P.S. I Made A Thing

Here's a little blue shawl I made recently, for three reasons: 

1. This yarn is my favorite color, and it's SO SOFT OMG
2. My office is cccccooollllddd
3. I've been working on a sweater for two months and needed to crochet something else for a while to clear my brain

There's no pattern, I just made it up as I went. (If you know crochet, it's made entirely of two stitches: HDC and Tr).     

I'm also working on a pair of slippers, but only because I wanted to know if I could figure it out on my own. I probably won't wear them, or post them here.  They're just an exercise in using up old yarn. 

   

My Own Personal Tiny Nature Channel

Just, you know, go ahead and read this whole post in Sir David Attenborough's voice.  For fun. 

This is my aquarium: 

It's a 10-gallon* freshwater planted tank which holds five live plants, two sections of driftwood,  one tiny baby ramshorn snail who I assume hitched a ride on a plant as an egg, and two Blue Velvet/Blue Rili shrimp named Fancy and Pants.  (Guy at the fish shop: "Y'all move out the way so I can sell this nice lady some fancy pants shrimps!" and LO, they were named). 

However, now that I have the MOPPothecary unit done and set up, the small tank looked tiny - and I finally had room to expand into a bigger tank! Hooray!

This is my aquarium on drugs No, wait, THIS is my aquarium: 

Here's the same cast, this time on a 20-gallon stage instead of a 10.  It looks so empty!  It IS a lot of tank for two 1" shrimp, but, after I get some more plants, more shrimp, and some tiny silvery fishes, it'll be teeming with life.

I made the background for it myself - it's a screenshot of the sacred forest from the Miyazaki film Princess Mononoke.  I adjusted the pic for size and shape on Blockposter.com, printed the pdf they gave me, taped it together, and taped it to the back of the tank.  The tree-i-ness of it blends with the driftwood roots and gives the tank kind of an underwater-forest look.  

Here are Fancy (left) and Pants).  Near as I can tell, Fancy is a girl and Pants is a boy.  Of course, I could be wrong about that, I'm not shrimp junk expert.  I'd be perfectly happy being the owner of a billion little blue shrimps, but I'm also perfectly happy just having two, so, whatever they feel like doing or not doing, that's just fine with me. 

* I can't type the word "gallon" without first typing "gallong" to save my life. It's not the only word it happens to.  People named Kevin(g), you have my apologies. 

What's Going On

NO  DISASSEMBLE

Remember the Ikea FORHOJA kitchen cart that I was using as a sideboard type thing before  I built the apothecary unit?

This is it, all disassembled. It's already been sanded down fully, and given a first coat of stain. Judging by how the staining is going, it may need 25 coats. We'll see.

What else am I doing right now?

• Crocheting a blue shawl
• Crocheting a multi-colored sweater
• Painting the legs of a little nightstand-table I have sitting around in my bedroom (finished)
• Sewing 5 cushion covers for a friend's couch
• Working on a painting I'm making for a friend for Giftmas

What's Next After That? 

• Refinishing my bedroom nightstand
• Refinishing an old wooden plant stand
• Crocheting a rug for my roommate, as soon as we find the right yarn
• Crocheting some slippers, maybe 
• Sewing a skirt or top for myself out of the leftover fabric from a dress I made recently 

What's New? 

I finally bought myself a new sander!  My old one was a work horse, but it was too big, heavy, and high-powered for me to wield safely anymore - it shook me and hurt me so much my hands and arms would be unusable for days after, every time I used it.  I got myself a little $23 Porter & Cable in-line palm sander, and it's GREAT!  Much more easily controlled, and it does as much work as my big one ever did - surprising, for such a little, lightweight thing.  Yay!  

More news on the FORHOJA as it develops.  Meanwhile, here's a crocheted scarf I just finished yesterday: 

ooh, ahh

MOPPE Sideboard, Finished

Folks, we have a finished apothecary/card-catalog sideboard, made with Ikea MOPPE chests:

At the end of the last post, I'd just finished assembling this thing.  In case you're curious, it went a little something like this.  Ignore the measurements on the paper; things got adjusted a bit when I realized the actual measurements of the MOPPEs are not exactly what Ikea's website say they are.  But this is the general idea of how the thing went together.  Essentially, I just made a house for the MOPPEs to live in - top, bottom, sides, and dividers in between each column of MOPPEs. Everything was glued together and/or joined with glue and dowels. 

 I decided not to put feet on this thing, as it was already 38" high, and that's tall enough for me.  I keep a fishtank on top of this thing, and there's only so high I can reach to clean the tank, you know? 

After all the glue was dry, I sanded and stained the entire thing, then clear-coated it with Polycrylic to protect the wood.  Most of this thing only has a single clear coat; the top got three coats, to be on the safe side - again, because I keep a fishtank on top of it. All the drawers are very different, because of the wood that Ikea uses in the MOPPEs. I think it's kind of neat. 

Adventures in engineering:  how the heck did I get this from the detached garage into the house, over a rocky pebble driveway? I used a pair of 5' shelf boards I had laying around.  I slid the unit onto one, and laid the second in front.  Slid the unit onto the second one, moved the first one to the front, and so on.  It took a minute, but it worked beautifully, and even allowed me to ramp the unit up over the front step and the threshhold without incident.  Whew! 

54 drawers got stained, sanded,  and clearcoated. 54 knobs (3/4" screw buttons) were glued in place, and then 54 label holders, labels, and 108 of the tiniest screws I'd ever seen. 

Lastly, 54 papers  were inserted, and the drawers went into the unit:

And it's done!  That was both a ridiculous amount of work (look at the size of this thing! (Cut the chatter, Red 2), and hardly any work at all.  All this really entailed was building a frame to house a bunch of pre-made boxes, which were all glued in place.  I had the shelf boards that I used for the top, bottom, sides, and dividers cut to length and width at the hardware store; I only did a little adjusting on my saw at home to make sure things fit perfectly.  

So, what happens to the Ikea FORHOJA cart that used to occupy this space?  

More on that soon. 

The Greatest Ikea Hack of All Time (For Me, Anyway)

How do you take a cheap Ikea organizer unit and turn it into a huge, expensive, pain in the butt?  Like this:

Okay, wait.  First, let me show you my inspiration and supplies:

This is a photo I found on Pinterest that made me gasp and clutch my pearls.  I slowly craned my neck around behind me like the girl in the Exorcist and glared at my MOPPE art table organizer unit.  My roommate dropped her pen and asked, "What is wrong with you??"


That apothecary cabinet.  The first thought I had as soon as I let go of those pearls was, I could MAKE THAT.








Here are the two Ikea MOPPEs I fixed up for my art table back in August. 

I adore it.  But what if I had another one...that was HUGE...and could hold all the little household bits and pieces?  I remember thinking, while staining these things, "A whole bunch of these could be kinda cool."









Here's the Ikea MOPPE by itself, as it comes from the store - unstained and fully assembled.

Very potential.  Such ideas.  Wow.











I spent about a week planning and sketching, and making supply lists.  When I was ready, I walked through Ikea pushing this thing around:

I swear there were PLENTY more left on the shelf. 

The first thing I did was set about staining 9 boxes and 54 drawers:

This is only about a third of them. 

As soon as  the boxes were stained and dry, I started assembling the unit: I set out three boxes on my bottom board, dowelled and glued them all together, and then set in the remaining six boxes the same way.  

All the clamps I own. 

Before adding the top board, I glued in six 1/4" square sticks behind the boxes.  I know the boxes are glued in securely; but just on the off chance that repeated use of the drawers knocks them loose (it won't), these sticks might add a little extra security against the boxes being pushed out of place (won't need it).  There's so much open space behind them; I really wish I could have made this thing double-sided. Right now it's going to be used against a wall, but one day it might make a nifty room divider or something.  Maybe I can go back and add more boxes in the future.  For now, when this is done, the back will be covered by a sheet of Luan.

Surprisingly not front-heavy. 

While I was waiting for all the glue to dry, I stained a billion more drawers.  I also cut out papers for the drawer bottoms (thanks, Past Me, for making templates in August that I could use later!), and labels to go into the labels holders waiting to go onto this piece.

Fiskars paper cutter FTW. 

As much as I want to show you a picture of a finished project - it's not done yet!  I can't WAIT to see this thing finished!  I'm hoping it will be by the end of the week.  I'll post updates along the way.



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Ikea HEMNES Pantry Cabinet: Part II

BEFORE

Hi.

This is my Ikea  HEMNES cabinet-turned-pantry.  You may remember it from such posts as this one from October.

I'd gone back and forth with the idea of painting it for months before I frosted the glass in October;  but once that was done, I was sure, and I was just waiting for a chance to get to it.

Enter Thanksgiving weekend.  I don't celebrate it, myself, but I had five days off of work, and my roommate was out of town for one of those days, so I prepped and painted this thing in about eight hours.

Here's the whole thing after painting.  *drooool*  I LOVE IT.

There was barely any finish on this thing to begin with, so all it took was deglossing and then sanding very lightly to get a good surface for the paint.

The paint itself is a 50/50 mixture of plain black semi-gloss latex and black latex chalkboard paint.  I guess that makes it quarter-gloss?  I don't know.  But the texture and sheen are really nice.  I love a piece of furniture that feels good.

For the first few hours I worked on this, I was listening to Hamilton, which is one of my favorite things in the world. Every time I look at this picture in particular, I get Wait For It stuck in my head all over again.

I almost painted the inside of this unit a pale muted blue.  I'll be honest with you, the reason I didn't was that I didn't want to go to the store to get blue paint.  There are days when you just don't want to put a bra on, you know?

The knobs and drawer pulls I used on this unit are Ikea's FAGLAVIK, which, sadly, was discontinued about three years ago.  They're so smooth and soft and pretty.  They had a brushed nickel version, a chrome, and a brushed brass - these guys.  I looooove them .

I mean, that's just sexy.

















I love this cabinet.  I love the color.  I love that it didn't become a big black hole like I was worried it would.  I love the way the glass and the black look together.

But wait til you guys see my other Thanksgiving weekend project.  I'm almost done with it, and I'm crazy excited to show it to you!




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Obligatory Halloween Post

Ya'll, I really thought I posted this weeks ago.  Whoops.

I didn't go all out for Halloween this year - I threw my first Halloween party in five years! - but I did go, like, maybe 50% out.  Here's some spooky stuff:

Every flat surface in the house was littered with plastic spiders, bugs, snakes, vampire teeth, and dead rose petals.

I only got to do one dead bouquet this year, but I kind of loved it.

1.  There were also googly eyes on everything

2. Hammers are scary. What?

Funny story about the "formaldehyde" these eyeballs are soaking in:  I didn't have any food coloring, but I remembered that the ammonia test kit for my aquarium turns water greenish yellow (as long as there's no ammonia).  So I did that.  But apparently the tester drops were detecting the living hell out of something in these painted foam eyeballs, because it just kept getting greener and greener and GREENER.  So I bought food coloring.

ALL THE GOOGLY EYES

The mother of all creepy-crawlies: this  aquarium full of spiders.  I covered the wall behind it and nearby furniture with spiders, too.  Escapees.  Mwahaha.

Frank here doesn't make a great disco ball, but he tried.

Where did I even GET a glitter skull? Why do I have this?

Family photo wall, from top left:   Edith from Crimson Peak, some random internet witch, Sweeney Todd from the film version of the musical with Johnny Depp, Rupert Giles from one of the Buffy Halloween episiodes, and Igor from Young Frankenstein.

Other frames around the house were filled with spooky old Victorian homes (including the one from Practical Magic), and creepy graveyard angel statues.

"Bleeding" white taper candles made by dripping red wax all over them. I only burned myself like six times.

Booze & candy bar, with a ouija board drawn on a chalkboard I made for the kitchen, and paper bats flying around and up to the ceiling.

I re-painted the chalkboard labels on these canisters and added some more to the new canisters so they'd all match.  They're labeled with spell ingredients from Macbeth.

Danger noodle ftw.

It me!  I was a witch.  My friend Laurie insisted on getting a photo of me from above for some reason, which is why this looks like a selfie.  I think she liked the hat. It is a pretty cool hat.









← that's a tattoo on my shoulder, not a visible bra strap

Every witch needs her black cat, right?  I have two.  This one is Rabi.





















Stay spooky, friends.  KTHXBAI.

Comments Are Fixed Again!

Stupid Google.

How To Make Your Food Blurry in 87 Easy Steps

Here's a fun thing about my 1965 duplex:  there's no pantry.  Like, at all. So my Ikea HEMNES glass-door cabinet is now a food-holder.  It works great!

The problem is, you can see the food. All the time.

Also, my kitchen is full of snakes:

Yes, I forgot to take a "before" picture again.




















Anyway, this is nothing a can of glass frosting spray can't handle.   I copied my design from a window cling film design you can get just about anywhere.


I sketched the pattern onto the front of the glass doors with a sharpie, a yardstick, all the math ever, and about seventy-eight little square templates (okay, 3 of them. But I had to make them over and over again because the Sharpie ink kept making the edges soft, which wasn't remotely helpful).

The next step was to tape off all the lines on the inside of the glass, using the Sharpie lines as a guide.


Frosting the glass on the inside means - I hope - that it'll be less likely to get scratched by people going in and out of the cabinet.  Of course, there's more chance of the food scratching it this way, so, six one half dozen the other?  Time will tell.




















In all it took four rolls of thin Washi tape, for both doors. Man that stuff's handy.

The next step was a Pinterest Fail.  I attempted to do the thing where you spritz water onto an area to be painted (in frosted or silver, from what I've seen) and it comes out looking like *drumrolllll* antique glass, or watered glass, or whatever you want to call the pattern of wibbly woobly melted-looking bits of glass.

However. This is not what happened.

What happened was the water caused the frosting spray not to adhere to the glass at all, and it fell off in big chunks as soon as it was dry. Also, some of the glass outside the squares was not as dry as I thought it was - hence the streakiness you see here.

So,  I had to un-tape and scrape clean an entire door and re-do it from scratch, including taping. So, I guess technically I did three doors this weekend, not two.

However, the end product was worth it:

Can you see the food? Is there soup??  YOU HAVE NO IDEA!  MUAHAHA!!! *ahem*cough*

So it doesn't block out anything.  At best this made the food blurry - but I'm satisfied with it. It's still a little less messy-looking, but this tones down the chaos effect that we had going on here before. The food just sort of fades into the furniture now, instead of sticking out like a sore thumb.



















The full monty.  Sewing machines and stack of grocery bags and all. (Sorry).


Even though I used the thinnest Washi tape I could find for the "lead lines", I still wish I'd tried for something thinner.   Still, I think it works just fine the way it is.  It's not supposed to mimic leaded and frosted glass, only lend the impression of.

Overall, I'm pleased with the way it came out. The food is nice and blurry, and it helps the cabinet, and the kitchen, look a bit more clean and organized. And I like the way the glass pattern works with the style of the cabinet itself.  I'll be honest, I neglected to even consider that when I was picking a design - I just wanted something pretty - but it works!



There are, of course, more things I want to do with this cabinet.  But these doors were the thing I wanted to be sure to have finished before the Halloween party this year, so that people don't have to look at all the disorganized food.  Fait accompli.


See you next time!

Grr Spam

For the two(?) of you who actually leave me comments on this blog:

1. Thank you!  <3 nbsp="" p="">
2. Due to the ridiculous number of spam comments I've been getting, I've had to lock comments down on this thing. There's verification now, and Google might require you to sign in to comment.  So sorry!  Stupid robots!!!

Whew!

I know, it's been a hot minute since I posted here, but that's because I haven't been working on any projects around the house.  I've been painting, sketching along with the Inktober drawing challenge, and crocheting all the things. I'm also prepping for a Halloween party, which I haven't thrown since 2014!

I started a fish tank, too. Right now, it's devoid of actual fish - I let it sit a couple of weeks to cycle, got a couple of plants (the leafy little Anubias nana and the Marimo moss ball (actually a beneficial algae) above), and have been contemplating getting a bunch more plants and a Betta but not actually doing it. Aside from a bit of mold on the wood (need some snails to eat it) it's coming along beautifully for, you know, not having any fish in it. Because it's a fish tank.  Let's be real: it's a box of water with a log in it. But it'll grow.

I do have several furniture projects planned:

• Refinishing the once-and-forever art table, which I've been "working on" refinishing for over a year now
• Refinishing my nightstand, an antique plant stand/hall table 
• Refinishing a little wooden chowki table that's seen better days
• Frosting the glass on the doors of my Ikea HEMNES pantry cabinet, and painting the rest of the unit. 
• Staining my Ikea FORHOJA kitchen cart, something I've been thinking about for three years and hadn't decided on until recently
• Possibly building a big honking sideboard for the living room from scratch. Sort of. 

Lots of projects to keep me in the garage this winter! 

But this month, I'm mostly focused on the Halloween party: 

• Buy all the spooky things
• Make all the other things spooky
• Don't have a heart attack over established friends base meeting new friends from work at the party
• Spray-paint the dog* 
• Finish crocheting the little pseudo-Victorian boot spats I'm making for my costume, block them, and sew buttons on 

* not really, but Daisy is getting a body paint costume, as soon as I order some dog-safe paint

I'm working on a painting right now, slowly, and I have no idea when I'll be finished.  But here's the last one I made, finished three weeks ago: 

I also painted this little papier-maché skull for Halloween.  It's not shaped much like an actual human skull, but I tried to get it as realistic-looking as I could anyway.  I'm kind of proud of poor Yoric here. As a friend said to me this morning, it's hard to paint dimension and shape onto something that has none.  Rewarding, when you get it right, but hard.  

Anyway, I'm off to Halloween all the things.  See you again soon!