Sunday, February 27, 2011

My next redecorating project...

oh boy, this one will be a tough one:

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excuse the blurry photo please, I didn´t realize until I looked at it right now!

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this little beauty is one of two little chairs that my mom scored from a client who was selling her house. She needed to get rid of her old stuff and these two little ones, although very very scrappy and dirty have real potential.

The first one will be reupholstered in a very cool zebra print (cotton velours)and it´s legs painted black.

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I haven´t decided on the color scheme/fabric for the second one yet, but I have enough on my plate at the moment anyway!

My feeble attempt at organizing my "stuff"!

For too long I neglected to organize my frequent fabric purchases, which led to total chaos. I had no idea how much of what I had bought where, how much I paid for it and what the fiber content is...
my first attempt at trying to resolve this problem was attaching a little note with all the information I could find on the fabrics. As my fabric hoarding, um I mean buying got a little out of hand I got sick of having to dig through the overstuffed closet looking for something and I found a helpful little sheet on the internet to print out. I haven´t gotten around to adding all of my fabrics to this, but here you can see what I have organized so far.

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Next up is a little book in which I glue my inspirations I find in magazines or catalogs. I am behind on this (I have about a years worth of InStyle Magazine that I need to browse through and take the scissors to!) but eventually it will happen.

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And last but not least, my sewing journal:

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I started this in january and I record every sewing project with a little swatch of the fabric(s) used, the pattern, sizing, alterations, fit and things I would change for the next incarnation. I also write a little comment on how I like it or not. This will eventually be the basis for the pattern reviews for PR I want to write... eventually...

WIP: Clapotis

Here you see my current WIP. A Clapotis (my first, and yes it has taken me eons to join the craze!) in madelinetosh tosh DK in the colorway "Baltic".

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I bought 4 skeins quite a while ago for some sort of scarf/shrug. And there it sat in my stash for months, forgotten and neglected (poor baby...) until I watched the first SATC movie and fell in love with that huge red scarf Carrie wears in the scene where she moves back to her old apartment after the disastrous wedding. I wanted to make a similar scarf and dug into my stash, because the yarn budget is tight at the moment. So I stumbled upon the gorgeous blue and obscenely soft merino and cast on:
first: 1x1 rib about 8 in. wide with plans to put fringe on the finished scarf. I didn´t feel the love and ripped...
second: 2x2 rib with same thoughts on fringe... again not feeling the love... rip the second
third: Clapotis!!!! And I love it! I am knitting the scarf with the same number of increases and decreases but added a couple repeats to the straight sections.
The straight sections are finished now and tonight, once I plant myself on the couch in front of the TV, I will begin the decreases, hoping to finish before the weather becomes too warm for a merino scarf...

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

New Beginnings

Hi, have I seen you here before? I don´t think so, since this is my new blog. The title “Today´s the first day of the rest of my life” is pretty self explanatory, I think. I had a different blog, but I wasn´t good at keeping it up to date. My life was different back then and I have changed very much and am still going through many changes. Almost exactly 6 months ago, I broke up with my boyfriend of 6 ½ years and I haven´t regretted that decision at all. It took me almost a year to decide whether I wanted to go through with this, but in the end I did. I´m sure, I will tell you more about this part of my life, but not now. There are more important matters at hand: sewing and knitting and redecorating!!!
I have been sewing regularly for about 3 years, but have just lately really tried to go about it in a more organized way… My fabric stash is organized, I am making a dedicated sewing space in my office, I have started a sewing journal with notes about every pattern I sew and have started a fabric catalogue (still needs work though!). My goal this week will be to write up pattern reviews for PR (I really want to start contributing there regularly) of everything I sewed since starting the journal: that will be about 8 reviews…
Another thing I want to do is inofficially participate in the jacket-a-month sew-along. January is already over, obviously and I didn´t finish that jacket, but I will eventually. The February Jacket is coming along nicely. It is unlined, not that complicated, which is great because it will be my first finished jacket (tempting the sewing gods with that, or what?). I have countless WIPs (including about 4 or 5 jackets/coats) and as soon as I get my sewing room cleaned up and organized, I will finally put all my WIPs in one place, take inventory and work on that pile.
Knitting is another thing I love doing (ravelry name: ribbit) and I always have something on the needles (multiple things actually). Since I travel a lot for work, it´s great to have something productive to do in the evening in the various hotel rooms I stay in. I don´t have quite as many knitting WIPs as I do sewing WIPS and most of those aren´t abandoned mid-project, instead just needing the ends woven in. Look out for some modeled shots of (hopefully) finished objects over the next couple of weeks.
Due to a certain breakup, I felt the urge (and also need, since I hardly had any furniture left) to redecorate my apartment, which I have been doing on weekends. I will post pictures of what I have done so far and of the things to come.
This shall be it for now…
More later!