The Reveal

It's a nice sunny day and the pup and I are ready to finish up our chair project.

We've gathered our fabric and our tools. The fabric was chosen to go in a room with an "adventure" theme. Do you like it?

I've had so much fun with this project! I had never done anything like this before so really didn't know what I was doing, but I did a great job... if I do say so myself. I was even able to find that thin breathable fabric for the underside of the seat like you find on the bottom of upholstered chairs. I salvaged this this fabric from a dust ruffle "base". You know, that thin white fabric that goes between the mattress and the box spring and holds the ruffle. It was perfect and looks just like a brand new chair bottom!

And the reassembly begins.

A few bits of hardware and we're almost finished.

Don't they look great? The pup thinks so.

I think the chairs have passed his comfy test!

I wish I could keep them; they would look great in my craft room. But alas, off they go to their new owner.

 

Stay tuned for my next post that may actally have some knitting content.

The continuing saga of the chairs...

A coat of paint has been added to one of the chairs. You can really see the improvement.

 

I had some help from a little white pup. 

Oh no! It looks like the pup got brown paint all over himself.

Silly pup, the paint is for the chairs.

Although not photoed, the other chair did get its first coat of paint. Next, I'll apply another coat of paint and staple some fresh new fabric to the cushions. (Not sure if I should let the pup help with that task. What do you think?)

It was all about spinning last night at knit nite!

Although I've tried my hand at teaching myself to spin through YouTube videos in the past, I wasn't very successful and I still had so many questions. No matter how many times I shouted directed my questions at the computer screen, I never got an answer. "Am I over spinning?" "Did I draft this too much?" "Why do I have so many slubs in the yarn?"... No answer. I needed to be taught in person.

Tuesday night I was lucky enough to have an immensely patient friend, Will, who sat with me and coached me along with learning this new craft. He answered all my questions which I am ashamed to say, I asked with quite a snappy tone as though it was his fault I wasn't spinning like a pro right away. Actually, I fired off my questions in that manner because I was well rehearsed from my past spinning attempts.

Will was great about making corrections to things I was doing wrong, but mostly he assured me that my spinning wasn't "wrong", it just needed practice. I guess because I have been knitting and crocheting for so long, the concept of practice is somewhat foreign to me. But, by the end of the evening I was seeing an improvement. Thanks Will!

Progress Report

Day two of the tale of the two chairs. The cushions have been completely stripped and the chairs have had a light sanding, although you can't tell from this photo.

Removing the staples that held the fabric on the cushions was a much more difficult job than I had imagined it would be and there were probably a bazillion of them. I did learn a few tricks that made digging them out a bit easier so I was able to shave about 45 minutes off the process compared to the day before.

Now I've got some swelling in the palm of my hand and a beauty of a blister on my thumb. The staples were rusty and disgusting, and if ever I should have had a current tetnus shot, it probably should have been now.


If you look closely at the top of the first photo above, you might see a pair of feet walking by. This is my hubby working on his project of the day: getting rid of the sink hole in the center of the patio. (He gave his hand a good smack with that mallet just to make me feel a bit better about my blister.)

We rewarded ourselves for our day's work with a trip to our favorite barbeque place. The place doesn't look like much from the outside, but the food is wonderful. Huge portions for a great price. I failed to get a photo of those huge portions, remembering only after we had already eaten and were about to drive away...

A Tale of Two Chairs

One tag sale.
Five dollars.
Two chairs.

















Three and a half hours.
A gazillion staples.
















Two sore hands.
And only two cushions stripped so far.