Winter weather

We've had the best winter weather, there is nice amount of snow, sun has shined and it's well below zero. Best weather to enjoy winter sports and to air home textiles.

And about winter sports. A had an accident. He fell while downhill skiing and something snapped in his knee. One or more ligaments in his knee have broke either fully or partly. We hope it's only partly, if those are fully broken then he needs surgery. He will have MRI on monday so we'll know more after that.

Patch for trousers

I had a hard time figuring out what to post about today.  I have done only very small things lately. Nothing big and nothing spectacular. But I had a few things to choose from and chose 'patch for a hole in the trousers'. The patch is not my best work, actually it's quite hideous looking, but it works.

In places where lot of strain is directed at garments the glueing method I did previously does not work, eventually the glue gives in and the hole in the trousers returns. The place I needed to fix was the butt of A's jeans.

These jeans will replace A's work jeans which are in much worse shape than these are. For the patch I cut out a piece of fabric and rounded the edges. Then I pinned the patch on to the back side trying to keep the fabric flat. Then I zigzaged the edges.

Then comes the most important part. I zigzag the whole patch area so it's filled. These stitches are what is keeping the fabric in one piece and keeping it strong.

From the right side it looks like this. If you choose a thread colour closer to the colour of the garment and make sure the fabric stays flat all the time the patch will be almost invisible.

 

This type of patch is very burdensome to make by hand and if I couldn't have use a sewing machine I wouldn't have fixed this. But since the butt of A's jeans just and just fitted in the machine the patch was not hard to make. I could never fix my own jeans like this, since they are way smaller, also my jeans never break from the bumb but always from the knee, it's impossible to gather half of a lenght of the leg and then machine sew inside the leg.

That's a plan

So I had a plan. I was about to remove all the wallpaper from the office and then paint the walls. I knew that the wallpaper in the livingroom which I removed few years ago was on very tight, so I thought I was prepared. In the office there are two layers of wallpaper, the rosy one and under is a stripy one.

I watered the wallpaper with a pressure sprayer (hope you know what I mean, I have no idea what that thing is even in Finnish) and the top wallpaper, the rosy one, almost slide off. I was able to rip it out in whole sheets. It was amazing.

Then I watered the old wallpaper, the stripy one. I watered and tried to rip the wallpaper off, but it was very stuck. Then I watered some more and tried to scrape it off, that didn't work. I even borrowed a steamer meant for removing wallpaper from A's parents'. That didn't work either. After one evening of work and messing around with the steamer, this is all that I had done.

That looks just pathetic.

Then I started to think that I need to change my plan. According to Benita you can paint over wallpaper and eventhough I trust her to tell the truth I still hesitate. So since the rosy wallpaper comes out so easily I will remove only that and leave the stripy one be. I will spackle the edges and some holes and then paint. I know I could just paint right over, but I'm still afraid that since the top wallpaper can be removed so easily that it will start to remove on it's own once I wet it with paint.

So that's the new plan.

Happy to do nothing

The start of this year has been really busy for me, because I started a new job and I needed to get a car and for some reason I've had lot of things on the evenings too. I'm not used to being busy, I normally have lots of free time and have time to do what ever I feel like. But now on the weekend I finally had nothing planned, so I pretty much did nothing, which was great. I went cross country skiing and watched a few movies and started to crochet granny squares. Maybe I'll make a blanket from them someday.

Sand

I was just wondering that have you ever seen grey sand? Because I haven't. I've seen black, beige, yellow, white and red sand, but I've never seen grey. I've seen grey stones and many of them, but not sand. Isn't that odd? I've also seen grey gravel. Why is there no grey sand? What happens to the stone when it get's smaller, does it reflect light in a different way so that it does not seem grey anymore?

Not that the grey sand is particulaly important, but I'm still thinking of making the dry landscape zen garden around the Teahouse and I've been checking some pictures of zen gardens and I noticed that grey gravel has been used in most of them. In miniature scale I would be using sand obviously, I even have the sand ready and will be using that eventhough it is yellowish. But I just started to wonder why I haven't seen any grey sand. Is there grey sand where you come from?

Things to do out of a Christmas tree, parts 3 and 4 out of 4

Hihey, a sequel to monday's post. Today I'm going show two more things I made from the Christmas tree.

Part 3

Bouquet

I made a very simple bouquet from the left over fir braches. I created the bouguet to a bowl and used a floral foam on the bottom where I could stick the fir braches. The foam is absolutely not necessary if a more upright vase is used.

Then just poked the foam full of braches. Nothing fancy and not difficult at all. And I ended up with a quite pretty and fresh bouquet.

Part 4

Hearth wreath

I also wanted to make a wreath, but I didn't want to make a round one, since I've made one allready. So for the upcoming Valentine's day (isn't a month from now an upcoming event?) I made a heart shaped wreath.

From a wire hanger and some additional wire I bended a heart form, then for extra sturdiness I attached two long fir branches on either side.

Then as I did on the earlier wreath I started making small bundles from the fir and attached them with thin wire to the base. When I reached the bottom I just thinned the bundles and took a few longer branches and placed them last. I hung the wreath to the backyard in the pergola, now we are able to see the wreath from the office.

Now, any ideas on what I should do with the trunk of the Christmas tree? :)

Things to do out of a Christmas tree, parts 1 and 2 out of 4

On friday I asked your ideas on what I should do with a Christmas tree that is so healthy and nice that it would be a shame to throw it in the trash. Thanks for all the replies, what I got from your replies was that it would not be odd to keep the tree or parts of it and that was exactly the thing I wanted to hear. So here are two ideas on what to do with a Christmas tree.

Idea 1
Keep the tree as a house plant

I wanted to move my furniture back in their own places, but the tree was hogging their space. That meant that the tree needed to be shrunk somehow which means that I needed cut it shorter. I chose a spot where many branches leave from the same level and saw half a feet under that.

I took a large glass jar and filled it with water and just placed the tree there, so it's resting on the branches. Added a ribbon on the top of the jar.

Idea 2 
Ice sculptures

Those are the things you need for the fir inspired ice sculptures plus different size buckets and containers and water. The ideas for the ice sculptures came from my now ex boss Tatyana (name changed). Tatyana sent me pictures of ice sculptures she had made. When I saw them I knew I could use some fir braches in them.


Idea 2a
Ice plate

I filled a pot lid with water and pushed five fir branch tips on the water in snow flake form. I left it outside to freeze for about 24 hours. After it was all frozen I removed the ice from the lid using warm water. I wanted to hang the plate on the wall so I needed to add a hole to it.

I warmed up a knitting needle with a tealight and melted a hole on the ice.

Then I added a ribbon and hung the iceplate in the conservatory.

Idea 2b
Ice lantern

There are a few ways to make a ice lantern, the most traditional way is to fill a bucket with water, freeze it for some time until enough ice has been formed on the sides and the top. Other style is to freeze blocks of ice solid and use them as a lanterns. I made both. I used a spice cake form on the last one.

For the more regular ice lantern I taped fir branches on the top of the bucket with duck tape.

 

I let both of them froze for allmost two days. It was about minus 6 Celsius (21 F), the water in the spice cake form froze solid and in the bucket the top was about 5 cm (2 in) thick. The sides were a bit thinner.

Here I am removing the lantern from the bucket (notice that I'm not wearing any shoes, you should! Ice water is... well icy). Then I cut off the pieces of the branches that poked out from the ice. And here are both of the lanterns.

Thank you Tatyana for these great ice ideas!

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Parts three and four coming on wednesday.