Rearranging.

Wow! So many days, weeks and months since my last post. I’m not sure what happened to me. I am still making slipcovers and pillows and cushions and bed coverings. Still enjoying my family. Still trying to fit in more time for artwork. (Haven’t added anything to my etsy shop in a while.)

I recently did a major house cleaning and moved some furniture around. My sewing machine drawer collection ended up in the living room as part of the computer / office corner. If you look close you can see my paint color splotch. I am mixing two gallons of different colors of paint that I got free at the recycle shed at the local land fill. I think it will look good. I just have to get it done.




I moved my desk into the garage in my new art corner. I wasn’t thinking about how cold it is in the garage in the winter. It’s only California cold, but that’s still cold enough to be discouraging. This time of year it gets near freezing lots of nights. I like my corner in the garage because it is so quiet, but I think until it warms up a little I might have to try to be creative in the cozier chaos. 

Keepers

A couple of weekends ago a neighbor had some things out by the curb for sale, sort of a mini yard sale. Among his things was a cardboard box of old bottles that came from a local bottle-dig. He was selling them for 25 cents each. I love the shapes and subtle colors.

The dice and game pieces came from the Nipomo Swap Meet on Highway 101. I pass it when I go to Ventura to visit my daughter.




One of these days I would love to map out all the swap meets and flea markets between here and there and hit every one.

Just hangin' out.

There were so many things I could have done today.... hang some pictures....plant some seeds...pull some weeds...clean something, anything.... but that's not what I did. I spent most of the afternoon watching golf on tv with the husband. Sometimes that just feels right.

Concerning my last post...after the drawing, Angie is the winner of the shoe bag. Thanks to those who participated.

Hope you had a good weekend!

Thankful for crafting supplies and inspiration.

We had a small group for Thanksgiving this year, just me and the husband and our two younger daughters, 24 and 19. I decided it would be fun to decorate the Christmas tree after we gave thanks and stuffed the turkey (into our mouths). We have never bought a tree this early before. I think I may have been the first customer at the lot, the day before Thanksgiving.



I wanted to do a "crafty" tree, so I took inspiration from Martha Stewart, and her creative team. I got ideas from the book Christmas With Martha Stewart, published in 1997. Some of the ideas are repeated in this years magazines, the Holiday issue, and "Martha Stewart Living". The candy holder was made from a pattern in "Romantic Homes Magazine."




We cut ornaments from card stock, fancy junk mail, old sheet music, and pages from old World Atlases. I also bought an aluminum oven liner to cut shapes from. The book said I could find rolls of heavy foil at the craft store, but that was not true. The oven liner was a little too stiff and heavy duty kitchen foil a little too thin, so not too many aluminum ornaments made it onto the tree. We added glitter to some of the white card stock shapes, and I got out my collection of craft birds. Some of them are vintage. I love to get them out and enjoy them while they are waiting for their turn to be included in a craft project.



My husband suggested using a crown as the tree topper, and I loved the idea. I found a gold paper crown at the party store, glued some rhinestones to it and put it on the tree. I was so proud of my paper crown until someone suggested that it looked like it came from a certain fast-food chain. I will now make a replacement.

Not just an ordinary sort of day.

I love my job, making slipcovers, pillows, and other items for home decor, but there are some days that I really love my job. Like yesterday. I delivered a couple of sofa slipcovers. They turned out good and fit well, and then before I went home, I swung by Saffron and Genevieve to drop off a couple of pillow covers I had made for one of the owner, Colleen's, clients. I always love to wander around and look at the amazing things she finds, and the beautiful and creative ways she decorates the store. While I was enjoying myself with all the looking, I discovered this in the back of the store:



It is a vintage, metal, mail sorting unit.I added the drawers. I have been looking for something to put my sewing machine drawer collection in for a long time. Fortunately she has more sewing for me to do, so that I can pay for it in installments. (Zipper installments, flange installments...that sort of thing).

I always say..."There's nothing like a piece of furniture to brighten up your day."

The creamers gather.

Collection of the week: the creamers, with a couple of gravy boats alongside. Thinking of gravy boats made me wonder about gravy trains. I was sad to find out that there was probably never any gravy involved in the origin of this saying. It most likely became a saying when the railroad workers went on an easy run with good pay, or maybe the hobos started it, meaning a free ride. Take the gravy train to easy street. That sort of thing. Gravy being an automatic by-product of cooking a roast. No work there. (This saying was obviously started by men who have not tried to turn that automatic by-product into a beautiful lumpless sauce to present to the mother-in-law at Thanksgiving.) And apparently a gravy boat was akin to a gravy train before it became a place to put your gravy.



A creamer is a creamer, nothing to wonder about there.





I think the white ones are my favorite.






So I'm wondering what an updated form of "gravy train" might be...."life's a beach"... that's similar. I'm thinking more like, "That was a trip through the drive-thru", or something like that. This reminds me of the time I had a root canal done and the Dr. was thrilled that it went a lot easier than he had anticipated, but he still charged me the same amount. ( We didn't have insurance at the time.) He probably told his staff, "That was like drilling for oil!"

Darn it! Or just go buy a new pair.

Collection Reunion # 4 is actually a combination of two collections. The sock darners and the crochet hooks.



Crochet hooks will never go out of style. At least they shouldn't. But sock darners, well, you don't see too many people (women) sitting around fixing the holes in the family's socks. The darner goes inside the holey sock in order to provide a surface on which to do the darning. I'll be darned if I'm gonna darn any darn old holey socks, unless they are special hand-made ones.

So why do I collect sock darners you might ask? I think I bought the first one at a time when I was much younger and was actually knitting a pair of socks on four little skinny needles. I do admire people who do that. I love hand-knit socks, I just don't think I have the patience for it myself. Maybe in a few years. Anyway, I think there was never an actual pair of socks. If I remember, the one I finished became a sort of Christmas stocking. (What else can you do with one colorful hand made sock?)

An update on my latest craft project:
Yesterday I finally visited a thrift store a friend has been telling me about for years. It is a couple of towns away, and I was there on business, so I stopped by. Alas, I only had 20 minutes. The place is HUGE. I did have enough time to find a bag of 26 Prismacolor colored pencils for 69 cents. Yea! So I used my pile of inspiration from the other day (with a few changes) and made a pencil holder/carrier for my drawing pencils.





The ones in the box are woodless colored pencils. They are great. No lead to break, and not too expensive either.

Collection Reunion #3, Pin...cushions???

Who decided that the place we store our pins should be called a cushion. Shouldn't it be a poker, or a stopper, because that's where the pins stop as we poke them there? I have a collection of pin storage units.
The tomato seems to be the most popular form for pin stop-overs. And strawberries.



This pinelephant was in a very pretty sewing box that came from England via EBay.



I like this group a lot. My daughter, now 22, made the little chair when she was little herself. (not as little as the chair, of course)



A tower of Chinese children holding giant Chinese beachballs for pins:



Some that are very old:



And this is what I would call a pincushion:



And that's all I have to say about that.

Collection Reunion #2, The Yard Birds.

I am busy this week painting the house. (really) My husband and I decided to take on the task, and are trying to get a fair amount done before the graduation party on Saturday. We have actually completely finished the back and it looks pretty good. Hoping to get one coat on the front and paint the front door. I whined a bit about the whole thing, but I'm actually glad we went for it. We got some great advice from our friend who is a pro and color advise, also from a pro. (I highly recommend professional advise).

The Yard Bird reunion took place in the Hens and Chicks of course.



The waterfowl in the Lemon Balm.



And we can't forget the working birds:



And speaking of working.......my list is calling.

Confessions of a Collector

I must confess that I am a collector. I promise that I'm not a "stuff piled to the ceiling, can't walk through the room" kind of collector, but if you look closely, you will see a collection of some kind in just about every room. I tried to do a little research on why some people have a tendency to collect things, but it seem that no one really knows for sure. A couple of articles I saw attribute it to the "hunting and gathering" instinct. I do like to hunt and gather. I probably would have been an awesome cavewoman.

Some of my collections are spread out or partially put away, so I thought I would have little collection reunions and post them once a week until I have run out.

This is sort of an accidental collection. I didn't set out to collect tracing wheels, but whenever I see old sewing boxes, or plastic bags of thread, needles, etc. at yard sales, I grab them and sometimes they contain a tracing wheel. I haven't actually used one since high school, but I've been amazed at how many different syles there are.







Now that I have gotten them out and looked at them, I may have to think of a use for them. Got any ideas?