(Re)Construction: Side-table

For Christmas, I wanted to give J a coffee table and TV table. Unfortunately, troll the Goodwill though I might of a Saturday morning, I couldn't find anything worth converting. A stop by TROSA resulted in the purchase of Broyhill side-table that looked like a promising start for the TV table (as J's TV is fairly small).

But, a) I could never find anything that matched for a coffee table, and b) after thinking things through a little more, I realized it would be very hard to add a shelf to hold the DVD player to this table's rounded legs. So I made J's coffee table from scrap wood (more about that eventually), and decided to give the Broyhill to Kenzi, who is sadly lacking in furniture. But before I could turn it over to her, I needed to personalize it slightly. So, after pondering and combing the paint collection for ideas, I slapped on a couple coats of Kilz (I learned my lesson after the pink bed incident. Everything gets covered in Kilz first).

Then a coat of the same white paint that adorns my bookcases (Rust-Oleum American Accents in gloss white. I love this stuff with an unhealthy passion, and am heartbroken that they no longer make it). And then, to make it truly Kenzi-fied, I used Kenzi-blue (the color she most frequently has in her particolored hair) to apply this paisley stencil to the inset on the top.

The result:

I almost don't want to give it away.

(Re)Construction: Bookshelf

I am a book hoarder. One of those people who, with good intentions of clearing up some clutter, takes a bag of books to the used book store, only to walk out with twice as many as I came in with. Needless to say, all these books require storage space, and so roughly half of my furniture was either intended to house books or has been repurposed for that use. So when Mom said I could have the bookshelves that currently hold my parents' VHS collection, I was extremely excited. There was only one problem. They looked like this:

Which doesn't, exactly, suit my style. So, three coats of a white paint later, it looked like this:

Which was much prettier, but somewhat boring. So, after trolling some of the crafting blogs (This post at Twice Lovely, to be exact), I decided I wanted to do a little damask detail up the sides. So I made myself a stencil

and did a few repeats on each side of my bookshelf in a slightly yellower white. It's so subtle it's difficult to photograph, but it looks a little something like this:

3 repeats up both sides, and one in the center of the top. It turned out exactly like I wanted, and I couldn't be happier.

A Collection of Oddments

I posted a few of my patterns (r-link) to Ravelry yesterday, and have been compulsively refreshing the page to see how many people have added them to their favorites. It's just my armwarmer patterns so far, but I'll be adding other stuff as I finish setting up the patterns. Though I was proud of them before, it's kind of ridiculously gratifying to see that other people like them, too. Especially when I have been feeling rather dejected about my abilities over the last couple of weeks, it's nice to see that even though I can't manage to get a corporate-type job, I can at least produce a product people appreciate. I can't wait now to get the yarn for my baby sweater designs and see if they go over was well as the armwarmers.

The Swallowtail is doomed. That's the only possible explanation for why, ten minutes before I was going to unpin it from its blocking, the cat threw up all over it. Now the process must be begun all over again. Which I don't mind in theory, as I could certainly use the practice in blocking - it is a skill which does not come naturally to me. But in practice, I'm sick of the sight of the bloody thing, and would shred it into bits if only it wasn't intended as a gift for my mom.

Some other things I have finished lately include my lovely Lady of Guadalupe pillow. I quilted the image and then sewed it to a piece of fat-quarter and stuffed it with fiberfill. I had initially planned on appliqueing it to the front half of the fat-quarter and then sewing the whole thing up, but that resulted in an even more oddly shaped pillow, which I did not like. So this worked better, and I ended up with a very cute little pillow that cost me about $4.

On another snow day, I painted and decorated my earring holder, which Daddy built for me several months ago. White paint and the same purple and turquoise flowers that I put on those picture frames a few months ago, and the result is perfect. It made me realize, though, that I've lost several pairs of earrings, which makes me sad. I can't wait until I move and have to go through everything again, because I'm hopeful they're just hiding in the wreckage of my current half-life.