Early April Updates - Projects Completed & Things in Progress

The snow is finally melting - I have a yard again! Well, almost. The ground is still quite frozen, so my plans to start laying out the gardens are on hold.

the melting snow has revealed that I still have a lot of leaves to rake.
and I'm so close to being able to take the holiday lights of the little front shrub -
however, the extension cord is still buried under a 2-ft plow pile

I'm on spring break - we are lucky to have two weeks - and am staycationing this year. I have more enough to do around the house, and not enough money in the bank to travel anywhere beyond my parent's over the mountain or possibly a trip to Montpelier or Burlington. But the sun is out today, and the temps are supposed to get up into the 50s this week!


A little wrap up of things finished as of late. March was a bit of a crazy month, but I managed to do a few crafty things:

• The bedroom curtains! I like them a lot; the color combination is perfect, and they let just the right amount of light in when they're down. 

new curtains! And plenty of laundry to fold.

• A vintage $2 skirt I hemmed to just above my knee. It's wool, but a thin fabric that I can still wear this spring with tights and tall boots. Or without tights, if I'm feeling brave.

a new hand-sewn hem makes a world of difference

• A cute spring/summer jumper top/sundress for the niece. The yarn is actually sock yarn, but the primary colors were screaming to be something little. The top is super stretchy, so should fit her for a while.

stripey, stretchy sundress with adjustable straps

• Recovered the seat of a $10 bench/sewing chair I picked up last summer. The fabric came from nido, in Burlington, and is one of my new favorite places to find fabrics. This was an easy fix with my staple gun and some patience in centering the pattern of the fabric. There was a lot of flipping back and forth and pulling just tight enough to keep the surface firm without distorting the pattern.

centering the pattern took longer than I thought.
I still need to paint the frame, but need to pick a good color,

it's an archaeological dig of the fabric layers, and the previous cover isn't even showing!

And some things on the staycation agenda, including the requisite spring cleaning/stuff-sorting/grading & planning for school/bedding switch over (except that it still feels like winter)/etc.:

• Plenty of hemming & sewing. Cords that are too long, a vintage $2 dress that needs some updating (future post on that one!), and some other miscellaneous projects that have been sitting all winter.

the cords really should have been hemmed last winter.
I'm super excited about giving the green & white dress a new life!

• A new sweater is in the works. I know it's spring, and I'm knitting with a chunky merino, but I love this pattern and I wasn't loving the previous sweater I'd made with this yarn (I think I wore it twice?). So I finally ripped it out a week or so ago and got a start on this one last night. I've already got a few ideas for minor alterations from the original pattern (when do I ever follow the original pattern??), but it'll be pretty darn close.

sweater number two for this yarn. not sure I can finish before it gets too warm, but it could
definitely be an early spring sweater!

• The living room is thisclose to getting painted! I think I've settled on a color that I like, and that looks good with the trim and two other colors. If you recall, the living room is about one half of the open living space. The kitchen & dining room is a light blue, the reading nook is a lightish brown, and the trim all around is a white/light cream. This part of the room gets sun most of the day, and with three walls, the color looks a bit different on each. But I really like this shade and I think I might commit. Probably this weekend, or next week. Just need to get the furniture relocated and the walls prepped.

my super scientific method of choosing a color involves randomly
grabbing one off the rack of paint chips and realizing that it's "the one."
and then I tape it to the wall and wait a few weeks.

• And I might finally get around to the crafty pay-it-forward I committed to earlier in the year via the old facebook. I was much more on top of things last year, and I refuse to flake out on it - so it's a good thing the deadline is "sometime this year." I have ideas narrowed down for a few of the folks, so it's time I get things started. A wrap-up post on that project will come later this year (but not too late, I hope!)

someone's getting a cork craft!
and yes, I still rock the flip phone. hasn't quit me yet and keeps a call when it is
dropped four feet!