Project 2016 -- Florida or Bust: Kitchen Makeover Day Infinity

I love it when the DH  vacuums

The never-ending-kitchen-make-over continued today. They say there is nothing like experience and after failing miserably two weeks ago with the Countertop Transformations® kit, we tried a second round. We made some changes in our approach to increase the chances of success and I think it worked.

LAST TIME: The video that was supplied emphasized working "quickly". Last time the thought that the adhesive base paint would dry before we got the color chips on, had me in a panic. We worked too quickly and as a result,  did not get the product on thick enough and ran into each other and the counter top smudging it in a few places. We also tried to do each bank of cabinets successively, one right after another which just made the stress level increase as we went from the smallest to the longest counter top.

CHANGES WE MADE: After watching the video again, I saw that we had missed words on the screen that said we had about 20 minutes to apply the color chips. That was more time than I thought we had. This time we decided that we would do the largest counter top first. Then clean up and take a break for a couple of hours. Then go back and do both the two smaller counter tops. This helped us in two ways: We cleaned up the mess from the first application so we were not walking around in all the color chips. It will also allow us more time on the sanding tomorrow as that has a time sensitive window, too.

Happy Sanding!!!

Knitting Merlot

I love the herringbone pattern on my Chelsea! Not only is it a lovely pattern, it is fun to knit even though it looks so "stiff upper lip" as the British say. I have knit about 7 inches and am ready to step down to the next needle size. The length of the skirt is to be 21" sans lace trim.

The yarn, Wool of the Andes Tweed, is really great. It holds up well to tinking and re-knitting, has great color and the texture is great! Can't wait to see what how it turns out. I think this is going to be one gorgeous skirt!

Happy knitting!

The 3 R's: Re-Purpose, Re-Use, Re-Cycle Redux

As I have told you before, I like to re-purpose things (or re-use). Here is something that can save you a few cents and brighten up a cross country gift.

When mailing a small gift to a friend, re-use a bright gift bag someone else used to give you a gift.

 Cut off the handles and the tag.

 You may need to remove a heavy piece of cardboard inside the lip of the bag

and you may need to trim the side of the bag that the bottom is on. This will give you a cleaner looking fold. After inserting the gift, fold the top of the bag to the side to which the bottom of the bag folds.

Using wide packing tape, close the bag shut and tape a mailing label on the side to which the bottom of the bag is folded.

Now that is a bright package! Wouldn't you love to open your mail box and find that bit of sunshine?








Happy standing in the line at the post office!!

Skirt Weather Will Be Here Soon Enough

Although there is still snow on the ground in Chicago, I know that eventually spring weather will be here. With that in mind, I cast on one of the skirts that I bought yarn for waaaaaaay back in October. The Chelsea by Cecily Glowik MacDonald is a just what I need to start out skirt weather this year. The flirty hand-knit lace at the hemline is a wonderful juxtaposition to the all business herringbone tweed of the skirt itself.

My yarn for the skirt is Wool of the Andes Tweed in Claret. I have already knit through one skein. I have a couple of different choices of lace weight yarns for the trim. A pale pink Silky Alpaca Lace which I was using for a lace project since frogged or a pale lilac Shadow Tonal that I bought on sale from Knit Picks. But I think that I will wait until the last second to decide on the lace. Perhaps I will knit a few inches of both of them and decide which I like best.

The pattern, once I figured out what the author meant by RLI (Right Lifted Increase), was easy to learn. My confusion was easy to understand as there are two ways to describe the RLI: 1) Insert right needle tip from back to front into stitch below the next stitch on left needle; place this st on left needle and knit; and, 2)  Knit into the back of the stitch (in the “purl bump”) in the row directly below the stitch on the needle, then knit the stitch on the needle, and slip the original stitch off the needle. In the 1st instance, the lifted increase ends with one stitch on the right needle, in the 2nd the lifted increase ends with two stitches on the right needle. So for the herringbone pattern directions of:


ROWS 1 and 3: (WS) Purl.
ROW 2: *K2tog, k2, RLI (see Glossary), k2; rep from * to last st, k1.
ROW 4: K1, *k2, RLI, k2, k2tog; rep from * to end.
Rep Rows 1–4 for pattern

If you use the 1st "definition" of RLI on ROW 2 you get

K2tog = 1 stitch on needle
k2 = 2 stitches on needle
RLI = 1 stitch on needle
k2 = 2 stitches on needle

a total of 6 stitches.

But, if you use the 2nd "definition" of RLI on Row 2 you get

K2tog = 1 stitch on needle
k2 = 2 stitches on needle
RLI = 2 stitches on needle
k2 = 2 stitches on needle

a total of 7 stitches. Since the author gave the pattern repeat as 7 stitches and I was using the 1st definition, it took looking at the notes by other knitters in Ravelry and asking questions in Knitting Paradise's forum before I figured it out. Good thing the knitting world is large and gracious in sharing knowledge.

Gotta go, I have a lot of knitting to do! Happy Knitting!

Project 2016 -- Florida or Bust: Kitchen Makeover Days Eight and Nine

This is my living room. It consists of all the painted doors of my kitchen cabinets and all of the contents of my kitchen cabinets. Unfortunately, this is how it will remain for the next few weeks as I slowly progress through the two remaining steps to my cabinet makeover (let's just ignore the whole counter top debacle).

If I had it to begin all over again, these are the things I would do differently:

• Only plan one project at a time. I shouldn't have thought I could get so much done in one week. But that would have depended on:
• Doing more research. If I had gone through the videos a couple of times, I might have realized that the project had a lot of steps and would take more time. Breaking the steps into smaller projects would have allowed me to rest between projects. It may have also allowed me to realize that I needed more room to progress quickly on painting the cabinet doors. Perhaps set up the painting in the basement -- regardless of how cold it might be down there.
• Do more prep work in advance. I wasted an entire day just cleaning out my kitchen cabinets. I could have done this in the evenings prior to my working vacation.

My working vacation is over and I must return to work tomorrow morning. I will have to insert the next steps of the process during the evenings and upcoming weekends.

Happy painting.

Nuts to You -- A Squirrelly Lesson in Design

I started playing with this design about a month ago and have blogged about the process here. There are things that I don't like about the hat, but I really learned a lot in the process and this hat will make me a better designer in the long run.

Things that turned out well:

I am really happy with the colors. The graduation in the three light colors from pale yellow to a golden tan works nicely in the corrugated ribbed band.

I love the way the circle of acorns turned out at the top of the hat.

The triangular motif that I pulled out of Alice Starmore's book sets off both the ribbing and circle of acorns. I am so glad that I did them as mirror images to each other.

Things that I could have done better:

Although I do like the squirrels -- the design is way too big for the hat. I am not sure I could make this any smaller for this style. Believe me I cut a lot out of the design. This is something that should go on a sweater.

The ribbing would have been better if it was narrower and done with a smaller needle. In fact the entire hat could have been done with a smaller needle.

Back to the drawing board.

Happy designing.

Project 2016 -- Florida or Bust: Kitchen Makeover Day Seven

It's a good thing that my motivation isn't at a high level today. As I stated in yesterday's update, painting the doors is really slow. I did take another shelf and put screws in it too so that I can have two doors drying on it while I have two to paint on the other rack.

Guess I will get some knitting done today! YES!

Happy KNITTING (between painting doors)!