Boxes and Baskets

I really like the mixture of storage boxes and baskets that I’ve assembled in my craft room! Here’s a quick tour…

On top of the wall of yarn:

On top of the pie safe:

A decorative box that was once filled with video tapes now holds all of my straight knitting needles.

And on top of the two book cases:

So far, so good, but now I’m reconsidering the fabric slipcover idea for my paper boxes.

I’ve thought more about how much upholstery fabric it would take to cover all my boxes and how much that would cost. I considered using the floral upholstery fabric I have *, but it doesn’t go with the oriental rug in my craft room. Besides, that material’s already destined for several projects in the library/office where the matching chair will eventually be.   * Scroll about half-way down in the linked post to see fabric, chair and rug.

The only other large piece of heavy fabric I have is Very Stiff navy denim, which doesn’t appeal to me for this use.

When it occurred to me that I could use regular brush-on paint for the boxes, instead of the spray paint I considered earlier, I thought, “Now, there’s a reasonable solution!” And… with no volatile chemicals involved, I can paint the boxes now, indoors.

So I’m living with this little burgundy drawer on one of my shelves, letting it help me decide how I feel about burgundy paper boxes. You see…  I have about half a gallon of burgundy satin paint. According to the custom color label on the can’s lid, it was mixed for us in February of 2000! It would be nice to finally use the rest of it.

I think burgundy looks pretty good with my ‘cherry’ bookcases!

Oh, on the shelf below the drawer, you can see part of the lid on a wooden bread box. (Kennedy’s saltine Biscuit) It took up too much valuable space on our limited kitchen counter and landed in the attic, but it looks right at home here!

I got a new idea from some storage boxes I saw in JoAnns. The boxes were darker than their lids, a look I liked, and each box had an attractive leather strap handle on one end (like this style of handle, although these simpler ones appeal to me too). Handles would make it easier to pull boxes down off the shelves and I could make matching leather label pockets. Together they would dress-up painted paper boxes!

I just happen to have some leather pieces:

My brother shared the ‘pages’ from a leather furniture sample book with my sister and me. There are so many colors to choose from – I could even put pink handles on my burgundy boxes!! lol. Each piece is about fifteen inches square, large enough for many handles and label pockets.

A Scrappy Ripple of the Week #10 – Princess

Finding balls of both pink and purple novelty yarns in my charity stash inspired me to make this scrappy ripple. I used about eighteen different yarns, mostly from scrap balls, lining up a few colors at a time in the order I wanted to crochet them.

I had no idea how far my pink and purple Fun Fur would go, but I was quite surprised when it only lasted seven rows! Although it’s a very airy looking yarn, it is heavy with little yardage per ounce. So I learned an important lesson – I definitely cannot crochet three ripple rows from an ounce of fun fur, which is the estimate I use for ‘normal’ acrylic yarns.

11,690 ripple stitches – 853,101 donated since Jan. 2011

Oh, well… this sort of thing can happen when you make a randomly striped scrappy afghan. But, even with plenty of fur on the left half and little on the right, ‘Princess’ is still a fun girly blanket!

A Lonely Mitt

Do you recognize this charcoal mitt? I knitted it for DH back in December.

Sadly, its partner has gone missing. It’s probably laying, forlorn, in a parking lot somewhere in New England, having dropped from of DH’s coat pocket when he pulled out his car keys.

Although a little disappointed that it happened so early in the mitt’s life, I’m not upset. After all, this is the very first item that’s gone missing in the six years I’ve knit for him! At least it’s not a hat knitted of thin sock yarn, or a loooong scarf.

What I dreaded wasn’t the knitting of the replacement mitt, but the hunting for the charcoal yarn! How much of it was left? Was it in the bag of scrap balls I keep for repairs? Was it among the charity wools? – or – Was it in the… Bum Bum Bum BAHM…   Waaahll of Yaaarrn?

I was already imagining an entire shelf of carefully stowed, but slippery, Ziplocs cascading to the floor around me as I attempted to remove just one bag. How many would I need to open to check the subtle differences in charcoals? Hearing me audibly groan at the thought, DH volunteered to help. He said he was sure that there had been a large amount of yarn leftover, so we would check ‘the wall’ first.

As I moved a floor lamp to shine directly over our work area, I realized that, although there were many bags of grey yarn, there were only three of charcoal! And the very first one I pulled free, with no resulting avalanche…

said ‘Charcoal Mitts’! Happy, happy, joy, joy! Don’t I feel silly for having turned a mole hill into a hillock?

I’ve already cast-on and started knitting a new matching mitt. Vroom, vroom!

If you’ve never knit with dpns (double-pointed needles) or have difficulty with it, you may find this photo tutorial at Purlbee helpful. They do a great job of explaining how to join and knit-in-the-round.

Hot Pink Socks, Thanks to Wilton

You may remember reading this December blog post, where I talked about finding two pairs of 99¢ hand-knit wool socks. These are now all of $2.36 socks, thanks to the one-ounce container of Wilton’s ‘Rose’ icing color I bought for dyeing them! lol. ($2.29 Rose coloring – 40% coupon is $1.37 + 99¢ socks = $2.36)

It’s been a long time since I used Wilton coloring to dye wool, so I consulted the i die for Wilton’s dye Ravelry group and googled ‘dyeing wool with Wilton‘ to refresh my memory. Everyone agrees that adding an acid, usually white vinegar, was necessary to set the color, but some wanted the acid in the pre-soak, while others put it in the dye bath. There was also discussion about how red #3 and #40 react differently to acid (Rose has #3), with some reference to clumping (sounds very bad) if things became too acidic, but I could reach no conclusion about what the ratio of vinegar to water should be. (just how much is a ‘glug’?)

Wanting to avoid the dreaded ‘clumping’, I stirred just two tablespoons of white vinegar into four cups (enough to cover my socks) of lukewarm water in a microwave-safe bowl. Then I submerged my socks and set them aside for a one hour soak.

Next I gently moved the socks to another bowl (no squeezing or wringing, lest I tempt felting) and prepared to add color to the vinegar water. Although I only wanted to put in a wee dollop (the size of a pea) of Rose icing color, I definitely wanted to wear rubber gloves! The best way I’ve found to get the corn syrup and glycerine-based Wilton coloring to completely dissolve is to rub it between my thumb and fingertips, as if I was trying to rub in thick hand lotion. Any remaining bits of gel can leave sticky dark blotches on the wool! Ew!!

With the socks submerged in a beautiful hot pink dye bath, into the microwave they went. I set it for one and a half minutes, then let the water cool back to warm. I kept repeating those two steps until the water had faded to palest pink. That’s called exhausting the dye.

Here’s how my socks looked after the first dye bath and that’s the radioactive-looking second dye bath I prepared.

I don’t know whether I mixed three or four dye baths throughout the day, but I know I love my results!

Here is the before photo (left), the after photo (center), and December’s computer-adjusted photo (right), which showed how we thought the socks might look after over-dyeing.

Yup, I like my new hot pink socks the most!

Oh – they’re really just $1.19 pink socks, teehee… when I pro-rate the cost of the icing color I actually used, plus… I have lots of Wilton Rose left for future dye projects!

And look at how well my socks coordinate with my primrose!

What a long-lasting bloom period these perky little plants have – they’ve bloomed, nonstop, for over a month already! Watch for them to appear in your local grocery store from mid-December on. Sometimes their prices dip amazingly low; these cheerful pots of color were only $1.65 each.

Primrose care tips: they like bright eastern light and cool temperatures, water only from the bottom – not from the top, keep evenly moist – not drenched or dry. Notice how heavy a moist pot feels in your hand and only add water when it feels definitely lighter. If the plant wilts? Oops, you waited a little too long, but chances are it will recover with a little water (don’t over-water in your zeal to ‘fix’ it) and you can try again.

Little Ripple of the Week #9 – His Favorite Colors

I wasn’t going to show you this, the last little ripple in my stash because it’s such a dreary color combination, especially for during the winter. But then I thought about how it seemed rather dishonest not to share every ripple with you and, besides, each of us know men who are very happy with these colors!

10,168 stitches – 841,411 donated since Jan. 2011

Just 31″ x 48″, a gentleman at the nursing home can use enjoy this little ripple as a warm lap robe. Bingo, anyone? (My lap robes are given as Bingo prizes at a monthly party there.)

Here it is in a carefully color-coordinated setting! lol.

And for those who prefer an even more rustic look:

Too bad… even in the close-up you can’t really see the tweed yarn, which DH thinks is especially nice. It’s probably Red Heart Super Saver Buff Fleck. He thinks this little afghan’s color scheme is great! (told ya) and likes that I didn’t include any pure white yarn in it.

I appreciate a man who knows what he likes!

Daisies in the Meadow – A Granny, Nearly Finished!

Another from my stash of small afghans, I made Daisies in the Meadow about thirty-three inches wide and fifty-five inches long.

I remember that I found the green yarn, which came on a big cone, at a tag sale. It has a lovely soft sheen, similar to Simply Soft. The fuzzy white is probably Dazzleaire.

Such an easy design needed an easy border, so I added four rounds: one double-crochet round of green, a half-double round of white, then one double and one single of green.

I slip-stitched the eighty-four granny squares together, just like Lucy demonstrates in this tutorial in her blog, Attic24. It made a raised grid on the afghan’s back.

What was I thinking when I put this blanket away without weaving-in the seams’ yarn ends? Well, just one short work session will take care of them. I’ll be able to share these daisies with a little foster girl loooong before the wild daisies will bloom.

Better Boxes

I’ve used paper boxes like these (boxes that once held ten reams of paper) to organize both my quilt fabrics and my acrylic charity yarns for years.

They’re a good size, big enough to hold quite a bit, without becoming too heavy for me to easily lift or move around. They were readily available and free, from DH’s last workplace. They do the job.

I need storage containers for my new craft room, but I want something better-looking than paper boxes.

The ones that will sit on top of my bookcases, where they’ll easily be seen from the entry way and the dining room, need to look especially good! Once I realized that I needed at least fifteen boxes, I knew chances weren’t good for me to find something I wanted in a retail store. Remember, I need to like both the containers and the total cost for fifteen of them!

I briefly considered spray painting paper boxes, but figured the color choices would be limited and the chemicals dreadful (I cherish my remaining brain cells). Besides, the best result I could hope for would be nicely painted cardboard boxes, okay for a closet, if that.

Thoughts of contact paper, wallpaper, and iron-on fabric also passed through my head. But I knew that, far sooner than I would like, any of those would need replacing and I’d have to go through the covering process again, so forget those ideas!

Given enough time, I’m sure I would find just what I need at a tag sale or a thrift store, but I don’t want to wait that long, so I decided that I will “shop” in our attic, garage and basement instead. I wrote a list of eclectic containers that we might still have around: some wooden boxes (I knew right where to find this one up in the attic),

picnic baskets (got this gorgeous one for $2.00 at a tag sale in March 2006),

and wicker suitcases, similar to these, that I think will look good together. Although I know there aren’t fifteen of them, I should be able to find enough to make it worth the effort of digging around.  They’ll be far more interesting to look at than cardboard paper boxes!

One of the library books I mentioned the other day, Sewing in a Straight Line by Brett Bara, gave me another idea. The introduction to its Make-it-Your-Way Ottoman Cover project says, “you can also use this pattern for any boxy item”. I bet that means it would work to cover a cardboard paper box, eh!?! I found a tissue box cover tutorial over at “Make It and Love It”, which shows a similar construction method (if you skip the slit in the top where you would pull the tissue through). Ashley used an upholstery weight fabric for her example and I think that would be perfect for my box slip covers too.

I may add ribbon pull tabs, like the ones on these fabric-covered boxes (the Woman’s Day’s tutorial is very good, but covering boxes that way takes far more fabric than the slip covers). I can sew a tab into the seam on each end, where the top piece of fabric meets the end piece. Tabs would make it easier to pull the fabric covers up and off of my boxes.

I like the label pockets on these fabric storage baskets, which I found at J Caroline Creative!, but I’ll make mine larger. I know I’ll visit that website again to explore the long list of other projects. Just check out this cute desk idea that I found there!

Three cheers for brain-storming – Yay! Yay! Yay! Soon I’ll have plenty of great-looking storage boxes for my craft room.