Almost Three Weeks Later...

So I haven't been posting.  This is mostly because the fixing and selling the current house projects and stress have taken over my mind and my life.  Sewing?  Not really happening right now.  About all I've sewn lately is tackling half the mending pile: three pjs, one shirt, and one stuffed toy repaired in a single session.

Today, in fact, I have been boxing up my quilting stash.  Sadness!  I'm not going to see it again for like six months, or whenever we find the house we end up buying.  One more box to go, maybe two.  And then I get to start in on using the good linen napkins to wrap and cushion teacups, etcetera.  We're (finallyfinallyFINALLY!) getting the shattering tile floor taken up and the hardwood underneath refinished.  So everything that's not in a bedroom or office needs to be moved off the floor by the 9th.  I have left out a couple WIPs, my scrap box, and some muslin for me to play with.  I need to figure out where my small collection of vintage sewing machines is going....

Featherweight Table, Come and Go

Yesterday I sold the Featherweight card table to Debi, my friend from both of the quilt guilds I'm in.

Here it is as it was when I purchased it, back in May of 2014:

A bit battered and dinged and dented.  You can see where there's water marks, but the chips and gouges don't really show in the above photo.  And the tape left a lot of residue behind when I peeled it off.

Here it is as I sold it yesterday:

Here, ironically, you can see the chips and gouges better, because the "stainable" wood putty I used to fill them?  LIED.  It would not take the stain.  But I sanded the top and sides within an inch of their life, stained it all a nice warm maple color, and then applied three coats of polyurethane, so it's nice and smooth and fabric will glide across it.  The table shows its age and history but is no longer quite as much a wreck.  Debi seemed pleased with it, and in the end that's all that really matters.

Painty Painty Paintingness

Last night, after the boys had been put to bed, Wonderful Husband and I hauled the shower room door out to the garage and I painted one side with base coat.  Tonight I'll go the enamel coat, let that cure for twenty-four hours, then tomorrow night flip it and base coat the other side.  While I was doing that, Wonderful Husband wrangled dishes and laundry and taped off the trim inside the shower room, so then I base-coated that.  I also pulled out the chippy over-the-john I'd bought for $4 at an estate sale several years ago, gave it a quick sand, and base-coated that as well.  It'll look good over the toilet in the shower room.  This all went so quick and easy (two hours, start to bedtime) that other than the massive home improvement burnout after fixing this house when we bought it, I'm left wondering why we haven't tackled these projects years ago.

Ah, inertia.

Since I'm on sort of a roll here, I'm seriously considering also painting the two small bookcases white during this eight-night painting spree....

But for now, I'm going to go wind a couple more bobbins for the orange nine-patch.

Just Keep Swimming

Today the purging continued apace.  About half of the boys' toys got audited, and about half their books boxed up to go to a storage unit.  I pulled out my ottoman that houses embroidery stuff, and yoinked a good whock of stuff out of it to go to my guild.  I put two coats of polyurethane on the Featherweight table; one more goes on in the morning.  Then I get to figure out how to fix the little latch that Jazzy half-ripped out of the table.  We also sallied forth and got paint for the two interior doors that never got their final coat....

Not bad for three-quarters of the household being some degree of sick.

Busy Day

I spent some time working in the garden today, finally getting the herb bed amended, planted, and mulched.  At the end, it looked like this:

The boys and I took some of the scrap bricks and made a little path to the fountain.  Right now there's oregano, two Italian parsleys, a bee balm, a couple clumps of garlic chives, a lemon verbena, and some lemon thyme in there.  The new plants have tomato cages over them to protect them from small boys and cats until they're established.  I'd like to add a lavender plant and some flowers.  And put one of my mint plants in the big planter behind the verbena, now that I've moved the chives out of it and into the bed.  Only two more beds to go!  (Three or four if you count the ones in front of the house....)

I also pulled this project out of the garage:

This is a Singer Featherweight card table I bought at an estate sale many years ago for $8.  It was in rough shape - holes, gouges, duct tape residue all over.  Knowing what it was, I snatched it up for a learning project.  I sanded it down, filled the holes and gouges with wood putty, and set it aside.  For a long time.  Today I pulled it out of the garage, dusted it off, conditioned the wood, and stained it.  The light bits are the "stainable" wood putty.  (It lied.  I've touched the putty up with a brown and a red marker so it blends better now.)  Tomorrow I start putting the first of two poly coats on it.  I don't have a Featherweight, nor am I particularly interested in acquiring one, so I texted my friend Debi and asked her if she was still looking for a Featherweight table.  She is.  So hopefully next week she'll come take a look at it and buy it from me.  Last time I checked they usually go for around $100, so that's what I'm asking.  Given that the sanding, staining, and finishing supplies cost me around $40, it's not as much of a markup as the original purchase cost of the piece might make it seem.

And, finally, this is what's under my needle at the moment.  I've just about run out of the orange thread I've been using to quilt the blocks, though, so I've stopped until I can hit up Joann Fabrics in the morning and get another spool.  Since there's so much blue and green in the nine-patches, that's what colors I pieced together for the back.  And I'm thinking a dark brown print I have, if I have enough, will be perfect for binding it eventually.