So the move was hell – torrential rains, flash flooding, heavy book collections, sewing machine collections, general collections of sh*t.
(sadly, this is only about half of my stash.)
A hell that also spread to others who were thankfully helping us. Others will find it a source of amusement if you have tubs labeled “houndstooths” and “herringbones” and “unravelers.” They will accuse you of having chintz, but you will be glad you know people who know what chintz is and are willing to help you haul the aforementioned heavy, excessive collections in the rain.
The “new” house isn’t very old – a baby boomer in person years, and isn’t very attractive (yes, the vinyl siding followed us and we can’t afford to replace it) but it is modest and cozy and all ours (along with its problems – we woke to a dead boiler this morning).
It is also filthy.
This is what happens when you don’t have an exhaust hood over your stove:
I have to go in for a second or third scrub before I can even think of painting.
The house also had kids in it, and every room has evidence of them – stickers stuck to walls ceilings floors, glitter everywhere, scribbles on walls ceilings floors, little toy parts in cracks and crevices, and dubious and disgusting sticky places.
Speaking of stick, many people like this decorative crap for a child’s room:
But each little cheery leaf and branch and bird leaves sticky goo.
And your kid is no artistic genius,
so why didn’t you clean that sh*t off when you wanted to sell your house?
N triumphantly killed the rotting jungle gym in the yard:
and I’m totally thrilled we’re surrounded by hills again and that we have a window over the kitchen sink once more, not to mention plenty of gardening space.
I also love the little bits of residential archaeology that come with sprucing up a new place – the kitchen was at least two shades of green in the past – maybe it needs to be again…
Years and years ago, after I made a few more garter stitch scarves for friends and family, and falling just as hard for knitting with wool as I did for alpaca, not to mention all of the other fibrous beasts, came what seemed at the time, a very massive project.
Yet I did not stray from my comfortable garter stitch. I may have started this as a poncho, or at least a shawl, but I don’t remember now, except that I didn’t have a pattern and I was afraid of them then. But ponchos were popular then, and then weren’t, and maybe they came back, I don’t know? Originally it was just going to be solid charcoal, though I ran out of yarn before it was a good length to wrap. Then something happened at the Brown Sheep/Lamb’s Pride mill? A fire? I can’t remember that either, but for a year, or years, worsted weight yarn in deep charcoal wasn’t available. When a new LYS opened in my old neighborhood, I bought four skeins (including a deep charcoal) in bulky weight. I got the only four colors available that weren’t some ghastly shade of pink or pastel blue (but I kind of liked the pastel sage). I didn’t really think about (or know?) the difference in yarn weights either, but ploughed through to the end, or enough of an end when I ran out of yarn again.
It too has a beautiful drape.
The bulky striped end is thick and especially warm. We use this most as a throw blanket lengthwise, with the bulky end wrapping shroud-like whichever is the colder end of the body.
I’m tempted to frog this once in awhile to get to the sweater’s worth of yarn, but it is the best way to stay warm when supine and corpse-like in the dead of winter.
So the Blackbird isn’t the only one going away these days…
We finally, successfully bought a house.
This little hallway sold it for me – I love a good hall and nook.
However, much of the place is not so good, so I’ll be spending the next few months patching and painting and sanding and staining and sealing and tiling and ripping out [not stitches] and installing and digging and hauling and biting at the heels of one or two hired professionals.
I won’t go in to the rehab to tiresome lengths (or maybe I will someplace else, because I regret not better documenting our last home transformation) but the place needs some serious color and character and will take the place of most of my fiber work in the near future – but then again, we also need curtains and re-upholstery and rugs and something to disguise a nasty basement drop-ceiling…
[packing my sh*t and moving it takes up several circles of hell]
I’ve been seeing photographs of knitting printed on things lately. Maybe it’s a trend, maybe it’s already passed – I don’t follow such things or care about them, but they’re catching my eye and I’m not quite sure how I feel about them – I like the use of photography on textiles, and I think there is some humor and novelty in these pieces, but maybe I just like real things more?
(I don’t endorse any of these items or their brands).
I saw these comforters in a shop window in Italy last autumn – I don’t know who makes them. I like the “big cable-knit” one, but I’d rather have it in a duvet cover – I’d buy something like that (on sale) (on a big sale) since I’d probably get sick of it after awhile. The colorful piece is a fake granny square afghan – I think it’s a bit cute – and would be nicer to touch than the real thing in acrylic.
These Dansko clogs were lusted after by many on ravelry over the last year or two. I hate Dansko since they broke with Sanita and I won’t buy their no-longer-European-made crap any longer, though I love clogs. These are just too novelty for me – I’d probably wear them if I worked in a yarn store, but then I’d probably get sick of people asking me where I got them.
And I have to admit I got suckered in to looking at the Uniqlo website after seeing their giant signs and advertisements for stuff-able down jackets in awesome colors for a good price. And saw this vest there too (although it’s gone now). I’m guessing that this stuff isn’t the best quality and is of dubious manufacturing, so I’ll keep my money for now.
One of these days I’d like to start playing with textiles printed with photographs, but not like this.
These things actually make me want to make the real thing – a giant cabled bedspread, clogs covered with knitting, and a wool down vest…
I knew it was coming eventually, but I was feeling a little smug since it hadn’t happened here until a couple of weeks ago.
It’s not that I hate snow per se, it’s the immobility it causes. Or like a bad pet, it’s not the beast itself at fault, but the owner.
Shovel your goddamn sidewalks!
I’m not doing well with the lack of light this year (I’m not sure I ever do, but this year feels like the worst ever) and I’m overjoyed with the arrival and passing of the winter solstice.
I’m not a fan of Christmas* either.
I’m just not into the religion, commercialism, consumerism, greedy children, gifts, worship of fat beardos (Santas, not you my bear friends), waste of materials and electricity, varieties of anxieties, bad music, the pushing of the season to before Thanksgiving, and the food-sharing, traveling, and gathering of masses of breathing, snotting, vomiting bodies during the peak contagion period. But perhaps mostly because it is the deepest, darkest, dreariest time of year – and that is the reason people celebrate and I know worse winter weather is yet to come, but for me, the new year is what I’m excited for, and feel intense relief when it comes. It signifies that the holidays are f*cking over, each day brings a few more seconds of light, and the anxieties and societal ho-ho-ho throat-cramming go away.
I sort of liked winter as a child. However, I hated it as a very small child because of the tortures of plastic bread bags on my feet inside my boots and socks on my hands over my mittens. I looked forward to Christmas, though my excitement was tempered with dread that it would all be over too soon, and a feeling of watching something beloved die. In hindsight, my favorite day of the holiday season was St. Nick’s on December 6th when we woke to a few little presents in a sock – a tangerine, a couple of walnuts, a candy cane, and a little trinket like a flavored lip gloss or novelty eraser. I loved the simplicity and the lack of anxiety surrounding the day and some connectedness with the past. Didn’t the Little House on the Prairie girl savor only a nibble or two a day of her sole simple cookie gift? Or one of those characters in one of those books… Children can bizarrely identify with, and intensely feel, the grand sufferings of others – Anne Frank, dirt-farmer kids, sooty-city orphans – without ever having a moment of true sufferings themselves. Or maybe it was just me and a f*cked-up upbringing in an old religion where suffering and self-martyrdom was supposed to be a good thing. Either way, I still crave and appreciate the most simple aspects of the holiday – not much fuss and some citrus fruit.
And speaking of citrus and to break my no-cooking-in-the-blog-rule, I’ll share my candied peels. They’re tasty but take a long time to make – mostly because of multiple blanchings to temper the bitterness and then the hour+ cooking time in simmering sugar water. We needed some for a recipe but can’t find them in our suburban groceries – and if I did find them, I’m sure they’d be dyed and full of pesticides. I used organic pink grapefruit, orange, and lemon, and cane sugar – and then dipped some in dark chocolate and rolled some in pecans for good measure. (Yeah, the sugar coating is kinda clumpy, but whatever.)
And I am solidly anti-craft for the season. I don’t want to make something only usable for a few weeks out of the year. And I don’t really believe in exchanging gifts (especially to every known person) beyond a few edibles or drinkables. However, over my lifespan I’ve made exactly one ornament, one stocking, and this tree skirt.
N has a soft spot for the holidays, and will occasionally erect a tree. His tree needed a skirt and I didn’t have any appropriate fabric, nor wanted to waste a good yard or so on something that would be rarely used, so I cut up some felted/fulled sweater scraps. I think my original plan was something like a penny rug, but the cutting took long enough, so I just tied it all together.
I don’t know where it is now – probably in still in storage five hours away (and we no longer have lovely wood floors).
But things will be better soon, we’ll have the tiniest amount of more light day by day. And we’ll eventually get out for some winter woods activities.
*Our Christmases are a pleasant low-key affair limited to time spent with just a few family members, good food, dogs, a cool kid, and walks, so I’m quite thankful and look forward to them. It’s the larger sense of the season (and some past holiday events) I abhor. My second favorite Christmases were the years I spent alone with Chinese take-out in a quiet apartment with the neighbors away – sounds bleak, but it was awesome and always the most productive few days of the year for me.
I’ve never had an all-time favorite color. I went through a shameful lavender and pink phase as a young tween which sharply questioned my tomboyhood. Then I chose all colors at once, or no color at all, in my punk/grunge/post-hippie “alternative” years. These days if asked my preferred color, I usually say greens, or browns, or oranges, or greys since I like nearly all of the varieties of these colors, whereas I’ve established that I’m finicky over others.
But all along, I’ve generally preferred the secondary colors over the primary – maybe it’s the underdog name or their need to be blended to exist.
I’ve been reading Alexander Theroux’s The Primary Colors over the last decade or more. I can only read a few lines, or maybe half of a page, in one sitting. I’ve also misplaced the book in a few moves (including now – I’ve no idea of its whereabouts) and go a few months or years without opening it. I’m occasionally irritated that the book tries to sneak in secondary colors at times, but I also feel relief to see my old friends green and orange when it happens. Unfortunately, I also just read that there’s some controversy with the book due to some bits of plagiarism, yet with the fact-listing style of writing, I can almost accept the author’s excuse of sloppy note-taking, but bad editor, bad publisher! Theroux next wrote a book on the secondary colors, but I don’t have it yet, nor am I sure I want to commit to another decade-long read.
But after reading about yellow, I found myself considering the color more often, and a specific nasty bilious yellow has been tugging on my sleeve lately.
My main thoughts on the color are quite negative – it reminds me of pus, snot, stomach bile, infection, illness, sulfur, poisoned water, smoggy air, insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, tarnished things, slimy things, pissy snow, stench.
But it also makes me think of wheat fields, green-golden light during magic hour in the late afternoon, summer turning to autumn, gilded things, tarnished things, slimy things, mosses, eyes, and old flannel shirts.
So with my mind in a mildly insane yellowish haze, I whipped up a Honey Cowl out of Dream in Color Classy Strange Harvest (my dye lot is more green) and Cascade 220 Birch Heather (my dye lot is more gold).
This was one of those projects I felt like I had already made, and more than once actually looked for it to wear – especially with my plaid jacket.
But now I actually have it.
I liked the pattern and might make another eventually. However, for the first time ever, I twisted the round when I joined and accidentally turned it into a mobius (maybe it’s not technically, but I don’t know). I left it that way because I don’t have a twisted cowl yet and thought I’d like to play with the different draping possibilities. But it’s a little disconcerting that I’m making a lot of rookie mistakes lately that I never made in the beginning…
But back to yellow. I had this awesome mustardy-saffron merino sweater for a year or two (you can see just a peak on the left).
Before I shrank the hell out of it. And how could I possibly make the mistake of shrinking a sweater? I really don’t know how it happened. And I also don’t know where it is now, but I know I saved it to turn it into something else. The scarf is a Drop Stitch Scarf – I really love it, though I don’t wear it as often these days, but it has a bit of gold in it too.
My favorite yellow project was the shawlette from last winter. I wear it often, and still think about making it bigger.
And people are calling grey and yellow “grellow” these days. I hate color fads, but I like grey and yellow. This is an opportunity to fess up to another UFO – a sweater I cut up, re-sewed and I’m knitting the cuffs and trim in grey. Or rather I started to, didn’t like the gauge, re-started and still didn’t like the gauge, and then put it aside for the last year or so.
Maybe grellow is also green and yellow. This has been a favorite color combination of mine for vintage-inspired kitchens like this one:
And some spinning from a year ago that I need to finish.
(Also one of my favorite color combos in Fiestaware).
And an early natural dying attempt with saffron, turmeric, coffee, and god knows what else on bulky yarn frogged from a hand-knit thrift store scarf.
I’m still not sure if I can wear yellow though, sometimes I think I can pull it off due to my own semi-sallow complexion, sometimes it gives me a surprise ill-like pallor.
I remember my beloved high school teacher discussing The Yellow Wallpaper and vehemently denouncing the color as sickly and maddening; at the time she was wearing a beautiful buttery colored pair of paints and coordinating sweater. When someone pointed this out, she was mildly shocked to discover it was true that even she liked some of the yellow family members.
Such is the sneaky dual nature of yellow – I’ll continue to let it tease me a bit.
I had to save my biggest and best tin for a post of its own.
I first saw this tin in a photographic negative I was cataloging in my old job. The tin was on the counter in someone’s kitchen in the 1940s. I read the writing through a tiny loupe and was aghast at the boasts of “scientifically processed” and claims of healthy hydrogenated vegetable shortening! And what is that graphic? A woman on a scale inferring that potato chips were diet food? Hells yeah! I love potato chips, though they’ve done nothing for my figure, unless of course I eat enough to cause severe anal leakage, but I’m a snob for the olive oil chips anyway. I started seeing this tin in antique/junk stores but they were often rusty, or the lid didn’t easily come off, or were just too damn overpriced. Generally, if I want something that isn’t really needed, I wait for serendipity to take over or to lose interest in it. However, after a year of looking for this in the right condition for the right price, I broke down and found one on Ebay, so it all worked out. Maybe serendipity is just an online market.
But in my quest for simplicity and curing former impulses and diseases of the hoarding of neat sh*t variety, I have a general rule for visiting antique/junk shops – buy nothing bigger than what would fit into my hand.* In theory I like some kinds old jewelry so that could be allowable, but I’ve never actually bought any old jewelry and it is usually more than I want to spend. I have more tchotzkies than years left in my statistical lifespan, so I generally resist the cute/weird but useless item. And I have nearly a zero interest level in military, presidential, I-am-man-and-hear-me-roar (or just destroy your lives and countries) artifacts, so old bullets, campaign buttons, coins, pins for distinctions, etc. don’t get the slightest glance from me.
But what else is little and can be extremely practical, and thus 100% approved?
Let’s open that giant tin, shall we?
Oh yeah, hells yeah, buttons!
I buy buttons that I think will look good on knits I’ve never knitted (nor will).
I buy buttons that I think I can re-sell for decent money (though I haven’t yet).
I buy buttons to replace those already on my clothes (which I’ve done once).
I buy buttons to use in my “crafts” (I do this occasionally with singles, but would never break up a set).
I buy buttons to repurpose them as jewelry (though not to make country button necklace shittery).
I buy buttons to one day feed my burning desire to amass them in a giant heap and then catalog them one by one.
And I buy buttons because some are nearly art and quite frame-able or worthy of display on their own.
(I didn’t tear off that one button in the upper left, it came that way)
I’ve had to start a new jar nearly the same size as the tin for the buttons I remove and save from clothing I cut up and turn into other things.
(And yes, I do have another boxful of buttons that you don’t get to see).
*I’ve got some big paws, so my fingers can really wrap a decent-sized find, and I do break this rule constantly if I find things that are fiber-oriented and thus can be considered a business, art, or research expense (but really, I can only kid myself so far…)
I love finding them and I love storing things in them and I especially love finding them with things already in them.
This one is from my childhood home – it looks old timey, but was from the 1970s or ’80s… which sadly, might in fact be old timey to some.
I don’t remember the marshmallows, but I like marshmallows.
It is perfect for the storage of zippers and various purse/bag hardware.
This was a lucky thrift store find of a tin with something in it – mostly needles and a lovely bent-to-fit sterling thimble. I use the needles from time to time but get pissed when I don’t realize I have a rusty one until it leaves a mark in my fabric.
Also inside are some nice bone tapestry needles – I think? And a “Tyton” tool at the bottom. Anybody know what that is? All I get is a Polish football (soccer) player.
This tin came from a thrift store and was probably $ .50 or less. I think I bought it when I only had $ .50 in my pocket. It previously held fruitcake from New Orleans. I thought you got sh*tfaced in New Orleans, not hang around and eat hard cake. But I guess you have to “feed” fruitcake with brandy or rum or something…. that could explain it.
But the loveliness inside is my collection of vintage thread. I got the thread way back when at my old favorite thrift store in a dusty old bag (perhaps once actually belonging to a dusty old bag of another sort). One day I may frame some of these in a shadow box of some sort, but I do use a teensy bit of them from time to time since the colors are wonderful and often match my clothing in need of repair. And good god, I love wooden spools. I know it’s a waste of a tree but they serve so many purposes after their intended one and just look finely aged and patinated on their own.
This is an estate sale find of a tin with something in it. I was excited to find this small stash of embroidery floss until its horrid camphor odor assaulted my sniffer. I got it anyway, cleaned and aired the tin, aired the floss, and thought it was good to go. I added a few odds and ends of my own floss too.
Sadly, it still smells.
And finally, the loveliest tin of them all, and the one I uncharacteristically paid the most for – I believe it was a whopping $12.
But $12 is no longer an insignificant amount of money to me, and I feel pressure to put something priceless and special inside of it instead of the tiny yarn balls and clippings currently in there.
Maybe I should have a candy while I think about it.
I made it to 5:12 a.m. this morning and feel triumphant! Then I realized it was daylight savings,* so the jet lag beast has been tossed a scrap and is still pacing a bit around the room. No more middle of the night pancake dinners/breakfasts though, but the last one was quite tasty with the last of our White Mountain edible souvenirs.
My brain is still buzzy and unfocused and my body mildly flu-like. I came home with mountain legs as firm as two well-aged prosciutti, but now they’re returning to their younger non-dead jiggly piglet state. My body and mind are out of synch with my reality and just want to put one foot in front of the other until a pleasing distance and vista and lunch spot have been reached.
**
I know it is incredibly pretentious, but I feel more culture shock returning to the U. S. rather than being outside of it (at least in the European bits). Americans weigh too much, they are sick, they are loud, they drive enormous machines, they wheel enormous luggage, they can be demanding of bedraggled clerks and service workers, their children are wild, and worst of all, they build and live in suburbs – vast expanses of land without sidewalks or farms – utterly purposeless and ugly.
But this is where I was born and legally reside and thanks to N we can leave it once in awhile.
But I’m also just another American wishing she could eat, pray, love (mostly the eating part) under the Tuscan (I’d prefer Abruzzo) sun. But there are a few things in Italy (and probably Europe in general) that are downright magical that even more increase my desire to stay.
Dairy. I have dairy issues in the states – I don’t know if it is lactose or casein or something else, but even when I get the organic grass-fed hoity-toity localish stuff here, I can have problems. I can tolerate milk, ice cream, cream, etc., about 15% of the time here, so I usually just forgo anything not aged or fermented – cheese and yogurt are ok-ish. In Italy, I have about a 99% tolerance rate – the only bad dairy experience I’ve had there was from a mediocre cream-based pasta sauce at an even more mediocre tourist trap restaurant in Rome a few years ago. So I load up on the stuff while I’m there – cappuccino, gelato, cream sauces, oh yeah! And of course cheese – I especially love the sheep and goat stuff – pecorino dolce, ricotta di capra, caciocavallo etc., etc., etc….
Allergies. I barely have them there, and leave behind my constant ropey mucous companion dangling down my throat here. That probably has a straightforward reason about the different climate and fewer useless expanses of lawns and less proliferation of non-native species with their companion herbicides and pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
So now that I’ve established that my brain is broken, my body atrophying, my nose dripping, and I’m suffering from a vague yogurt induced gut cramp, I must mention fiber – specifically my travel knitting.
I started the first pair of socks since my sock knitting debacle months ago. Again, my sock mojo is off – I used a bit bigger yarn on my preferred shorty wood needles with my 64 stitch vanilla pattern, thinking it would firm things up and be ok, but they’re big – baggy ankle big. But I don’t give a damn and still have to finish the leg parts, so I can firm up the upper ribbed section. I’m constructing them in a strange fashion, but it makes sense in my head and should allow me to use up all the yarn. I’ve dubbed them my “Nostalgia Socks” as the color reminds me of old quilts, 1970s sweaters, and now my trip.
The colors in this pic are wrong, but accurately portray the weak blue light that just barely stretched down to our nearly subterranean Italian apartment.
This is how the color should look – and if you look closely you can see one of the two knots I’ve found so far.
And remember my giddiness over Pigeonroof Studios Mimsy BFL roving? And even more over the Hitchhiker pattern? I can call it a finished project now since I shoved it in my bag at the last minute. It was one of those that ended sooner than I was ready to finish, and previously I only let myself knit a few rows here and there as a reward for meeting some goals on my portfolio pieces. Ok, I may have over-rewarded myself, but this is my favorite handspun yarn to date – the softness and drape are wonderful (if I do say so myself) but most of that is due to the inherent qualities of the fiber itself.
My yardage was less than the suggested amount and I used bigger needles, so I didn’t quite make it to the original 42 points. Mine is 41 1/2 – instead of a half a point, I just made the last one wider. I watched 42 on the plane over and hoped I could have that numerical reference as well, but I didn’t quite make the team.
I finished it in the first few days we were there, so I was able to wear it again and again and again – it’s finally taking a rest drying from a light blocking to stretch it out a little.
As for acquisitions, I bought some cheap (but ugly) sock yarn, and some cheap (but lovely) mohair in the market.
* Daylight savings happened in Italy last weekend. We spent a day wondering why none of the cafes were opened when they should have been, rushed to return the rental car when we didn’t have to hurry, and even left for the airport an hour before we needed to – but none of it was the problem it would have been in the spring.
** I love this picture that N took – in the camera it appeared that I had been steamrolled, but now it looks more like a Nancy Drew book jacket for “Murder on the Mountain.” I love sleeping on mountains – some bedroom designer should get on that – forget beds – rig up a soft inclined meadow and mimic warm sun and chilly breezes in a room instead.
I tend to get a little obsessive/fanatical about certain colors, textures, and shapes. For a few years, I loved the diamond. Not hard-assed sparkly rocks that people die for literally and figuratively, but the shape in a flattened geometric form. I had some awesome diamond-shaped eyeglasses back in the late 1990s that I wore to dust; I have some argyle clothing, jewelry with diamond shapes, some great vintage diamond-shaped buttons I’ve yet to use, and I’ve sewn and knitted many diamonds.
Little did I know I had a thing for hexagons too.
I knew I liked antique hex tile floors. I had an original one in my first roach-infested apartment (it wasn’t the first of several infested, it was the first and happened to be infested). And I fantasize often about having one again (a tiled floor, not an apartment full of cockroaches).
I photograph tiled floors when I see them, including this one in the late 1990s, which also served as evidence in case I was brutally murdered or came down with an incurable STD or sudden Bukowski-like alcoholism from the seediest hotel I’ve ever patronized in Niagra Falls (I mean seediest ever, not one of many in Niagra Falls).
And check out this awesome antique floor in a non-hipster cafe in Brooklyn I saw last year:
(And yes, I have a cheap-ass pre-paid phone and can’t figure out how to email the picture to myself, so yeah…)
When we first started fixing up our former house, I was completely and entirely ecstatic when I found this in the bathroom:
However, my joy was short lived when I found other things:
And the absence of the tile throughout and/or layers of cement and other impenetrables that prevented us from salvaging the original floor.
I wanted to put down a new authentic porcelain hex floor, but the high price sent me to the big box for the cheap alternative:
Still porcelain hexagons, but not quite the real thing – the real deal is more flat and matte with thinner grout lines. I loved that bathroom though, and I yearn for that giant cast-iron tub again…
But I’m still always on the look-out for hex floors and sometimes find them in surprising places:
Look how small the hexagons are! The tiny little hexes are just a little bit bigger than a hex floor tile.
I wonder if the maker was sick of it after one motif, this was a leftover from a finished quilt, it was made to be a chair pad or other small item, or yeah, maybe she (maybe he but not likely) died. I love the inconsistent greens as well – I wonder if it was made from old-time scrubs or nurse’s uniforms, or if the fabric was home-dyed.
For those of you in the knitting world, you’re probably expecting me to say I’m hip-deep in hexipuffs for the Beekeeper’s Quilt and that’s what this is all about. Nope, though I like it a lot, and considered it for a little while, I’m going to pass for now (even though I may have purchased a few mega-sale skeins of sock yarn with this in mind).
I occasionally find myself designing floors for bathrooms, kitchens, and foyers of homes we don’t have. In fact, one of the houses we purchased over the last year had a half-bath (I hate the name “powder room”) small enough that I could justify the price of the real thing and to my own custom design. But alas, I must settle on non-floor hexagons for now.
But look at this!
(Picture yanked from internet – no idea of its original publication)
Ok, so a floor again, but even though whatever house we’ll eventually get will eventually need to be re-sold, I’m really tempted to do something along these lines. I don’t know if it is paper or fabric, but it would be fairly economical and a more interesting alternative to the paper bag floor (which I also sort of like, but can’t get past that leather crazy quilt jacket look of it).
But back to what I can do now, which really isn’t something I can do since I must finish other things first, but what I’m fantasizing about doing is a traditional hexagon quilt. After a summer’s worth of basting letters for an appliqued quilt, and though at the time they often annoyed the hell of of me, I had the brilliant epiphany that a quilt can actually be as portable of a project as sock knitting. Though that is probably obvious to all already, I’d never thought of making quilts outside of hours-long blocks of time at home. And though my earlier thoughts of sewing a quilt by hand were along the lines of you’ve got to be f*cking joking, I now want to piece that bitch up one by one by one in airports, while visiting other people’s houses, in waiting rooms, and sprawled on the sofa while binge watching some mildly awful but addictive television series.
I haven’t decided whether or not to use my current stash and scraps or come up with something a little more uniform and floor-like, but I’ve sure as hell had fun playing with the possibilities – at least in my head, of course, since I really can’t be spending any real time on it. (And I haven’ t yet printed off a bunch of blank hex sheets I found on this site).
I’d be remiss in not mentioning the hexing possibilities with crochet in the form of hexy granny afghans – see this Flickr group for pics – but alas, I don’t crochet. I don’t like the looks of it sometimes, but that’s usually the maker’s fault for choosing crap acrylic yarn, or poor colors, or having no general aesthetic sense.
But I’d like to learn one of these days…
Oh yeah, and my inner jukebox plays this every time I think of the word hex:
The 1990s infected me with a whole wiggling writhing wad of ear worms…
ASTITCHMATISM 