a little knitty bit..

My Putney shawl from the knit-along at Yardgoods Center. I am using Heritage Silk Paints in color 9789, and I love this green ! The yarn is so soft and easy to knit.. I picked up the yarn yesterday and the class is tomorrow. It's an easy pattern, so far.. but I am not sure about the lacy edge. Fairly new to the knitting world and between my dyslexia and my grasshopper attention span, I may do a lot of 'frogging' once I get to the edge.
I'll never be as fast a knitter as my cyber-pal Sue, but I'm having fun nonetheless. 

365 days later....

I can't believe it's been a year since I last blogged. Well, actually, I can.. I seem to go in a hundred directions at once each day, so it's not surprising something gets left undone.
In the past year, I have tried to get organized in the sewing room, and finish up some of my UFO's.
I was gifted with 3 old sewing machine cabinets in the spring, and I took two of them and cobbled them together to make a storage box for my knitting supplies. The top serves as a surface for my ironing pad now.

One of the cabinets was for an old treadle machine but someone had removed the large pulley and the foot pedal and set up the machine for electricity. I took the drawers off of that one, and added them into the center of another cabinet, from which I had removed the door and the roundish wooden insert. I placed the door on the bottom of the two drawers, so you can see it connects them and provides a place to put books. The tag holders are from Michael's Arts & Crafts, in their scrapbooking department. I used some also on the row of drawers I removed from an old Adler sewing cabinet. The rest of that cabinet had been particle board and was not in the best of shape. That became a free-standing drawer unit to place between my sewing table and my ironing surface. 

Mike had an old table top from the 50's in the basement, and he had done a lovely job spray-painting it red. (my spray-painting talents are nil.. I get drips and runs so I was pleased that his efforts were so successful) He generously allowed me to adopt it after he moved out. I knew I raised that boy right !
Taking a couple of pieces of old pine 1x6 and screwing them to the treadle base, I slid the old metal table top on and secured it. That became the sturdy base for my Bernina to live on. I am a happy camper with my up-cycling efforts ! Pardon the clutter. There are works in progress ! The paper pieced points will become the shoulders of a flannel jacket that should be finished this weekend, if all goes well. To the right of this table is my light box, and then the old school desk that holds my serger. To the left is another treadle, that belonged to a relative and came home with me about 30 years ago. I have used it several times to make quilts.
I've done some knitting and sewing and quilting and so forth this past year but spent over a month refinishing an old commode, that I ended up painting white after all. I don't seem to have a picture of that. Another month was spent stripping horrid blue paint off the dining table legs and re-staining it to match the laminate top. We're very satisfied with the results, tho the picture is quite dark.
Yep, I don't have matching chairs.. I like it that way.
In May, I spent a few days reupholstering several of my living room chairs and footstools. WalMart had a deal on tapestry fabric several years ago and I bought a whole bolt !

It's been a busy year !
Hopefully I can remember to blog more often in future..