www.allposters.co.uk |
(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)
www.allposters.co.uk |
(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)
www.allposters.co.uk |
(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)
image from Clipart Library |
I finished the skirt for Ethel-Maud I showed you previously and as I said, it is a little wider than I would have really liked. So, as I was getting mightily frustrated trying to work out the best way to make a matching sweater.....
"I generally avoid temptation...unless I can't resist it" Mae West |
I do try not to get tempted by pretty/unusual/vintage/whatever "stuff" but buttons are one of my (many!) little weaknesses. So not only do I have a yarn stash, I also have a button stash.....and for some reason, bearing in mind that I am not a sewer, I have a little fabric stash too 😏
Anyhoo, I was cruising through Etsy looking for pretty hair elastics and I came across EcoBlue...
...I wasn't actually looking for buttons...
...but since I was already there, it would've been rude not to have a look at Gill's pretty little wooden buttons. So I had a little look.....I swear I was just going to look ~ for future reference, of course. Somehow, though, these cute little buttons ended up in my basket 😉
And yes, since I'm sure you're wondering, I did get some new hair elastics whilst I was there, too, so I didn't totally abandon my original mission LOL
At the Seaside by William Merritt Chase; The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai; The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning by Camille Pissarro |
Snap the Whip by Winslow Homer; Gardanne by Paul Cezanne; The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder |
A Wheatfield with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh; Self Portrait with a Straw Hat by Vincent van Gogh; Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses by Paul Cezanne |
The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil by Edouard Manet; The Gulf of Marseilles Seen from L'Estaque by Paul Cezanne; Study for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat |
Madame Manet at Bellevue by Edouard Manet; Dancers Practicing at the Bar by Edgar Degas |
A Bouquet of Flowers by Clara Peeters; Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze |
www.allposters.co.uk |
(4th April 1928 - 28th May 2014)
I've been making my own dishcloths for a long time now ~ I find they are way better than the ones you can buy, even if I do say so myself!
I did get tempted by a pack of Dream Cloths last June, though, when I placed one of my bulk orders with Who Gives A Crap but to be honest I much prefer my home-made cloths.
But needs must, and poor little Ethel-Maud definitely needed something to protect her modesty (and keep her warm), so this is what I came up with ~ Adrian thought it was some sort of bikini! I basically just crocheted some rectangles of half-trebles (US half doubles), using a 3mm hook and some Adriafil Azzurra (a 3/4ply yarn) from my stash. I then sewed them up to make the bandeau bra top and knickers; I also added a simple picot edge to the knicker legs to make them prettier.
To be honest, whilst they serve a purpose for the time being, they are not ideal as they are somewhat bulky. Both the bra and the knickers could also have done with being a tad less wide ~ although the latter would have been better had they had a little extra length to the body section! With Ethel-Maud being made from a velvet fabric, the knickers in particular don't slide up her body very smoothly either. As I say, they are fine for now but I will have to rethink how I make clothes for her at some point.
image from Clipart Library |
The cupboard is already living up to its storage potential. The space at the very top has various bits and pieces of Adrian's that he doesn't want to have on display, but equally doesn't want to discard. The sections behind the little wicker chair are also now filled. The triangular door at the top is held on with magnets and it would be all to easy to catch the coomb ceiling when removing it; we therefore decided that it would be sensible to keep things in there that we don't need to have regular access to...in this instance, the ashes of, and bits 'n' bobs belonging to, our dogs ~ probably best not to let our guests know that, eh 😉 The cupboard section below now holds: spare towels and toiletries for the upstairs bathroom; gifts and wrapping paper, etc, for upcoming birthdays and Christmas; and on the bottom shelf, single-sized bedding for if we ever need to make up a bed on the sofa downstairs. The section behind the double doors has a hanging rail for our guests' clothes (and the ones Beverly has left here on a permanent basis LOL); I've also re-used a couple of the plastic crates we had under our bed to store games and the things I (try) to collect over the course of the year to make up Beverly's Christmas advent gifts ~ she still shows no signs of tiring of this rod-I-made-for-my-own-back Christmas "tradition" 😵. My clothes-horse is now stored in the cupboard, too, along with a few other odds and ends.
Whilst all the work has been going on, we've been to-ing and fro-ing over whether we should have a double or king-sized bed. In the end though, because it will be so close to the bathroom wall, we have decided to order a double ~ hopefully those six extra inches of space will help to make it more comfortable getting round the end of the bed.
The length of blue tubing laying on the floor is the protective packaging of our Silent Gliss curtain pole. Needless to say, the ordering of said pole didn't go smoothly; when it arrived, it had been made using the wrong measurement and was too short! Of course, this was all going on whilst I was away south, so Adrian had to contact the company to sort it out. To be fair to them they confirmed straightaway that it was their mistake, and supplied a new pole very quickly. Hopefully, this will be one of the things Shug will be able to get put up for us this next week. I will then make a decision on curtain fabric; we're having a single curtain which will be pulled round to the right. I'm no seamstress so will have to have it made-to-measure for me.
Adrian has now got the television and DVD player, which have been languishing beneath our bed since we moved up here, set up on the white stand beside the window. What I am now using as a blanket rack is actually the towel rack that used to be in the downstairs bathroom before it was refurbished. I would hate for our guests to be cold whilst they are staying with us! I have made a start on crocheting a blanket for the bedroom (and have more yarn from my stash in mind to make a second at some point), but it will probably take me quite a few months to get it finished as I keep getting distracted by other things! In the meantime, at least there are a couple of blankets ready should they be needed.
The chest of drawers has a vintage china dressing-table set on it which I purchased over 40 years ago from an antiques market. Before I went down south I ordered a shelf from The Shelving Company on Etsy, in eggshell white, to go above the chest of drawers (another of those finishing tweaks on poor Shug's list!); I have a rather sweet vintage wall-cupboard, that has a little mirror in the centre, that I want to display on it. The magazine rack had been painted green when I bought it a few years before we moved up here. I had thought of perhaps painting it either white or a deeper blue than the walls to tie it in with what has turned out to be a blue-and-white-with-pink-accents bedroom colour scheme, but must confess that I am rather fond it's shabby chic green finish so will most likely leave it be 😉
The somewhat shabby looking wooden stand with the basket of teddies is more or less at what will be the end of the bed. It's actually meant for folk to put their suitcase on although it doesn't seem quite large enough to be honest. Still, when we have guests I shall put the basket beneath the stand, then they can use it if they wish. This is something that I will most likely paint at some point as the colour really isn't all that attractive. Whilst it isn't shown in this photo, we now have a nice new heater on the bathroom wall.
The sweet little oak chair in front of the window was given to me by my Auntie Mavis many years ago, and is something that I treasure. The darker stain that was used on the wood sometime in the chair's history has worn away back to it's natural colour in places, and ideally I'd like all the wood stripped back and simply finished with a coat of beeswax. I'm going to have a chat with a local furniture repair and upholstery company not that far from here, as the chair is in need of a complete overhaul and is not something that I would want to tackle! (The vacuum cleaner is not a bedroom fixture, by the way 😉)
I have no idea what the plant is beside the chair. Beverly "rescued" it when our local food bank relocated to different premises ~ I don't think that any of her colleagues there really wanted to take it in and she knows what a sucker I am for half-dead plants 😃 Anyhoo, it's come back to life admirably and seems to like living near the bedroom window. The photo on the windowsill, by the way, is of my sister Amanda and I when she was a very new baby and I had just turned four.
It's amazing, really, just how very much the bedroom has changed over these past few months ~ I still can't help smiling each time I walk into the room. There aren't that many more things that need to be done now and I'm so looking forward to having our first guests up to stay, hopefully sometime this year 😊
I'm way behind, as usual, with my show-and-tell guest bedroom photos ~ a lot has happened since my last post!
As you can see, the painting is all finished now...
...and the carpet has been laid.
There are still a few things for Shug (our lovely joiner) to finish and hopefully he'll be here this coming week to get them done. In the meantime, we've put the furniture (apart from a bed, which we need to buy) into the room and I've started to do the bit I like the best ~ putting out all the pretty stuff. More updates to come in due course 😊