Divinely Crafty

I am slowly but surely amassing red accessories and accent pieces for my kitchen.  The piece that I have coveted for a long time is a red rubbish bin. But the price!  Ack!  My budget is not in that range and even if it was I have a hard time swallowing paying over £100 for something to throw my trash in.  Ebay and me are not friends when it comes to winning auctions (despite my use of snipe sites) and all my attempts at a good deal were thwarted in the last seconds of the auctions.  It seemed that I might never get my red bin.  Then one day whilst browsing at the local iron monger’s (where they had a lovely red bin on display for a mere £100 – taunting me as I shopped.) I came across the spray paint ailse.  My initial urge to come back at night and pronounce rubbish bin robbery on the shop windows was quickly replaced by the idea that I could make better use of my being over 18 (and therefore allowed to purchase said paint) by transforming my ugly duckling bin into the bin of my dreams!

I was on a mission.  Of course I had a flare of my fibromyalgia for a few days after I bought the paint so it sat quietly on a shelf waiting for me to get to it.  When I felt better there were other more pressing needs in the potting shed and in our allotment. (Which I really should blog about – allotment politics and gossip are the best!  Gardening in it is fun too.)  At last the day arrived when my body and my schedule were in sync so I set about my task.  It happened to be the day before a big BBQ party at our house. As I worked I imagined myself proudly presenting my new red bin to my guests amid oooohs and aaaahs of my crafty frugality.

Documenting the bin au-naturale.  It served us well when our kitchen was black and silver industrial when it was first purchased. After we moved out of that flat the poor thing has been somewhat of a eyesore and been mistreated.  I scrubbed it up nicely and readied it for it’s makeover.

Next I set up a paint booth by stringing up a couple paint drop sheets all over the patio. The wind was blowing towards the big bush so I tied it up and around it to spare it from getting sprayed. An up-ended recycle bin served as a base to prop the bin on and lucky thing – it was red so the paint didn’t muck it up. (Can’t have my recycling bins looking shabby now can I?) Thanks to the swine flu craze all the masks at the paint store were sold out so I donned a high tech breathing filter courtesy of my farmer husband (which I did not document in photos, but if you do work with spray paint use some sort of a mask. That stuff is awful. Were it not for the greater good of my kitchen decor I would not have used such a vile medium.)

Several hours and 4 coats of spray paint later …. My beautiful red rubbish bin!!! (Fully deserving of all 3 exclamation points.)

Ain’t she a beauty? And for a mere fraction of the cost of the extortionately priced ones. The bin cost us £14 when we bought it 4 years ago and the spray paint was £7. I used 1 whole large can of paint. The gray metal showed through for the first 2 coats and the 4th,final coat gave it a nice even shine. I had no idea going into the project that it would take so much paint and originally contemplated buying a mini can. Thankfully I went for the big can or I would have had to buy 3+ of the small cans at a much higher end cost. (full disclosure: actually I used a whole large can and 5 squirts of another can but that was because some fluff flew onto the final layer of painting the lid. I had to buff it out with some steel wool and give it an extra coat. Were it not for the wayward fluff it would have been a one can project. )

Oh – and at the party I did indeed smile with pride as my guests commented on my lovely bin and were duly impressed with my ikea hack skills.

Back to the same bad habits it seems.  If not posting to my blog is counted as a bad habit!

I know there are a few of you who stop by in hopes of finding something new, only to leave shaking your head in dissappointment.  I appreciate your loyalty and want you to know that I hear your knocking and I am not ignoring you.  It is just that I get distracted on the way to answer the door.  Countless times a day I think to myself “I should blog about this.”  only to be squashed by the giant killjoy in my head that says “Not now, do it later. And only if you can make it really interesting.  Which it won’t be.  So don’t bother.”  Either that or the trickster will fool me into thinking I am too busy to stop and write.  Because refreshing facebook again to see what my friends’ Top 5 Favorite Pickle Flavors are is top priority, you know.

I don’t really have anything in particular to write about today, but since I have been trying to get my twitter list going and realized that I had linked this site from my twitter that I should either get things going again or consider abandoning it all together.  Not being able to stomach the thought of abandoning it all together I am here now – babbling about nothing.  Hoping that this little babble will turn into more babble and that more babble will be able to silence (or at least babble louder than) the ‘voices’ (don’t worry, they aren’t real.  Not all of them anyway. ;)  )  and maybe even I might start writing for real again.

What I do know is that I will never post a “I’m back” post again because doing so is a guaranteed assurance that I will not actually resume posting.  So let this be my first official “I’m not back” post.  If I prove myself wrong by actually writing then hooray for me and reverse psychology.  If I don’t, well then – I told you so.  I’m not back.

Tags: blogging, facebook, twitter, writing

This time for real.  It’s been a long hard winter that seems to have started last summer.  After a wonderful trip to the Pacific Northwest of the US where there was sun and warmth, coming back to a record wet, gray and cold English summer was a bit of a crash to say the least.  My health and our move in late August turned out to be much harder to recover from than I anticipated.  As the winter took hold I found myself frozen in my body and as a result I never did get back to blogging as I had intended to.

Happily spring appears to be trying to break through and with it I am experiencing a renewal of my own.  I recently started a new medication that while still early days has me feeling optimistic about getting some of my spark back.  I’m not looking for a miracle cure but to have a bit more fire burning in me is a very welcome change.  There have been treatments in the past which have given me a little boost but unfortunately they all seem to be short lived.  Not wanting to count on this boost being a permanent thing I am taking it one day at a time and trying to simply appreciate each day for what it gives me without putting stock in what it may or may not mean for the future.  In the true spirit of zen – living each moment as it comes.

In my hiatus I was not all together a slug.  I did finish the pair of socks I started way back in August and have gotten much love and warming of my feet out of them during the cold days.

Of course with my feet all toasty warm, my hands were feeling a bit left out so I obliged them with this lovely pair of mittens.

Which led to my husband wanting his own knitted warmth, so I obliged with these fingerless gloves. He started working for the Royal Mail in December so he needed something to keep his hands warm but left his fingers free to sort mail as he delivered.

In making these I did my first attempt at knitting on two circulars as opposed to DPN’s and must say that I am a committed convert. The speed at which I knit these was truly amazing and I found the method to be overall much less fiddly than using the DPNs. I have since cast on a pair of socks on two circs, and while they have been sidelined for another project (of which I will write more on another day) I am pleased with the speed and ease. If you haven’t tried the two circs, you should give it a go. There are some great tutorials on you tube to get you started.

And to round it out, and show that I do indeed do other things besides knit – a project that I had been planning to do for ages but never made the time to do. Recovering an old stool that we had in our kitchen. Previously it was a robin’s egg blue which was nice, but the giant hold in the middle with foam sticking out kind of ruined it’s aesthetic. A square of oil cloth, a few minutes of labor and hey ho – a newly covered stool that fits nicely into my slowly becoming retro red kitchen. I really love this stool now.

There have been other projects, but I won’t go into them all. In my flickr you can see some more and if you happen over to Beneath Our Feet and follow it to my family flickr you can see some projects around the house that we have been working on over the winter. I have lots planned for the spring and looking forward to being back and sharing them with you!

Tags: crafty, hand warmers, household, knitting, ktichen, makeover, restyle, socks, stool, upcycle, writing

The Toy Society. I got wind of them from Danielle a bit ago.  I love how it really is starting to catch on, and if I ever get my sewing and crafty stuff unpacked (No, it still sits in front of me in boxes.  I should take a picture. It is really sad. ) I would love to do something like this.  It would make a fun project for me to do with Anja and then wait to see who finds it.

Let me know if and of you are inspired to give it a try and be sure to pass the word on!

Tags: community, fun, giving, sewing, softie, Toys