Things I love

I can't leave a Top Ten list of things I "strongly dislike" all by itself. I have to follow it up with a list of things I love. In no particular order:

The smell of rolled oats

Zucchini bread

Master Pathetico, when he jumps on the bed and buries his little nose into my elbow and starts purring, or when he charges down the hallway expectantly because he thinks it's bedtime, or when he wanders aimlessly meowing pathetically (hence the name), or when he hears the sound of food and comes galloping at the food bowl, or when he buries himself in my clean laundry. Wait. Not then.

Wooden spools

Joss Whedon

Lopi -- I'm really obsessed with Lopi right now.

The first cup of coffee in the morning. And the second. And the third.

My nieces and nephews.

Birthday beverages:

That's a cranberry mojito. YUM!

HULU!


Friends with gardens:

Top Ten

TOP TEN THINGS I STRONGLY DISLIKE:

10. Losing the little tin with all of my darning needles. Because I really don't need to buy MORE darning needles.

9. Sellers on etsy who think that they are recycling by stealing (new) coffee stirrers from Starsucks and using them to make stuff. remember: Just because something is free doesn't mean it was recycled!

8. Cats who vomit on your clean bedspread in the middle of the night and don't even apologize, then want you to put ice in their water bowl when you wake up.

7. Dull scissors.

6. Me, not updating this blog for eleven days.

5. Me, skipping spinning to update this blog.

4. Buyers on ebay who don't read the listing, then leave you negative feedback because they can't read.

3. Me, giving in to buyers on ebay who don't read, to avoid negative feedback.

2.Yoga instructors who do "ab work" during yoga. YOGA. LOOK IT UP.


And the number one thing I strongly dislike:


1. People who use "Top Ten" lists because they aren't creative enough to come up with anything else to write about.

The Office

I've finally worked out a reasonable configuration in my office that doesn't make me want to scream or start throwing things out the window. Well, usually anyway.



So that's my sewing machine on the left, my computer in front of the window (because computers like to be near the window so they can see outside) and the makeshift desk I made by putting a couple of pieces of MDF left over from the closet remodel on top of four bins.

Oh, and perhaps you notice that I am also watching "The Office". (That's Jenna Fischer, NOT the Mona Lisa. Jenna Fischer is way cuter.) It makes me giggle ALL DAY, and I actually manage to get things done as well. No, really.



And here is a very exciting picture of my sewing machine, with (some of) J's awesome collection of signed basketballs on the shelf above it, my thread organizer to the left, and my little mess of stuff that I haven't figured out where to put yet. It's a very eclectic workspace.




And here we have my desk, with the dress form I made of Jessica behind it, and to the left all the little cubbies full of supplies and materials. Ooh, look, and there's my lunch! Tomatoes and cucumbers and fresh basil. YUMMY. Also very exciting.



Hmm. Looking at these pictures, I'm surprised that I'm so inordinately pleased.

ellaluna: Improving Home Improvement

Goddess forbid I ever live anywhere without trying to muscle my way in and change things around!

So I'm living with my friend J for a bit, and decided that her closets needed some sprucing up. I think you can see why. Here's the closet before:

Well, that's not so much a "before" as it is a "right after I knocked out the useless shelf and clothes rod." But you get the idea.

One of J's big complaints was that 30% of the closet is essentially inaccessible, because it's behind a wall. So we designed some narrow shelving that allows a person to step inside and turn to the deeper shelving behind the wall. Maybe a pic would explain that better!

In this pic I'm experimenting with supports for the narrow shelving. I wasn't too happy with the supports you see running down the center, at the corner where the narrow shelves meet the deeper shelves, because it doesn't really allow access to the deeper shelves. I ended up running a support along the wall, under the deep shelves, that extends out to the narrow shelves, and then putting supports at the front on the right of the narrow shelves and in the center along the wall.

Again, that doesn't make a lot of sense, so let's see if I have a picture:

All righty, so this is before I added the narrow shelves, but you can see the support that juts out from the deeper shelves. The reason I didn't want to put a support running the entire length of the narrow shelves is that they are pretty shallow, designed primarily for CD's and DVD's, so we didn't want to take up space with a long, fat, 1x4 support.

On the other side of the closet, I built a double clothes rod, a shorter length of clothes rod for hanging long stuff (there is another closet, so hanging longer things isn't really a priority in this one) and a few extra shelves above. Like this:

Gee, to look at this picture you would think I was photographing all the junk ON the shelf. I think I know someone who needs to learn how to take a picture. (That would be ME)

When I look at this, I think two things. 1) I can't believe I did it! 2) I can't believe it took me the better part of a week to do it! We did have to borrow a circular saw for the weekend to cut everything, but once the weekend was over the saw went back, and any additional cute I had to make (primarily for supports) I had to do by hand with a hacksaw or coping saw. I had a reciprocating saw as well but those things are monsters, not so great for precision cutting as I discovered to my dismay.

All in all I was pretty happy with the finished product. Now if only I could get her to put things away in it...

lightboxing

I'm very focused on listing more frequently on etsy, and to that end I decided to make a ghetto lightbox to make my photography easier.

I used a ruler to draw a line one inch in corners of the box on two sides and the top, then I cut out the areas of the box on the inside of the line where the muslin filter was going to go.

I then reinforced all of the corners with leftover pieces of cardboard because, of course, anytime I can use glue and cardboard I'm like a terrier with a stuffed bunny.


After that I glued muslin to the inside of the box and cut some pieces of posterboard to slide into it to use as an infinity backdrop. Hmm, some pictures of that step would be helpful, wouldn't they?

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the lightbox. Now I seem to be fixated on making little "lifts" covered in the same paper as my backdrop. God forbid I use this lightbox to actually, you know, PHOTOGRAPH anything.

Sometimes I'm just more interested in the process than I am in the result.