All These Things

I don't know. I mean, I've been here, but I've not so much been sitting with time to blog so I guess I've been silent.

The room is completely painted though, ceiling and walls the same beige (and the baseboards too, I've been pressed for time, contrast - if any - can come later) and it looks decent.

I bought a new duvet cover and sewed a not even slightly ruffled dust ruffle because when it comes to daybeds all you can find is cream or white broderie anglaise which I just cannot. It's not even slightly hard and really doesn't take more than an hour or so. And you get to choose your fabric (you can see it below in the pictures of the table and the lamp).

I did a very small amount of beading while I considered my Room Strategy.

 I changed the way the rivoli is captured in the star-shaped pendant because it just looked BAD before.

 I made a couple of beaded beads as class samples for the class I'm teaching on Tuesday. I'm nuts about the colour ways - I might offer them as kits at Bead & Button next year.

I knew I needed to be completely ready in advance (except for printing out the instructions) because my daughter was going to be here for a week and while a new coat of paint is nice, it wasn't enough.

So I've been making things for the second bedroom.

At some undetermined point in the future I'll sell this house and when prospective buyers come to look at it, the rooms need to be furnished, need to look clean and at least halfway decent, and a room with only a crappy bookshelf and a daybed with really ugly linen isn't going to cut it and since I'm getting some work done on the house (and for about a week until I got a second opinion was under the impression that I absolutely had to get a new roof this instant) I was wanting to not have to spend a bunch of money for furnishings which I don't actually need.

I thought a pair of tables/nightstands might be useful, so I started with PVC, some wood and metallic spray paint and ended up with something that's not ghastly, though it's not quite as steady as I'd like - but I have Thoughts on how to fix that.

The room has an overhead light of course, but I had only one ugly lamp and a matched pair of tables really needs a matched pair of lamps.

PVC again. It's just so easy to work with, though I confess that cutting four-inch pipe isn't the best work I've done in my life. I'm just not very good with a hacksaw.

I'd never used one of those drill bits that makes big holes. It's kinda fun actually. What I really needed was a 5/8" drill bit because I wanted to glue clear iridescent marbled in the holes, but I didn't have one so perhaps another time. Plus the glueing would take too long; I was finishing the second lamp after my daughter arrived.

Meanwhile I finished another pendant which is very two-dimensional, but I was somehow hoping that with the addition of another colour a three-dimensional aspect would be added but sadly it wasn't. It looks like just a flower, but it's supposed to be a five-fold version of the thing that many people think of as a Celtic knot.

I know.

It misses the boat completely.

The lamp also needed metallic paint to match the table.

This picture is with a CFL bulb in it which would simply not get beyond the pink stage of illumination so I eventually swapped it for an LED bulb which is far more effective. It casts interesting blobs of light on the walls, even without the marbles, and illuminates quite well.

Once you start looking for instructions on how to make anything with PVC pipe, you will in fact find instructions on how to make just about anything with PVC pipe, though there are all sorts of dire warnings about how you will burn your house down if you wire your own lamps. I think I'm safe though, as I wired two lamps in my house about twenty or more years ago, one of which I use every day, and so far (touch wood) my house is unburned.

But I was extra-careful because I was tempted to have the bejeezes scared out of me by all that hellfire and brimstone talk. OK, fire only, but still - the tone was the same.

The idea for the lamp was from a pendant light I saw, which I was actually considering making as there are two hooks in the ceiling that I neglected to remove, and have been considering how to put them to good use. The problem is that they are just hooks in the ceiling, not supported or connected to any sort of joist and as four-inch PVC pipe is pretty heavy, as are LED bulbs, a DIY swag light turned out not to be on the cards. I could just see it falling down along with a chunk of ceiling and that amount of patching might just be beyond my capabilities.

I did find something to make to hang from the hooks though. From paper. This one is approximately basketball-sized. I'm still working on the next one. Or two.

After all that my daughter announced that she couldn't possibly conceive of sleeping in a twin bed and so has moved into the guest bedroom for her visit.

And her cat doesn't remember her anymore.