Textiles

This will be a quick post, because it’s a depressing rainy morning and Sparks’ computer is borked…

I have ordered the fabric for the great room’s curtains and cushions. If you remember, I plan to make a mess of floor cushions and throw pillows for the seating area. I’m also going to cover an IKEA footstool, to be used either for feet or for cups of tea, or even as an extra seat. Here are the fabrics I bought to do all that with:

(pictures from fabric.com)

And here is the absolutely fabulous print I’ll make the panel curtains out of:

(picture from fabric.com)

They’re gonna be supercool. In a recent issue of Southern Living, they showed pictures of a house in which the drape hardware was mounted not across the windows, but on either side of it. This let the drapes stand farther away from the window that would have been otherwise likely, letting more of the window stay unblocked and more light come in. I like that idea, and am considering using it in the great room. The sliders there have miniblinds inside the glass, so the curtains will be purely ornamental… why not just admit that? Plus, getting a curtain rod that long would be tough.

And then, the squishy rug for the fireplace nook. The favorite of us both is this one:

(pictures from homedecorators.com)

But if, for whatever reason, we find ourselves unable to get it, we can go with either of these too:

(pictures from homedecorators.com)

And possibly, to throw over it and move around as desire, the oh-so-VERY-retro this:

(pictures from ikea.com)

So we have the whole textiles situation sorted out.

The big question, the only question for me really, is how well my English transferware will play with these fabrics. There is a pale powder-blue in them, which is a pale version of the cobalt blue of their patterns. Also, the Nigella collection of fabrics is advertised as being “neo-Victorian”, and you don’t get much more Victorian than my Asiatic Pheasant dishes (it was, I have read, the best-selling transferware pattern of the 19th century). But in any case–it will have to work. I have far too much transferware to get rid of it now.

Kitchen plans

Tee hee. Sparks and I watched Fight Club last night. It was the first time I’d seen it in… probably… seven years? Since I took my undergraduate gender-in-literature class, anyway, and we read the book and watched the movie. It was just as good, if not better, than I remembered and I had forgotten that it was the first place I ever heard of IKEA.

I’m calling Sparks IKEA-boy, now.

So anyway… I’m asking myself, what kind of dining set defines me as a person?

Actually I’m designing my kitchen using IKEA’s software. Here is the current overview:

Behold. The fridge is currently occupying the right-hand wall, taking the place of cabinets shown here, and also making the corner next to it unusable. We are going to move it to the upper wall and install a cabinet above it and a pantry next to it. Then, we get to put upper and lower cabinets in its current location, creating lots more usable counter space as well as a sorely-needed opportunity for upper cabinets. Kitchens without any upper cabinets are very trendy right now, but I have to say that I can’t imagine them being comfortable and functional for me. If I had to choose between uppers and lowers… I’d choose uppers. The lowers are harder to get to.

And here is the 3D view looking through the bottom wall of that schematic–which in the house is the wall with the pass-through window to the great room. Behold the fridge, the pantry, and the doors to the laundry room and front porch.

And behold the view looking through the top wall of the schematic, toward the pass-through window. The upper cabinets on the left side of this picture will be glass-fronted and will hold dishes and drinking glasses. We are planning on getting IKEA’s Adel White cabinet fronts, which have simple single panels on the fronts and pleasantly interesting/mod gridded glass inserts, which you can see on this page if you choose the “Adel white” option.

The same glass-fronted upper cabinets will be installed in the laundry room above the machines.

And that’s about that for the kitchen. The only other detail to note–I think–is that in those lower cabinets which are not drawers or lazy susans, we are going to install inside drawers instead of shelves. I have such cabients in my current kitchen, and it makes the storage sooooo much more pleasant to use. It functions just like a shelf, except that it can be pulled out so you can see exactly what’s there, including at the very back.

And such are the kitchen plans.

Our Old House

Okay, I need to qualify the post title in two ways: “our” is actually “his”, and “old” is actually “35 years old”. It is a midcentury-mod box, with a perfectly rectangular foundation and the roof all sloping one way. There are barely any windows, but lots of sliding glass doors to the front and back porch. And inside…

Exhibit 1: view from the front door

There is a cavernous great room with this Big Orange Wall that greets you as you enter. We both want to paint the wall. Probably a biscuit-color, to contrast slightly with the white drywall everywhere else in the area. He thinks that the wall needs some kind of art on it–and I can’t argue–and we have a preliminary idea that my transferware plates could be arranged in an artistic flourish going up it. We’ll see. That’s just preliminary. Since I do have like… forty spare transferware plates.

Exhibit 2: the big orange wall

Here’s the rest of the Big Orange Wall. This will also be painted a biscuit color. Then, I think, we will put my biscuit-colored sofa and armchair here. We will put a colorful rug between them, and put up Amy Butler curtains around the glass slider and scatter floor cushions made of Amy Butler fabrics around. We’ll put bookshelves up either side of the fireplace. There will be no coffee table… it will be an informal reading spot that invites people to flop down on the very squishy and comfy carpet and leaf through a pile of picture books or magazines. It’ll be very cozy.

Exhibit 3: the dining area

Here is another corner of the L-shaped great room. Here you see the second glass slider in the room, as well as the pass-through to the kitchen. This pass through currently has kitchen cabinets blocking half of it; that situation will be remedied. We will also put cabinets under the breakfast bar, turning it into a sort of built-in buffet. My dining table and chairs will go in front of the slider. My hutch will go behind those, in a nook that is just the right size for them. We will trade my current red dining room rug for my mother’s gold and aqua dining rug.

Exhibit 4: the problematic corner

Here is the third corner of the L-shaped great room, between the fireplace nook and the dining room. Both Sparks and my mother tell me that I really should put my sofa and chairs there, not in the fireplace nook. I can’t argue that it’s a nice big area that begs to be populated, but that raises two issues: 1) so what do we do with the fireplace nook? and 2) the comfy vibe I want in the fireplace nook won’t happen if there isn’t some seating furniture in it. If you understand me… it’s no fun to sit on the floor if you aren’t flagrantly ignoring the real furniture. Right? So I’d have to buy some more furniture to go in the nook.

So my plan right now is to ignore the problematic corner, thinking it will eventually be filled with an office armoire, who knows what.

Exhibit 5: the kitchen

The kitchen as well as the 2.5 baths, we are planning to tear out and replace with IKEA cabinets. We are going to move the refrigerator in order to free up existing counter space and create even more. This means that even if we wanted to save the existing cabinets, there wouldn’t be enough of them. So… whoopee! New IKEA kitchen! I’m so excited, I can barely stand it.

And those are the public spaces of the house. Besides those, there are 2.5 baths, three bedrooms, and a very large media room in what used to be the house’s garage. Oh, and the new garage, which breaks the otherwise-perfect-rectangle of the house. And outside–which I’m not comfortable showing pictures of–are mature apple and pear trees, a redbud, maples, a huge beautiful deck just begging for a table and chairs and lots of planters, and really a lot of lawn–enough for a huge garden and a pool to go in, which is what we’d like to eventually do.

This is gonna be fun.

Sugar Stars winners

All right, I have taken far-too far too long to announce the sugar stars giveaway winners. Pudding says:

Joyce, Shirley, and Anita are the winners! Congratulations, everyone. I’ll be sending you emails shortly asking for your mailing addresses. Everyone, I direct you to the comments on the Sugar Stars Giveaway post–the entrants told me three lovely stories.

But, seriously. I thought giveaways were supposed to bring people out of the woodwork. There were, however… only those three entrants. And one of them is my mom. I am apparently not going to clean up on Etsy by selling sugar decorations. Perhaps I should try sock yarn again? That did very well.

On the Etsy forums, people are saying that it is a particularly bad economic climate in which to be selling luxuries, and boy howdy, I believe it. Apart from the breath-stopping drop in my retirement accounts, I had been able to mostly ignore the trouble until last week–until precisely when I was supposed to be announcing the giveaway winners, in fact, at which precise point in time my company laid off 25% of its work force. I still have a job, but in light of this, Sparks and I made the good-sense economic decision to live in his house, with its adorable baby mortgage, instead of my house, with its mortgage of very grown-up proportions.

Living in his house makes sense in more than just economic ways. His location is fantastic, his lot is huge and fantastic (with productive fruit trees!), and though his house is sound and he knows about all of its “issues”, it is also in need of a fresh kitchen and bathrooms. So, woohoo! IKEA here we come! I coped with the stress of the layoffs by designing the kitchen and bathrooms, and picking out carpets and curtains etc. Thank heavens for my 3D home design software and thank heavens for IKEA. Hang on, folks. Snapdragons is gonna go reno.

Pulmonaria

Oh, I’m so happy.

The three rather expensive pulmonaria I planted last spring, which promptly stopped flowering and never grew bigger last summer, have come up bigger than ever and they’re blooming. Ah, what perfect delight.

I have two plants with “bright” flowers and one plant with these pastel flowers. Lovely. Great dappled foliage, too.

And this is the other thing that surprised and delighted me this evening. The Chinese forget-me-nots are, indeed, not to be forgotten, because they have re-grown from seed and are blooming.

A quilty Saturday

I was always struck by the character name “Clare Quilty”. Believe me, this post has nothing to do with him.

Yesterday was a gorgeous, brilliant, warm, sunny Saturday. My parents were in town. We had been going to wander around the arts festival downtown, but Sparks had the brilliant idea that we take a road trip which the two of us had been talking about for some time, to Paris.

Now. If you ask for Google Maps instructions for how to drive to Paris from where we live… well, try it yourself. I’ll wait. Too lazy? Well, one of the instructions is “swim”.

So no, we weren’t going to that Paris, but rather a small town named Paris that is home to a highly recommended quilt shop. But first, to another quilt shop in another town, so that we could make a proper day of it.

The first shop we went to gets credit to its name for carrying some Kaffe Fassett, some Amy Butler, and some Moda. It is much better than my local quilt shop, which is never worth going to under any circumstances.
This antique quilt was hanging on its wall, and since I was at that point I was still steely-determined in my decision to not buy fabric, I spent my time ogling this antique quilt.

I am still both impressed and proud of the Prairie Star quilt that my great-aunt Madge made, but this one had it beat all hollow. It has a lovelier variety of colors, and the individual patches–in case you can’t tell from the first two photos–are this tiny:

Clearly, this is the kind of quilt that my mother would make, not me. Just looking at it made me feel so tired that I was obliged to partake of the complimentary cookies and sit down among the embroidery machines until the rest of the group re-convened (the boys had found a junk shop, where vinyl records and pocket watches were purchased).

Then on to Paris, which Sparks had enthusiastically recommended as a charming little town, and which did indeed have a peculiar, pleasant character all its own.

There were many pink brick buildings, as you see, including a pink brick Legion with a real-for-sure fighter aircraft mounted out front of it.

Also a number of large churches with very fine stained glass. We bought cold drinks at a convenience store, then picnicked in a park at the center of town, amid blooming snowdrops and dandelions. Then, on to the quilt shop.

Oh my. Oh my oh my oh my. I have been to many quilt shops in my life, some better than others, some at which I was even tempted into spurious and often foolish purchases. This shop however–Pins and Needles–was a different animal entirely.

I have always said that all I ask of a quilt shop is that it carry Moda, and lots of it. P&N does just that. Not just yardage, either–and not just yardage grouped by lines either. Not just a good variety of fat quarters of each line, grouped with the yardge of that line, either. I mean jelly rolls. Charm packs. Honey buns.

I hyperventilated a little. Then I bought a metric shload of fabric that I had been virtuously passing over on online stores for the past few months.

Neptune from Moda. Besides the jaw-dropping colors, this fabric is covered with coral, shells, seahorses, octopuses, submarines, chains, anchors, shipwrecks, life preservers… yes, I stood in the middle of the store and recited “Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks, a thousand men the fishes gnawed upon”. Then I bought a jelly roll and six fat quarters.

Then I found their stash of Sultry from Moda. I had been holding off on this because I thought the multi-color prints were large scale and wouldn’t like right in a jelly roll or honey bun. I was wrong. So I bought a honey bun, and when the clerk asked me if I wanted her to take my stuff to the counter for me, I said no. I needed some time with my precious.

A charm pack of Aviary. Because, well, you know. At $8, I don’t need a because.

Squee-worth teatime fabric. Only a fat quarter of this, and the collection unknown because my quarter was cut from the wrong side of the bolt, sorry. Can we say… tea cozy? Oh yes, we can.

Finally, two yards of this irresistible mushroom print from Critter Jamboree. The rest of the collection is too twee for me, but this was just perfection. I’m going to sit on it, maybe for years, trying to decide if it would be better off as a kitchen apron or a little girl’s dress. I think it would be irresistible as either.

All in all, a profoundly successful Saturday, and all due to Sparks’ instincts and good taste. Thank you so much, sweetie. You found the best quilt shop I’ve ever been to, and hey… they even had a corner with chairs and issues of Popular Science to keep you busy while I squee’d and breathed hard. Wasn’t that thoughty of them?

Sugar Stars giveaway

The Fourth of July, the Fourth of July… I was born in July, and Independence Day, coming as it does in the middle of such a drought of holidays, was always a favorite with me. On the last Fourth of July, Sparks and I had our third date, and I told him that he’d be married in a year (because he’s such a general all-around great guy, it seemed obvious to me). Rather wonderfully, this coming Fourth of July, he is going to marry me. Little wonder I like the holiday so much.

The sugar stars now available in my Etsy shop come in a red-white-and-blue patriotic variety. I thought that, to celebrate the new shop and to make me feel encouraged that it will eventually be July, I’d do a giveaway.

So here’s the deal: leave a comment telling me about a Glorious Fourth that stands out in your mind. Did you see your first fireworks? Did you miss them? Did you have a first kiss, a first love, a first child? Did the fireflies blink and the long grass swish in the breeze? Did you have a picnic? Tell me about it, and be sure to leave your email address too.

Entries close at noon on April 21 (one week from now), and I’ll announce my favorite three stories soon after. These three winners will receive one box of twenty-four patriotic sugar stars. Sound nice?

Get writing!

Living up to the name

What else is there to do on a sunny Eastern Sunday than take myself to the garden center?

I bought seven kinds of Morning Glory seeds for the long planters, that will eventually be moved beneath the benches on my deck, where they will twine and bloom and make the whole deck into an exceptionally lovely place to spend summer evenings. I also bought some zinnia seeds and put them in planters, hoping–probably wrongly–that they will be happy there. And lastly… the snapdragons. These four little plants replaced the old hyacinths, which always got frostbitten and were never pretty. When these get frosted over in the fall, I will put in tulip bulbs.

Now on Etsy: sugar stars

While shopping for pre-made sugar flowers to adorn a batch of oh-so-cute cupcakes I had made, it came to my attention that the pre-made sugar decoration market is severely underserved. I’m now proud to say that my cake decorating experience has given me the know-how to start doing my own, small part to remedy this situation.

Now availabe in my Etsy shop, an array of adorable little sugar treats to adorn your adorable cupcakes, cakes, petits fours, cookies, brownies, and whatever else.

I think they make great doll-sized teatime treats, too.

Pastels & Pyrex

In the past month, a corner of my kitchen has become distinctly pastel-ified. It has always had my pink Kitchenaid mixer, in it, but then…

Sparks’ mint-green Hamilton Beach milkshake mixer was added to it. Isn’t that neat? We’ve been making protein shakes with it–it almost (almost) makes them seem like a treat.

And then the pastel Pyrex mixing bowls began to show up…

And kept on showing up.

Yay pastels! Yay for springtime!

(though, in the interests of full disclosure, there is currently snow on the ground. The grill looks so, so sad.)

Daffodil surprises

The pink daffodils are delighting me, this year. Not only are they all actually pink, but the colors in them really do change as the blooms mature. Do you remember the frilly bright-yellow daffs? Well look at them now:

All pink centers, except for a bright yellow halo at the tips. Lovely! When I planted daffodils, it was more because they were an early bloom than because of a genuine affection for them, but these are so lovely, I think I’m a convert.

Springing

Oooohhhhhh, springtime is certainly here. I am going outside without a coat more and more often.

Pudding only wishes she could, too…

I have been cutting daffodils and rotating them in and out of a bouquet on the table, for her. My “pink” daffodils are a mix of varieties, some of which bloomed just a little earlier than others, so I have had a continuous wave of blooms. Just as one kind in the bouquet begins to get tired, another is ready for cutting.

Madeline’s

I took my introductory series of cake decorating classes–and will take a series of fondant classes starting next week–at Madeline’s, a confectionary studio dedicated to teaching sugar art. Isn’t that neat?

And how about that Kitchenaid, eh? The first time I ever came close to thinking that my pink Kitchenaid might not be quite adequate… was when I saw Buffy’s aqua one. And aqua with red? Yes PLEASE, that is TOTALLY what I’m into right now.

Set against aqua walls and lime-green ceilings are inspirational cakes…

And working space.

What’s very interesting is that the front of this studio is an art gallery. This city will subsidize the rent of a commercial property, apparently, if it agrees to display work by local artists. Thus, a studio that teaches cake decorating and confectionary classes becomes possible, in this medium-size midwestern city. Cool!

Wanna stash?

I’m having a fit of Springtime de-stashing. Right now, I have seven lots of BEAUTIFUL yarn up on eBay, right here. If you knit, do have a look… the lots are big and therefore, perhaps, destined to go for way less than retail (SEVENTEEN skeins of Kureyon? What was I gonna make, an afghan?)