More Painting: Dining Room Touch-up

I hope to be sharing sewing projects again before too long, but until I manage to clean up my sewing room and actually work on something, I'll share some of the other projects occupying my time. For the next month or so I'll be focused on painting.... the kitchen, the powder room and a few other "touch-up" areas that were affected by the kitchen remodel.  So the crochet and knitting projects will continue for a while, too, since I can work on them anywhere.

Before the renovation, this was the view from the dining room into the old kitchen. The lower wall is painted a solid eggshell finish and the upper wall is a faux finish using glaze and was intended to resemble woven fabric such as denim or linen.  I painted this room several years ago and fortunately, I had sufficient leftover paints and glaze for this repair project.

The archway from the kitchen to the dining room was widened and relocated to the center of the room.  The contractors cut a new entry way and patched the old one with new dry wall.  It would have been too easy if they'd been able to reuse the cut out section, wouldn't it? At least they were able to salvage and reuse the chair rail molding.

I spent one afternoon covering the moldings with painters' tape and fixing the patched areas before priming the drywall.  Because it's been several years since the original paint job, it took a while to remember how to create the woven fabric look.  Finally I found the right brush and used a light tack tape to create new "panels" to glaze.

Here it is all finished - the lower wall is a really good match and the upper wall is close enough.  The good thing about this technique is that it is supposed to be textured and irregular.

Paints used:  Behr Premium Plus latex paint from Home Depot, Neptune Blue in eggshell on the lower wall, Americana in eggshell mixed with faux glaze on the upper wall over a base coat of flat Navajo White.

see more photos in my Kitchen/Powder Room Renovation Set on Flickr

Up next: the Great Room Wall - needs to patched, sanded and primed.  I may paint part of this wall with some leftover neutral color so I can put up some window treatments until the rest of the Great Room can be painted professionally.

Stitch N' Pitch: The Happy Recap

Scroll down to the bottom for links to posts by other bloggers, articles and any other tidbits I find online

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Our little group met near the old Home Run Apple well in advance of the gate opening. And yes, it was a very windy day indeed. The weather forecast was for temperatures in the high 80's and possibility of scattered thunder storms. We were prepared for both sun and rain, armed with sunscreen and hats as well as rain ponchos and umbrellas, which pretty much guaranteed the rain would miss us.

We stood in line for about half an hour waiting to enter the stadium through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. One of fans in line ahead of us was wearing a customized Mets jersey that read Buckner with the number 86. Die hard fans will understand why that is amusing.

It was Sports Bag Day, and the first 25,000 fans received these "lovely" bags. Once inside the turnstiles, we were on a mission to find Promenade Section 531 for the Guinness World Record Event, so we headed up the escalators to the left and kept going until we reached our destination.

The organizers kept everyone moving efficiently - handing out the special Stitch N' Pitch bags, yarn and crochet hooks and getting us seated. As we were nearing the end of a row they asked for a couple of people to head up to the back of the section to fill a pair of seats, so Rich and I volunteered.

Yes, you read that right - After weeks of telling me no, he decided to grab a hook and help break the record. He was lucky to be seated next to another husband, who said he felt he was discriminated against because they asked if he was here to crochet, but didn't ask any of the ladies the same question. The nice lady next to him helped instruct Rich how to chain and he even tried some single crochet.

I was in the row in front of Rich and a few seats away from me there was another young man who was reluctantly chaining. Kudos to the deputized Guinness record observers for gently convincing him to keep going. It might have been easier to sell the guys on crocheting if the hooks had been blue or orange instead of light pink. The observers were very diligent in making sure that everyone in their assigned rows crocheted for the entire 15 minutes.

*UPDATED 6/28/2010*

I don't have any pictures of me other than this one taken by the Mets photographers (I paid way too much for a single print and scanned it to add here). Rich was supposed to be in charge taking pictures during the event ... but we know how that turned out, don't we?

The rest of our group was about mid-way up the section:

Deborah Norville was the celebrity emcee and started us off. She also gave a quick demo on how to crochet for the beginners in the crowd. And so we crocheted for 15 minutes while listening to that typical, 70's style, time elapsing music (tequila!) and at the end we all counted down the final seconds and cheered.

When it was over, we crossed over to our ticketed seats in Section 528. We were in the last row, but enjoyed it. The wind, though a bit strong, was cooling in the hot muggy heat.

We had more than an hour before the first pitch of the game, so the younger girls in our group went to explore Citi Field and to try to get a player to sign a baseball. The rest of us relaxed and continued crocheting and knitting until just before game time.

In addition to the Stitch N' Pitch tote bags, everyone with a SNP Ticket received a special Mets Skyline keychain. Can't you just picture this skyline image as a pattern for a quilt block? or a cross stitch design?

The Mets scored early and often, and it seemed as if every rally started with a hit from Ike Davis. It was very appropriate that they played the Rolling Stones' "Start me Up" before each of his at bats. We all cheered for David Wright's home run in the 3rd inning and sang along to Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th inning stretch.

The game ended with another Mets home win and as we were making our way down the exit ramp a fan who'd obviously had a few Budweisers during the game was offering to buy somebody's sports bag. He'd arrived too late to the game and was bitterly disappointed to have missed out. Considering our vast array of Mets freebies at home, Rich gave the guy his bag and told him to keep his money. He was so thrilled to get that bag, he shook both our hands twice.

Now, if he'd asked for the Stitch N' Pitch bag, he wouldn't have stood a chance at one of those -- I'm keeping them both!

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~ Read my previous Stitch N' Pitch blog entries
~ See more of my photos in my Flickr Stitch N' Pitch Set

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 Here's a list of a few blog posts and articles about this event from around the web:

• NY Daily News: Over 400 fans set Guinness World Record for most people crocheting in the same place
• Queens Ledger: Close Knit Group
• Golden Apples: Exhilarating!
• CrochetingWithDee.com: Going for the Guinness World Record
• Yarn 365: Stitch N Pitch
• The Knitting Patch: Stitch N' Pitch
• Deborah Norville: New World Record and Video: Deborah at Citi Field
• Photo.Knit.Dog:  Stitch 'n Pitch 2010
• Hooks, Sticks & Wheels: NY Mets Stitch N Pitch Day
• Lion Brand Notebook: Setting World Records at Citi Field ... with Crochet!

Stitch N' Pitch at Citi Field: By The Numbers

Stitch N' Pitch at Citi Field: By the Numbers

Event: Guinness World Record for The Most People Crocheting Simultaneously (if you don't know what this means, read my previous blog post)
Date: June 5, 2010
Time: 2:15pm (approximately)
Seating: Promenade Section 531
Capacity: 427 Crocheters breaking the record
Duration: 15 minutes
Swag: 2 Mets bags, a keychain, yarn and a crochet hook
Total Stitch N' Pitch ticket holders: not sure about this one, but heard there were over 600 tickets sold; I'd guess it was about twice that number on game day
Number of Years Mets have Participated in Stitch N' Pitch: 4
Number of Stitch N' Pitch Games I've attended: 2

Final Score of the Game: Mets 6, Marlins 1
Mets Hits: 10, 4 from Ike Davis
Home Runs: 1 from David Wright, his 10th of the year
Home Record after the Game: 21-9
Weather: 89 degrees
Wind: 16 mph, out to RF
Total Attendance: 37,165

This is a shortened post - I'm working on a more detailed recap that should be finished soon. I've been reading lots of blog posts about Saturday's Stitch N' Pitch at Citi Field; thought I'd change it up a little with my post. If you're familiar with this page on Mets.com you'll get it. :-)

You can see my photos in my Flickr Stitch N' Pitch set.

In Progress: Felted Westie Sweaters

Started another knitting project recently ... this is from a book called Dress Your Dog - Nifty Knits for Classy Canines. One of the designs in the book is for felted sweaters, modeled by a pair of black Scotties.

I thought the sweaters would look sweet on my Westies and the yarn was on sale ... so I started out the first sweater intending it to be for Keli. The pattern includes stitch counts for Medium and Large sizes; Keli is a little big for a Westie, so I followed the instructions for the Large length and width.

It took me a little over a week to do the knitting (I admit I was a little obsessed with finishing) and yesterday I spent several hours working on the felting. I had to do the wet felting by hand, as it seems that my new HE washing machine doesn't agitate enough to felt the fibers very well.

This is my first real felted project (I know -- technically, the term is called "fulling" but the books call it felting and so will I). It turned out rather nice, but I think I will do a little more research on the technique. It was interesting so watch the knitting morph into a semi-solid fabric.

The finished sweater before felting was a little larger than necessary, since the wool is supposed to shrink a bit. All the yarns are 100% wool; the black is Berroco Peruvian and the colors are Cascade 220, and they're all labeled 100% Peruvian Highland Wool.

I left it to dry flat overnight and tried it on Keli this morning to check the sizing. It almost fits -- the belly straps fit and it covers her well from side to side. BUT -- the neck straps are too short and the back length is about 3 spots too long. So the amount of shrinkage from felting wasn't quite as expected.

Penny tried it on next -- the neck straps are just right, but of course, the belly straps and back length are too long. But the good thing about felting is supposed to be that you can cut it without worry of unraveling, right? So I guess I'll be doing some trimming .... maybe I'll need to add some machine felting to the cut edges, too, just to be sure it stays together.

This is definitely a work-in-progress -- and now I need to do a second one for Keli, with a few modifications to the pattern.

Of course, both of them are looking at me cross-eyed for making them try on sweaters in June when it's 80 degrees outside!

See the post - Finished: Felted Westie Sweaters

Ravelry link

Finished: Perfect Pup

I am officially removing this from my UFO list and am considering it finished, even though there's a little jacket that's not quite done. It's time to finally share the story about this little guy.

The last time I wrote about this project was in February 2008. A few weeks before that, I'd written about some crochet and knitting projects that inspired me to pick up this long unfinished Westie pup.

This knitting design is Alan Dart's Perfect Pups Westie pattern, a leaflet I purchased on eBay in early 2002, shortly after our first Westie girl, Wyndi, had left us for the Rainbow Bridge. Even though I'm not a frequent knitter, I just could not resist the cover photo for this pattern and I had to at least attempt to make this little Westie pup. (This OOP pattern can be found on Etsy or eBay listings or as a PDF on Alan Dart's UK website.)

It took me a few weeks to find the yarn supplies and I made a number of substitutions. I could not find the Sirdar Snowflake yarn, so the body of my Westie is knitted using Berroco Plush.  The ears, feet, nose and eyes are knitted using Plymouth Yarn Dreambaby DK yarns in appropriate colors.

Each of the body pieces were finished fairly quickly. Before too long, all the parts of the Westie were complete and I was working on finishing the jacket.  Of course, at the time, I had to change all the colors to pinks and purples for my Wyndi.

Around the time I was working on the knitted pup, we brought home our new 8-week-old Westie puppy, Keli Angel and all knitting, sewing and other crafting projects were put aside while we enjoyed all the excitement and commotion that having a new puppy in the house creates.  And then six years passed before I picked it up again.

I still can't believe that so much time had passed -- and it wasn't due to a lack of interest or time constraints.  I was very motivated to finish this puppy.  So what kept stopping me?  That silly little jacket.  Or rather, the edging for the jacket -- it's a 4 stitch ribbing that's knitted separately and is supposed to be attached to the main part of the sweater and I just can't make it work.  I've stitched it on and ripped it off at least twice already.

In January 2008 I decided to forget the sweater and focus on putting the Westie body together.

 

It wasn't long before it started looking like a real Westie:

The pattern photo was a fair guideline for shaping the body parts, but I used my own in-house Westie model to get the details just right.  As I was stuffing and shaping each body part, I found a few spots where I dropped a stitch -- remember, I never claimed to be a great knitter -- I just stitched up any holes or loosely knitted spots with pieces of the Plush yarn and buried the loose ends inside.

The last remaining step was to add strands of yarn around the head to create that famous rounded Westie head.  And that's around the time when Penny joined our pack.  She was a five month old rescue puppy with no manners whatsoever, and once again the knitted puppy was put away for safekeeping.  Now, at 2-1/2 years old, she's still quite a rascal, but she has learned to behave nicely when I'm working on projects (she chews her own toys, not my supplies -- most of the time).

Last November (during the kitchen renovation), I pulled out this knitted Westie to work on for a day and managed to get most of the headpiece finished.  But it wasn't until I started working on other yarn projects for this year's Stitch N' Pitch that I decided to put this puppy to rest once and for all.

I wasn't able to get a big, full round head, but I think it approximates the look of a pet Westie head - or at least it looks a lot like my girls.

 

That tail makes me giggle - it almost looks as if it's waggin!

Oh, I almost forgot -- the pattern calls him Wesley, which I think suits him. And Keli keeps telling me that Penny was supposed to be a little Westie brother, not a Wauzer sister. So he's a boy and his name is Wesley.  That pink jacket won't work now anyway.

There are lots more photos of Wesley in my Knitted Westie Set on Flickr

By the way, I've joined Ravelry now.  I don't know how much I'll be hanging out there, but it looks like a great place for inspiration and help, in the same way that PatternReview is a great resource for sewing. To find me in either place, look for sewamazin.