Something I Found

While the cat's away...

2012-02-02T10:31:00.001-08:00

Dad's off visiting my sister for three weeks, so I've been crafting to my heart's content, without any pressure to tidy up after myself. I had a few barn items I've been wanting to paint, so I have spent many a happy hour with the coffee table covered with paint bottles and brushes while I watch re-runs of Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer.

Yes, I noticed the spot I missed on the handle!

Digging around in the barn, I found a few large milk cans which begged to be painted. Dad said he liked blue, so here's the first one. After sanding off the rust, I painted it with primer, then flat latex, and traced the picture of the cow on it. I painted it in with acrylic craft paints and gave the whole thing a coat of satin polyurethane. I've got another one going at the moment so I'll post it when I'm done.

With the paints out, I decided to tackle two large cheese boxes, left from some yummy Christmas presents from my brother some years ago. We live near Hancock Shaker village in Massachusetts and love the simplicity of Shaker style. Although these boxes are stapled together, I wanted them to look like the Shaker boxes, with long "fingers". I painted the boxes, one green and one blue, with contrasting tops. Here's the result of the fake joins.

The tops are real folksy with the famous Shaker tree design and a little folk art village.
I am pretty pleased with them. They should make nice knitting project boxes.

Reality check

2012-02-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

My older daughter is a great inventor of her own life (and I mean that in a good way). She prefers to pick and choose the things from the past that seem superior to the choices we have in the present, and it seems to work very nicely. Of course, as she once said, it makes her sad that life today isn't like it was then, and probably wasn't even like that then. Better to stay grounded in the present, since we have distorted the past so much, and are unable to process the future, even if we were given a glimpse of it.

Darling Clementine

2012-01-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

Recently, I happened upon a blog about using odds and ends in clever ways, and a woman was asking what she could do with her after-Christmas clementine crates. They are just so little and cute -- there must be something to do with them. The main suggestions were window plant boxes and doll beds. I've got enough plants, but one can never have too many doll beds, right? And I had a clementine crate, so doll bed it was.

My first decision was choosing which way the bed would go, with the little legs up or down. Putting them down made them ready made as legs, but it seemed weird to have a box upside down and the bedding on the top. The other way, the four posts stood up oddly, the bed was very deep, and it had no legs. I went with the latter option.

First I sawed off the tops of the posts even with the box. Then I cut four strips of 1/2"x1 1/2" wood for the bedposts. The foot-end two were 6" long (just to the tops of the box. The head-end two were 9" long. I glued and nailed them to the head and foot, right into the triangular posts. Across the head posts, I nailed a little strip of molding as a headboard. Two coats of white semi-gloss latex and the crate looked like a real bed!

Using "junk" presents problems because corners aren't square, cheap wood splits, and there are annoying gaps. Just do your best. I have found that drilling holes (always slightly smaller than your nail or screw) helps the fastener to go in without splitting wood and without having to subject your little object to heavy hammer blows.

Of course, a little bed needs little bedding, so I made a thick mattress out of heavy muslin. It is a box-shaped mattress with a top and bottom the size of the inside of the box, and sides made from a two inch strip all the way around. I stuffed it good and solid and tufted it with buttons on both sides for strength. Then I made a little fitted sheet with elastic, a two-sided coverlet, and a little muslin pillow with a pillow case to match the sheet. Cute as all get-out!


Do you ever have to drag your cat out of your bed unmade bed?

All finished and ready for a cat nap.

Caveat vector

2012-01-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

which roughly translates to "let the passenger beware", a useful motto for the world traveler. Dad is going to Sweden on Monday for three weeks for a visit with my younger sister's family. As much as he complains that long plane flights make his knees hurt, he travels well and enjoys getting out and about. His assignment on this trip is to work with my nephew Nicolas on his high school major project. Nico loves ships and airplanes, and reads everything about battles, and Dad was in the US Navy during WWII, so his topic is "The Battle of Leyte Gulf", which Dad participated in. Leyte Gulf was the largest sea battle in history, and will never be surpassed, due to changes in military technology. Dad went out to a hobby shop today and bought a model kit for a Fletcher class destroyer, which is the kind of ship he served on, the USS Knapp. I can just imagine Nico's glee when he sees it, and the fun the two of them will have putting it together.

I could tell you some amusing almost Baron von Munchhausen tales of my international travel, but that would be better for a whole new blog. The last couple of decades have been pretty tame, at least not involving firearms, military raids and attacks of insurgents, beasts rarely seen by the general population, Soviet era modes of transportation, and people who think nothing of sitting on your lap and taking a nap. My own traveling motto is from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle -- Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. I'm getting tired of being a wallflower at this dance. Time to get on the road, Granny.

Dolly and Minerva don't seem to grasp the concept yet.

Color me cream and green

2012-01-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

Hoosier cabinet dispensing all sorts of stuff!

I just love old-timey kitchens like this. Sure, I know that modern kitchens are set up for efficiency, but these cream and green rooms, with their awkward appliances and crazy linoleum, ring some happy alarm that must have been set in my infancy. I just know there is a set of dishes with yellow daffodils or tulips in the cupboard and a green glass bowl of sugar cubes on the table. Several years ago, I bought a great little gas stove which I would take a picture of, were it not behind a huge stack of my stuff in the barn. It looks pretty much this, except that mine is a gas stove and it is cream and green! I could have the sink above, if I cared to get it from Vermont up to mid-western Canada. I can see the customs folk now -- "Ma'am, you've got everything in here but the ki -- hey, she does have the kitchen sink!" One thing I've wanted was one of those small kitchen tables with a wooden base, with a little cutlery drawer in it, and an enamel top.

Driving through the village last September, I saw an old guy putting a table out by the road. Having no shame, I pulled up. He produced the sign he was about to put on it -- FREE! I stuck it in the back of the Geo Metro and hauled it home. It had nice unpainted oak legs and skirt, and the little drawer. The old guy (turned out to be a friend of Dad's) said the Legion wouldn't take it for their sale because one of the leaves didn't pull out right. I fixed that, so it has two "dutch" leaves that pull out from under the top. My only complaint was that it had a very dull, worn Formica top in a poor attempt at wood grain. So I sanded that, primed it, and gave it two full cans of cream high-gloss enamel spray paint. When really dry, like a week later, I gave it two really heavy coats of gloss polyurethane. Ooh, it is shiny! And it's up in the barn covered by a blanket, waiting for me to move to Canada some day. In case you think I live in a shed...

Oh, one more picture! We cut our own Christmas trees from the woods. Dad brought it in and I decorate. When I was straightening the trunk, I felt a bundle of straw, and discovered a little bird's nest tucked away since summer. I perched it on a branch and put some jelly beans in for eggs. I hope all the original eggs hatched and the tiny birds survived to fly away.

Transcending Time and Space

2012-01-07T13:24:00.000-08:00

Starry Night with Tardis

I'll admit it -- I am a Dr. Who fan. For those poor benighted souls who don't know who (or what) Dr. Who is, It is a British sci-fi television series about a 900+ year old Time Lord who buzzes through time and space in a re-vamped blue police callbox called the TARDIS. He's always dropping down to earth, befriending gutsy girls who become his adventure companion. The cool thing about Dr. Who is that he occasionally gets killed, but is able to move into another body and get back in action. What a great plot device! The show can go on forever (yay!) and not rely on the availability of the actor. Actually, this show has been around since 1963. I remember watching some of the old black and white episodes and frankly, they were pretty bad. The filming, sound, and props were so cheap. The series ended in 1989. But the Doctor does not die! In 2005, some blessed people brought back the Ninth Doctor, complete with wonderful filming, sound, and props, and great stories.

We're working on the Eleventh Doctor at the moment, played by the adorably dorky Matt Smith, with Karen Gillan as his companion, Amy Pond. I was so miffed when the temperamental and cute David Tennant, the Tenth Doctor, left, although I was getting tired of analyzing the facial bone structure of his pal Rose, but I will be way more put out when Matt and Karen go. Dr. Who fandom can reach some extremes. Check out the entries for "Where's the Tardis?", a competition to be creative in TARDIS-making, hosted by BBC America. I have made some minor TARDISes, but admit I would love to see one of these up behind the barn!

nicknamed the TURDIS

My craftiness has resulted in a knitted cover for my daughter's Kindle, which is so apropos, since both the TARDIS and the Kindle are much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Also bigger on the inside

I saw this super-cool rolling suitcase online and thought, "Hey! My suitcases are brilliant blue canvas!" So I painted the smaller bag like this. At the airport, I actually worried that people would think it was something "official", but I did get one young woman who hooted, " I love your TARDIS!"

I can tell you one thing, though. My next car is going to be TARDIS blue.

Dolly & Minerva visit Currier & Ives

2012-01-06T10:14:00.000-08:00


BASE? What do those kittens mean?

Dolly and Minerva don't seem to notice that these fluffy white kitties are a good ten feet tall.

The Hopeless Chest

2012-01-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

NOT what it looked like

Several years ago, Dad picked up an old chest from the side of the road and hauled it home for me to deal with. It was a cedar-lined hope chest, manufactured by Virginia Maid, a subsidiary of Lane Furniture, the famous hope chest people. Scouring the web, I came across this picture of the same model, showing what the veneer pattern looked like once upon a time.
However, my chest was in pretty bad shape. The bottom "skirt" boards were split or missing, and the whole thing had been painted blue, badly stenciled, and covered with yellowed varnish. The inside was in very good condition, so I decided to give it a try. I stripped the paint off the front to see if the veneer was worth salvaging, and it wasn't. So I sanded it down, primed it, and did a faux wood thing. I admit I'm not a pro at this, but it was good practice. It's supposed to be ribbon mahogany. I painted a base coat of a peachy color and worked a couple of layers of darker graining. I replaced the bottom boards and left them straight, not curved, as in the original.

Stored in the barn

One problem was that I took the end boards of the top off so I could strip them more easily, and there they sat for several months. The top was warped slightly, so I couldn't get the ends to fit in their grooves again. To correct this, I had to cut a couple of grooves across the inside top to give it more flexibility. It worked well, and I'll stain those cuts eventually.

I found some cedar oil at the Vermont Country Store in Weston, the next town north and gave the interior a good rub. I was pleased that the inside was in such good shape, with the neat folding tray for doo-dads, and it smells lovely. The lock is missing, but I found links online which told me that there was a recall on Virginia Maid and Lane locks, due to some locking problems and some poor little children who suffocated inside trunks (how awful!). If you have one of these trunks, you can send in for a safe replacement lock for free.
Lane Virginia Maid Cedar Chest Lock Recall

An Ephemeral Life in Ackermann's Repository

2012-01-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

Look no further than Ackermann's!

One of the reasons why I majored in history in college was my love of imagining what it would be like to live in any given time. Many eras of history fascinate me, but the vaguely-defined Regency period in England is particularly interesting. Fortunately, with all the enthusiasm over Jane Austen in recent years, there is no end to the material posted on the internet for me to peruse. A gold mine of information is found in a publication called "Ackermann's Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions, and politics". Rudolph Ackermann's monthly magazine ran from 1809-1828 and was the arbiter of all of the topics it claimed to be. Beyond that, he also had a store which supplied all the items the upper class needed to follow his advice. The magazine included beautiful colour prints of fashion, architecture, interior design, furniture, carriages, etc., which give us today a glimpse into the lives of the very wealthy.

Perhaps the most ephemeral of ephemera!

I'm also a fanatic collector (downloader) of digital ephemera -- all those little paper items that are either lost, destroyed, decayed, or with luck, tucked away and found much later. The word ephemera come from the Greek, meaning "lasting only one day", and includes all those little clippings and advertisements we (should) routinely throw into the recycling box. There are a zillion great digital ephemera websites from which you can download wonderful things for crafting. Because of copyright laws, most of these items are quite old, as their age has put them in public domain. Be very careful in following these laws when using images in items you sell! Anyhoo... while wandering through Ackermann's, my mind began imagining the lives of the people in the fashion plates, and Dolly and Minerva were born. D&M are sisters who only exist in the world of ephemera, which has a profound influence on their knowledge of the world. Most of the time, they live securely in Ackermann's magazine, but they occasionally wander into other publications, with the most odd results. A scrapbook is kept of their adventures, which begins today.

If you are interested in a complete download of all of Ackermann's colour plates, please visit Evelyn Kennedy Duncan's blog, My Fanciful Art Quest, and see the fantastic things she has done with these images!

Up in the Barn

2012-01-02T12:12:00.000-08:00

There was a bit more sun today than we've had for awhile, so I took the camera up to the barn to photograph some of the items I've moved up there. In my first picture of the laundry/work room, I was working on an old desk. I picked it up a couple of years ago. Coming home from work, I saw it out in the roadside snow bank in front of a house, obviously being tossed out. I got it into the trunk of the 1996 Geo Metro I still drive and hauled it home. What a strange piece of furniture it turned out to be. It was made of 2x2s and scrap boards with a big piece of plywood hinged on the top. The top was very long toward the person sitting, with large lobes of sorts on either side. The kind of thing that screams "homeschool". It had been painted a high gloss red (I know my International Harvester colors) and then someone unacquainted with the most basic paint chemistry had tried to paint over it with a latex grayish-green. So it was a peeling mess. The real hoot was that the back rung of this desk was a forked poplar branch with the bark still on.

Dad's 1952 IH Farmall Cub tractor
I stripped off what paint I could and repainted it a nice dirt red, as I call it. I replaced the poplar stick with a real 2x2, cut down the desk top to a manageable size, and replaced the rusted hinges. The top had never been painted, and had an interesting grain pattern, so I left it as was. The rest of the desk, considering the assortment of odd lumber in it, needed a bit of camouflage, so I did some goofy faux wood graining, finished with a couple of coats of satin poly. All in all, it looked pretty nice, so it deserved some extra touches. Dad put in a little chain contraption, so the lid won't flap back and bend the hinges. I made two little corner brackets inside, with dowels that fit in so I can use the desk with a level top. Then I got inspired and decoupaged a couple of copies of old school papers I found online, including a hand-drawn map of Vermont! I'm pretty pleased with it.

Finished desk

and inside!

New use for old dustpan

2011-12-22T17:09:00.000-08:00

Before...

Dad's barn is a treasure trove of fantastic things, if you're looking for old plumbing parts, mountains of odd boards, bales of barbed wire, ancient tractors, and a thousand rusty coffee cans filled with millions of rusty nails. It's better than that -- if I need something, I can usually count on finding it in the barn, or at least, coming away with something better.

I was up there last summer on a rooting-around mission, and came across this old rusty dustpan. The remains of red and cream paint and the remnants of an old decal charmed me into bringing it down to the house, where I cleaned it and sanded it with steel wool. A coat of cream Rust-Oleum and some red hi-gloss left over from Dad's tractor restoration spiffed it up nicely. I wasn't up for splurging on a new repro decal, so I copied one and decoupaged it on the front. A couple of coats of polyurethane, et voila!

Dad loved it and decided it would be his new out-going letter rack. It has a long wire handle which now hangs from the wall behind his chair.

Finished workspace!

2011-12-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

It's an improvement!

A Room of One's Own

2011-12-20T14:24:00.001-08:00

Virginia Woolf wrote that, to be a successful writer, a woman must have money and a room of one's own. I think that goes for any home-based profession. Of course, this woman must be single and/or have a very supportive partner. I'm an older single woman and live with my much older father. Fortunately, he is extremely tolerant of my creative efforts, so there we've got that side taken care of.

Money? My very interesting job was eliminated in February 2009, and I've been rarely employed since then. The recession has hit my rural area very hard. Room? Although this house is quite large, most of it is closed off in the winter to save on heating bills. My room is a pretty small one which is also an "office", with most of the space taken up by my single bed, two large desks, a dresser, and a bookcase. So, I appropriated the laundry room as my workshop. In an effort to make it a better space, I did a big sorting of everything in it. My mother, who passed away in '09, was a huge collector of stuff. True, she was "nasty neat", as she put it, but the house is filled with things she loved and thought she needed. Well, we didn't need four rice cookers and twelve coffee makers. We didn't need a dozen ice cream sundae glasses, or much of the other stuff that was stored on the shelves in the laundry room. I made a massive clear-out and put a lot of things in boxes for the church tag sale. Then I decided to wallpaper the room.

This room, painted a smudgy white, contains the washer and dryer, water heater, two walls of shelving, and the refrigerator and coat rack at the far end. Was I insane to wallpaper this place? All the shelves were boards on brackets, so I took them all down. There was a lot of climbing involved, tucking dripping paper strips into every accessible spot. I also papered the shelves. I painted the window and put up a cute curtain. A few accessories on the wall and ledge behind the washer, and I had a super nice room that I was pretty proud of. And it only took a few rolls of thrift shop wallpaper and the physical work out of a boulderer (those lunatics who climb mountains or skyscrapers with only their suction-cup fingertips as equipment).

Once it was all pretty, I moved my woodworking into the narrow room. A room of my own!