Wordless Wednesday

One of the fun things about moving into a new home is seeing what pops up in the garden over the first year you're there.  These were taken just this week.

 

Keep Calm and Carry On

click to read the Wikipedia article

I know everyone else has known of this inspirational phrase for a long time, but it has been repeating itself in my head alot lately.  I finally looked it up on Wiki, and learned a few details.  It was apparently printed on a poster by the British Ministry of Information in 1939, in an effort to improve morale but few of the two and a half million posters ever made it into the public eye at that time.  The BBC news suggests it was the greatest motivational poster of all time, and they might be right.

You've probably seen lots of parodies of it on t-shirts and whatnot (do a search on Etsy for "keep calm" and you'll find some real treasures!), but its a great concept and a simple mantra to remind us all that we can get through.  I think I need the poster for my studio.

Luckily the copyright has expired and we can all reproduce and plagiarise it to our hearts content.  So today's thought is...

Keep Calm and Eat Pie!

Color!

So I've finally gotten all my stuff moved in to the new house and I'm thinking about maybe changing color schemes here and there. I've really only committed to three areas - the office space is black & white with red and then my bath is light blue with silver and mercury glass accents. That bath already has a beautiful embossed wallpaper painted in a pale blue, reminiscent of the old tile ceilings. The guest bath is pink flamingos with aqua accents. Love it! So there's three decisions made, but they're really the simplest.

I thought that once I got my furniture into the house it would be easy to 'see' what I wanted, and whether I wanted to stick with my old color schemes. Not so much. The very front room of the house is painted in a lime sherbet color with a gorgeous tile floor in white and terra cotta with black accents. I've put in a black wicker chair and my pine craft cabinets. The room is sunny on two sides and I think I'll be using it as a knitting space and a crafty place for when my niece and nephew come over. Not sure what to do there, and that's just the beginning! I need to choose color schemes for the dining room / kitchen, the living room, the master bedroom and the guest room. Insert big sigh here.

Have you ever done just a simple image search for "color" on Google or Yahoo? Oh the things you'll see!

blogged by Corner Paint

I don't want to get too cliche and fill my house with palm trees and pink flamingos (just a bathroom full is ok, right?) but the tropical inspiration out there is heady!

blogged by Hospitality Design

 This one might be a bit much for me, but I like the color combo

blogged by StyleBeat

 I love the idea of removable vinyl wall stickers, especially in a rented home.  NouWall on Etsy has some beautiful choices.

gorgeous wall vinyl from NouWall on etsy

More soon!

World Wide Knit in Public Week begins!

Well I didn't do our craft proud today, I'm afraid. I worked pretty much all day, and spent a good part of the day writing a blog post for the shop about what you can do for the birds during summer. It's a pretty good article, if I do say so myself, but that didn't leave me too much time for knitting.

I did get over to my sister's where I showed off the Barbie dress with the cute little ruffled skirt that I designed on the fly the other day. My niece loves the style, but I bound off too tightly, and did not leave any wiggle room by using a snap for it's closure, so of course it doesn't fit. Back to the drawing board, but I think I can fix it. I used CottonEase, which normally allows some give, but it wasn't enough to get over those hips! Pix soon, I promise.

We spent a good amount of time leafing throug the copy of Nicky Epstein's Knits for Barbie Dolls that I just got from the library and the Princess has selected only 35 of the 75 patterns in the book. "Barbie is going to be so excited with her new wardrobe!" How can an aunt resist? I am honestly looking forward to every one! I hope to get started while I'm at the shop tomorrow.

Finally a pattern to publish!

I finished the Detroit Lions dishcloth a long time ago and wrote up the pattern some time after that.  Its the age-old story of modern life - time moves on, computers crash, data is retrieved, yada yada yada.  Anyway, this is my first pattern and my first time trying to add a pdf to the blog so its a big adventure all around!  The photo is dreadful, I'll admit it, but the cloth is now happily in use in another home so I can't improve the picture without knitting it again.  One of these days ....

Detroit Lions NFL Mascot Dishcloth

Fresh!

There is something terribly rewarding about finding an item and giving it a new lease on life.  Even when it's as simple as a fresh coat of paint.  After much internal debate on whether to go with colors that are predictably me or strike out into new color territory, my heart finally landed on a color for the new-to-me dressers that will be part of my guest room craft storage.  Although I was open to fate leading me down her path via the oops paint, I didn't find anything inspiring so I went to the paint chips and chose a color called Pink Grapefruit.  I must admit that I am intrigued by how many gallons of black or almost black paint that had been returned to the store.  Don't you wonder what colors those DIY'ers ended up with instead?  Oh, if a gallon of paint could talk.  But ... I digress.

To me this is a rich coral and will add a lovely, almost bold pop of color to the white room.  Its not bold in the sense that designers use the term these days (its not orange!) but its bold for me since I normally choose pale shades.  Here we have the tall dresser with two coats of fresh paint as it waits patiently for some new drawer pulls.  Shucks - I must go shopping!

As I painted the second coat this morning, I was listening to An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon - the latest in the Outlander series.  I have loved it from the beginning, and its very easy to get lost in the story.  She does a wonderful job of describing everything from the signs of the times to some serious character development and Davinia Porter brings the characters to life with her narration.  I can't recommend the series enough to everyone I meet!  Ms. Gabaldon must do an incredible amount of research - I feel like I have learned so much about life in the late 1700's as she takes us from Scotland to France to the Caribbean and finally to America.  No spoilers here, but I will tell you I'm listening to the events of mid-1777 and oh, how intriguing they are!

Unfortunately I was enjoying the rhythym of painting and listening to the audiobook so much that I ended up an hour late to work.  Oops!  More to come.

Crafty Cabinets - before

I love my new little house, but since I don't have all of my furniture with me yet I went out in search of some cabinets or bookcases to use in the meantime.  I'm going from a 3 bedroom plus office home into a 2 bedroom plus sunroom home so there is obviously going to be some downsizing and consolidating.  Another big challenge is that my bedroom storage is reduced closet space - horrors!  Instead of whining, I'm off to the races with this adorable set of dressers that I found at a local consignment shop for peanuts. 

Since I'm renting, I'm not going to paint the walls in the guest room so I will need to add some fun color through my 'stuff' - the comforter, artwork and furniture!  My old guest room was in a soft peach with a gorgeous floral comforter and a general sea shell theme to the room and guest bath.   I've chosen a pink flamingo theme for the guest bathroom, but I really think one room of that is sufficient, don't you?  (And yes, I realize most people would say one pink flamingo room is one room too many!)

I'm thinking a brighter peach, or perhaps coral?  Coral would be girly but a little more tropical.  If I want to use the space as my studio for HotPinkPeonies, then I might want to go with a sky blue with hot pink accents.  That would be cute, but not a very good 'welcome to the beach' color scheme.  Decisions, decisions.  I've thumbed through some photos of beautiful craft rooms online and on Ravelry (because of course one must go there first), but mostly I see where people have added color to their craft rooms or studios on the walls, and used or created white furniture.  I'm sure sure which direction I'll take, but its fun to have a new project!

Anyway, here's the "before" photos :