Runaway October

I’ve been pretty busy lately. There’s only 61 days ’til Haloween, which means about 54 until our party.

So far I’ve:

• Stained our garage util­ity sink tea-staining cheesecloth.
• Made about half a skele­ton worth of paper mache bones.
• Redid a giant plas­tic pump­kin I picked up at a yard­sale. It needed paint and sand­ing and such.
• Made PVC flicker candles
• And destroyed a lamp and chan­de­lier and put it all back together as a, what I like to call, Lampalier!

Ta da!

Not bad, eh? I had an old shiny brass light fix­ture we took down out of the house and an aged brass lamp base I picked up at Good­Will for like $3. I took them apart, stuck them back together, had my dad cut some metal disks for the can­dle­holder parts and painted. Of course, I don’t have any big can­dles handy at the moment, but you get the idea. And it’s very big and heavy. Very dra­matic. Also, no “before” pic­tures. I’m lazy like that.

And this is where I admit where I was wrong. Was that a col­lec­tive gasp I just heard?! I know, I know. I was bab­bling about what color to paint it one evening and my hus­band sug­gests Matte Black. I prob­a­bly gave him the stu­pid­est look ever. Matte Black? Seri­ously? Men have no sense. Seri­ously. So I pick out this ham­mered black color and grab some dark grey auto­mo­tive primer and start prim­ing away. Prob­lem is I really like the primer color, so Matte Black it shall stay. I love you honey!

It’s gonna show fin­ger­prints like crazy, but what doesn’t in my house?

Don’t ask about the chair on the table. I was gonna drape a back­ground cloth but my fam­ily was giv­ing me too many crazy looks.

See those can­dles? Made ‘em. Yep. I’m not entirely sure open flames will be a good idea, so these “can­dles” will be used with flick­er­ing LED tealights in strate­gic loca­tions where I really appre­ci­ate things NOT catch­ing on fire. Here’s a tuto­r­ial, if you are so inclined. I would like to add though, to skip the expend­ing foam step. The stuff is expen­sive and a pain. Just turn your tea light on, put it in, and stuff some news­pa­per or gro­cery bags under­neath it. You don’t need to worry about heat or melt­ing or any­thing like that.

So have you started on your Hal­loween stuff yet? Is it too early to start decorating?

I like to fre­quent thrift stores, espe­cially on 50% off days. I also like to read dec­o­rat­ing and home­mak­ing blogs.

Because of said blogs, I’ve real­ized that I need to pay more atten­tion to dec­o­rat­ing my own house.

Thrift stores are a great place for find­ing one of a kind items, espe­cially if you have an eye for refur­bish­ing or updat­ing things. You have to real­ize the poten­tial of things, I guess you could say. My hus­band doesn’t quite get it, so I often get ‘What are you going to do with it?’ or ‘What is it?” or ‘Why on earth did you buy that?’. In gen­eral I get kid­ded for alot of the “dec­o­rat­ing” I do.

Recently I had a tough pur­chas­ing dilemma. My mom, the boys, a friend and I were at Good­will, when Mom men­tioned there was a really cool green chair near the back but it had some rips in it. I didn’t think much of it. I mean, a green chair, right? As I strolled towards the back… Okay, so as I calmly walked to the back while my kids were fight­ing like wolver­ines in the cart, the chair caught my eye.

See what I mean? Would that not have made you look too?

I think I sat on it for a good 20 min­utes decid­ing what to do. It was $25 on half price. Prob­lem was it had rips, like mom men­tioned. I even sent a pic­ture to my hus­band and asked what to do. Some­times it’s eas­ier to let him decide. He told me sure as long as it was in good con­di­tion. Yikes.

This is the seat. It was two smaller rips before my boys noticed it. :S

I just couldn’t pass it up though. I bought it!

I was so upset and angry when they loaded it for me though. The guy load­ing it put it on a box dolly and drug it across the asphalt, doing even more dam­age to it around the bot­tom edges then it had before.

My mom thinks the chair is awe­some, but Matt still makes fun of me for it. He just has no sense, right?

The color above is more true to life, and it obvi­ously needs a real home, other than stuffed in my front sit­ting room. From what we can tell it’s real leather and some­one cov­ered it by hand, hence the slightly erratic nail­head trim. But that’s all part of the appeal for me.

I’ve looked into leather repair for it, but hon­estly I think the lit­tle lamb skin on it is per­fect. It also helps reduce the stick­i­ness of bare legs against leather that I dread.

So, what do you  think? I LOOVE it!

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Recently I’ve come across a cou­ple arti­cles and tuto­ri­als on how to recy­cle yarn. At first I thought some­one was tak­ing it too far. I mean, wouldn’t that be a HUGE amount of work for a lit­tle bit of yarn? No. Think about how many skeins of yarn it takes to make a nor­mal sweater — 4, 8, 12? Depends on the sweater and the yarn but that’s a lot of money if you buy some­thing that isn’t ugly clearance-pile acrylic. Just a decent small wool skein is $5!

So I experimented.

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I bought two small hooded Good­will sweaters, cute as but­tons, but only big enough to fit one of my boobs in. Okay, more than that but just know­ing that some­one that petite existed made me want to destroy the sweaters. Kid­ding! They were 100% cot­ton and appeared to be Super Bulky. I did the seam check… Awe­some! The pan­els were shaped, not knit­ted in large blocks, cut and then serged together. That would mean that the yarn would be in lots of lit­tle pieces instead of one con­tin­u­ous strand. Had the sweaters been made out of an acrylic I wouldn’t have both­ered because acrylic is so much cheaper in the stores that it’s not worth the work.

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Basi­cally, all I had to do was sep­a­rate the sweater pieces — hood, sleeves, back, placket, etc and then unravel them. I used no fancy tools besides a seam rip­per, and just wound the yarn around my arm, like you would do with an exten­sion cord. It didn’t take me very long as once I had the sec­tions sep­a­rated I could wind the yarn while watch­ing TV with­out pay­ing atten­tion. It was def­i­nitely a good work­out for my “mama arms”! Because the sweaters were made of cot­ton yarn I washed them first as there was no risk of felt­ing, but now that it’s unrav­eled it’s kinky as shown by the pic­tures. So I’ll soak it in hot water and then hang it out to dry with a lit­tle bit of weight on it. The top pic­ture is on a full sized cof­fee table for an idea of how much yarn one sweater gave me. Oh, and both had about 8 really cute but­tons on them that I can reuse too.

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A few tidbits:

• Uncer­tain if it is wool or not? Soak it overnight in straight bleach. If it dis­solves then it is wool. If noth­ing changes then it is prob­a­bly acrylic.
• Angora is oh so soft and pretty in a com­pleted sweater but does not unravel well. Either does any­thing furry, eye­lashy or bumpy.
• Try not to cut any of the yarn while pulling out the seams. You’ll have to splice it back together.
• Make sue to label your fin­ished yarn so you remem­ber the fiber con­tent of your fin­ished prod­uct. Here are some PDF labels from MysticSpiral.com
• Don’t like the color but the yarn is won­der­ful? Dye it!
• Rethink lace-weight sweaters. If you’re doing every­thing by hand, you’ll never fin­ish unrav­el­ing. I know I didn’t.
• Watch out for but­ton holes. If they are on a sep­a­rate placket then just dis­card the placket. If the but­ton holes are cut and sewn into the body of the sweater that yarn will be cut and not con­tin­u­ous. Either splice the yarn back together, dis­card the button-holed sec­tion or look for a dif­fer­ent sweater. 

Here are a cou­ple tuto­ri­als if you are interested:

• www.neauveau.com/recycledyarn.html
• http://laughingpurplegoldfish.blogspot.com/2008/10/recycling-yarn-from-jumper.html
• http://dawnprickett.blogspot.com/2008/01/recycling-sweaters-for-yarn.html
• http://www.az.com/~andrade/knit/thrifty.html
• http://www.craftleftovers.com/blog/archives/401

Oh and if you have any wool or cot­ton sweaters lay­ing around that you don’t want and they aren’t serged I’d love to have them!

Wow! It’s been awhile. When I picked ‘Run­away Octo­ber’ as my blog name I wasn’t kid­ding. Things just pick up and move so fast this time of year.

- Our nor­mal com­puter is down for the count. I believe I need a new power sup­ply for it, but funds are very lim­ited. It’s much harder to blog when you don’t have your nor­mal setup, with pro­grams and FTPs and the like. Trust me.

- Rowan turned 1 year old last month. He has 8 teeth, and is def­i­nitely on the move. He still prefers to crawl, but he’s got it down and I bet he stops crawl­ing entirely soon. He just walked all the way across the bed­room, as a mat­ter of fact. He seems to walk bet­ter hold­ing some­thing in one hand, like it gives him a mission.

- A fel­low bloggy friend just had a very large benign brain tumor suc­cess­fully removed. Be sure and visit her and send her well wishes.

- My Christ­mas craft­ing is not going as well as planned. I get so stuck when try­ing to think of gifts for every­one. Then I start wor­ry­ing about mak­ing every­thing per­fect. Then I worry that the gift will not be liked and I’ll find it a Good­will in a cou­ple of months, etc etc. I’m also find­ing that hand­made does not mean cheaper. 

- We are all get­ting over a dou­ble round of the stom­ach bug. It’s so hard to watch kids be sick, and pukey sick is even worse. I guess you never really think about learn­ing to puke, but it’s so obvi­ous when some­one doesn’t know how. Declan is a very loud and vio­lent puker.

- Speak­ing of Declan, we took him to the doc­tor to have a wheezy cough looked at.  It turns out it was asthma. He’s cur­rently tak­ing Orapred and thrice daily breath­ing treat­ments of Xopenex. He’s doing much bet­ter. Thank­fully he’s not on a full time reg­i­ment of meds. The Xopenex is $45 a week alone after insurance!

- I’m woe­fully behind on my Sun­day Stash. I don’t know if I’ll get caught up, but hope­fully I’ll stay on top of things.

That’s all for now my pret­ties. Hope­fully I’ll be a lit­tle more reg­u­lar on my posts. I try, I swear. A blog is a lot of work!

So I decided to join in Sun­day Stash started by Tamara of 1/4 of an inch. The idea is to air out some of your stash and maybe get some inspiration.

This is one of my favorite fab­rics. I picked it up on clear­ance when a local Han­cocks was going out of busi­ness. I’m not sure what to do with it though. Of course I bought 2 yards… just in case

This is a lovely lit­tle 1 yard piece that I just picked up at Good­Will this Sat­ur­day. $1.50! Go Me! It is Alexan­der Henry’s “The Great Pumpkin”.

Under­neath both of these is a huge piece of yummy cor­duroy that I also scored at the thrift store also. It’s a rusty red­dish brown that will make great fall or win­ter projects. I intend to use it for steam­punk cos­tumes, of course.

If you’d care to join in, hop on over and tell Tamara that you’d like to play too.