Why I need a ball winder


550 yards of yarn wound by hand. =P

But this yarn will hopefully, magically, turn into this shawl.
It's the Wing o' the Moth shawl from Knitspot and a rather dramatic departure from my usual projects. but the tank top(still blocking) has convinced me "I can knit anything now".
And it might not happen, but since it's the Harry Potter yarn, I am hoping for some conjuring magic to aide me.

Door pt.2




These are the doors that were hung in the frame for the bedroom. The closet door frame is really wonky, one side tilts way out to the left. But the yarn on the knobs( that I installed) will keep the cats from climbing all over the place and knocking things of shelving.


The walls of the bedroom are purple, and it's a nice enough shade of purple, calming, like lavender or something. And since I went to all the bother of refinishing the door, I got a little arty with it. I do not recommend painting in a dim, dank basement. It dosn't show in the pic, and no one but me would prolly care, but the paint isn't as neat as I would like. But it will do. Also, the flash makes the purple look a little crazy, it's much more subdued than it seems.

So now I have door. And I am happy. And Matt helped me in the hanging of the door and it was a process, so I am glad he was around to help or it would stull be in the basement. I'm handy, but I only have two.=)
Pics of the knitted tank top later, it's still blocking.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Squee!

The door is hung, the tank top is done! pictures tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Door

For about 6 months I have been working on refinishing and hanging a door to our bedroom. Well, maybe I have spent a few weeks out of 6 months doing so, I took a big break during winter when the basement is freezing.

The door was already in the basement, and one can suppose it used to hang in the house, somewhere. It was painted black and the paint was quite blistered. So I had to scrape down the blisters (very loud and nails-on-chalkboard) sand down the scraping, and paint it with primer several times to hide the black. So that was what I did last fall. It may blister again, well, It will blister again. The original door was varnished wood and it's the varnish that is blistering. Maybe due to the damp basement and it's extreme temperature fluctuations. Maybe in the house it will fare better.

Anyway, the last week or two I have been putting on the last coats of white paint. Today I am panting some of the inset panels of the bedroom side with the same color as the walls. And then it will be done. It may be dry this eve to hang!

Our bedroom currently has swinging doors, like a bar room. They will be relocated to the closet entry, as it has no door, and I think it will all look the better for it. I had to remove an old hinge from the door frame and it's amazing. It's original hardware from the early 1900's. I may clean it up sometime with paint stripper. The crafting that went into the fixtures in these old houses is just beautiful. The were hand made somewhere, by some metal smith. The hinge is a pin hinge with decorative scroll work. If i ever clean it up I will post a pic. It's too thick with paint to see much right now.


Our apartment sort of has not doors between any rooms, except that bathroom, which has TWO doors. (the bathroom is a door hog!) The front room has pocket doors, and that's handy sometimes. But there is something about being able to CLOSE a door, between any room, that makes a room feel complete, separate, it's own space apart. Our last apartment had a broken pocket door, a bathroom door and a door to the closet/bedroom. It had THREE doors to go outside. But all the other rooms were a continuous flow, as this place has. It's been a long time since I could just close a door and shut out the world. Doors lead to sanctuary, space, quiet, peace, solitude. They are also boundaries, when you have people over or whatnot, a closed door mean do not enter, it's off limits.(Also a convenient place to keep cats out of the way...)No one else quite gets that, or why it's important to me to have a door.(Except maybe J9. =) )

I will post door pics after it is hung. Yay!

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

I also garden

over here. Not literaly, though I would be interested to see what a blog garden would look like.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Abject Falure!

Well, not really. I just entered a good portion of my library into library thing. And my total is only at 277 or so. I still have many more books to enter, but it looks like I will have under 500, maybe around 400. I am oddly upset that the number is so low. I did get rid of about 100 books a year or so ago. Books I would never read, or never cared to read again. I now think I should have kept them, just to have MORE books. Sad, yes? But perhaps not as sad as the fellow with 11,ooo+ books,and time to catalogue them all, but his profile seems pretty cool. So maybe we aren't sad, us bibliophiles. I figure I buy 50+ books a year, so, that's comforting...
Books are worse than one's yarn stash...

Jedi Worthy Papercraft


This is cool. Image is from the Craft: blog.

Monday, April 2, 2007

get well

One of our volunteers is having heart trouble at work. One of my co-workers asked that I make a card for him. (I have done some graphic art for this coworker before.) And I said I would. This gentleman is a great man, who has done a whole lot of cool things in his life and I hope he gets well quickly and without trouble. He will be back in no time, I hope.
Anyway here is the graphic for the card.