for household Archives - Page 11 of 16

More pottery

The boyfriend took me to paint pottery again, and this time I did a plate. He did another mug, but for himself instead of as a gift.

I like koi. Unfortunately I am not very good at drawing them. Matt suggested the barbels, which made all the difference in the world. You can hardly tell in the unglazed photos that the background is blue, although that is more the fault of the rather awful lighting in the pottery place.

Matt made his almost a comic strip. I am incredibly impressed by his ability to draw in pen (or paint).

After I took the pictures he painted the handle and bottom purple.

And without further ado, the glazed fish plate.

Soapdate

Hello all!
My current projects seem all to be longer-term, without so much to blog about at this point. However, I do owe an update on the soapmaking work, and on how the strange foamy soaps have worn.

First off, I made an order with Wholesale Supplies Plus for a bunch of soap-related things: a mold, two sampler kits, and a set of coloring blocks (which I admit I ordered mostly to get above $100 and get a free gift, which was my choice of one of 10 or 12 fragrance oils). Full marks for that experience: the website is good, the shipping was fast, and they even wrapped electrical tape around the lid of the fragrance bottle to keep it from leaking. Here’s my soapbox:

That photo was taken after making a set of soaps with the new materials, as well as with some of my TJ Maxx soaps – I chopped up and melted some very strongly scented floral soap along with some lavender-vanilla guest soaps, some water, and some unscented shower gel, and then pressed the mixture flat in an old take-out box.

kind of looks like split pea soup makings

Then I used some heart-shaped cookie cutters to punch out pieces to embed in glycerin soap. I used up the last of my original block, plus a pound each of honey, olive oil, and high lather glycerin soaps from my sampler packs. I embedded in four or five steps, trying to get the bars with multiple pieces to embed at different levels. I would have has more success with slightly more patience, but it worked out pretty well.

I’ve been using a bar in the shower and although it started out a little big for my hands it makes great shave gel. It also smells amazing – I was kind of tempted to taste the honey soap because it smelled so good (I refrained).

Finally, as promised, an update on the foamy soaps. As expected, the soap with more non-glycerin both lathers better and is getting worn down faster. In the picture below, you can see that. It’s also been used more but not as much more as it appears. The embedded shapes are not appearing as nicely as I might have hoped; I think the bat is going to be missing half of one wing and the tip of the other before his body comes fully into view. The star looks pretty nice, though. Recall I made a double layer of those embedded shapes, one clear and one purple.

We call this LEARNING.

Some things just don’t work

I had a great idea last fall. I envisioned a multi-level yarn holder, like milk crates on their sides but with a half-height front hanging out at an angle. One could include up to four bins, because dowels are four feet long and each bin is a foot-cube, and they could be rearranged (well, except one would have to be the top permanently). It was golden! I sketched it out in my little graph paper notebook and gathered all the cotton remnants I had that are too heavy for my usual uses. I made four bins almost completely – the top edge of that front lip needed to be finished – and threaded them onto the dowels. I stood it up in my sewing room and BOW BOW. It sort of twisted and fell over.

Well, I was too busy then to get back to it, so yesterday I dove in again. I sewed up the remaining edges and then sewed dowels along the bottom outer edges of the top bin. I thought a nice square of rigidity would fix the problem. Well, it sort of did. Not quite. So I delved into my shockingly large stash of “cardboard from inside calendars” and had enough to put a 12″x12″ piece in the bottom of each bin. So, okay. Not perfect, but okay.

However, then I tried to fill it. My original plan had four hooks and eyes holding the bins together, one near each corner, and I had faked it with a safety pin in each corner. Not enough. I put things in and the second bin fall off the first one. Okay. Try again. I repinned the corners and added two pins in the center-front and center-back edges. Refill!

BOW BOWWWWWWWWW. I chose this picture out of the ones I took because it gave the best sense of how much this puppy is leaning. I could perhaps sew the bins together, navigating my lovely dowels, but I am through with this thing. I’m not sure it is ever going to look anything but saggy and wrinkly. Oh well! Not every project succeeds.