three weeks?!!

Oh my, I was catching up on a few of my favorite blogs today and what did i see on one of them? My blog was listed and my last post was 3 weeks ago, yikes!


So here is much ado about..... well.... three weeks.

We took a spur of the moment trip to Mexico Beach and visited with my brother, now a first time homeowner and has the distinct distinction of being the first "homesteader" in his condo development.  In other words, he lives there!  Lucky him.  He purchased it "used" and so has had the walls painted during a recent bout of rain that made the painters happy as they had been working on an outside job :)  Then after the movers still had not delivered his furniture and another batch of well-timed rain, the painters came back and did the trim and all the doors.  So now it is very apparent to me that my brother just L-O-V-E-S the color blue.  Parkwater and Let it rain blue to be exact.  I wonder what all that will look like when I get back up there as his furniture finally Arrived!  Can hardly wait to see.  Amazing how excited we can get about someone else's home purchase and all that it entails. Do you think it might be so exciting as all the work is not ours?  wink wink

We fished while we were up there and while i did not catch record number of fish or even a record size of fish i did have two good hits but did not get to see what they were as they busted the line.  My normal fishing buddies are all off at their summer residences so not much in the way of chatter time on the pier but did make friends with one guy who was visiting.  he had grown up in the area and was in town for a few days and got to do some fishing.  he also had a hit on his line that he lost.  Neither of which was a shark or ray.  They did not run like either of them anyway.

What else have we done?  Hmmm I've been knitting up on a couple of projects.  One is a double knitted soaker for the first grandbaby of dear friends of ours to be born the end of this month.  Let me tell ya, that is the last double knitted soaker I will be making.  Quite possibly it will be the last soaker double knitted or not.  It took blessed forever to knit.  And all for a wee one to wee in?  Whatever happened to just plain cloth diapers?  Oh well, the revived 60's are here with their newly adapted manners and gadgets.  What goes around, comes around.

I knew the soaker would be finished before the rest of the pre-ordered yarn arrived for the ladybug jackets for the twins so I needed a quick knit project to work on til the serano (red) yarn got here.  I opted for a scarf pattern for myself called Wisp out of the apple green silk/angora yarn my sister spun and gifted to me.  I was working along on that very nicely and suddenly found myself wanting to make apple picking hats for the twins.  I bought the yarn at Joanns  (come on why spend 8-10 dollars a skein when they may get to wear them one apple pickin' time?  And could not find an appropriate hat pattern I liked so I cast on what I felt I wanted and just kept knitting it.  As I needed to make two - twins you know - I had to write down what I did so I could make the second one.  This is resulting in a pattern that I plan to publish.  Working pattern name?  Emma Jane's Basic Hat - Apple Pickin' Time.  The first one just needs the leaves sewn on and the ends worked in and Amelia's hat is already through most of the ribbing.  If the ladybug jacket yarn does not arrive soon I'll be casting on for yet another project to work on til it arrives.  Though I do need to revisit the Wisp (when you go to this link, think only about 7" wide and long enough to do that pull thru wrap thing, not the size of the pattern) scarf for myself as I'd love to have that for those days that are just a bit chilly here in Florida.

Still job searching and the pickin's on that front are mighty slim indeed.  Youngest son leaves on the 12th to his first non-college digs for his first-ever real-life job in MD.  We are excited for him and yet, it is sad to see him go.  Each time he moves it takes a larger vehicle.  I wonder if he has really made the connection thought process yet that as you age so does the trail of "stuff" you lug along with you get larger and longer?

Oh I have been painting two ceramic lamps my dear mother-in-law gave us.  As they are mauve and the condo is anything but mauve, I went searching for something to paint them with.  I finally used XLM as a primer for them.  Problem?  Well, they wound up looking VERY textured.  Like sand was sprinkled on them.  Which led me to re-think the paint the bottoms white and put a darkish shade on them.  Darkish shade choice due only to the fact that the existing shades are also mauve AND huge!  To buy new shades would certainly defeat the purpose of using gifted lamps so.... I am in deep thought and internet research over potential coverings for the shades.

The lamp bases were nearly going to become lighthouses but sort of gave up on that idea I think.  Then with the sandy texture I saw beach sand with some real MB sand adhered to them and shells etc.  Probably not, but not entirely ruled out either.

While I was at Sherwin Williams for the XLM and other spray on paint ("krylon fusion" supposedly does ceramic items) I decided to research the colors for my ultimate dream wall mural for the tv wall in the condo livingroom in MB.  We have 5 resin fish hung there right now and well I want a mural of underwater.  BUT murals are not that large and how to make the cut off of hte largest size I can get make sense is not working.  Not too mention that an underwater mural will cost upwards of $1000 and still not cover the entire wall.... well just not happening.  So I am back to the paint-it-yourself technique using glaze to make the wall look like underwater and to embellish the rest of it with the 5 fish already existing and some sort of painted seaweed and coral possibility.  Enter in the chosen colors for the water look and the glaze and finding out that you can purchase color samples in QT containers.  So that is what I did.

now let's revisit the lamps.  oh, perhaps you have known me long enough to figure out my next statement.  As i do not have any scrap wallboard around to test the paint samples for the undersea project on, I'm thinking.... dh would interject "ut oh" at this point.  I'm thinking why not..... test the paint color samples of the undersea wall mural idea on the lamps?  Much smaller place to test.  Would give me a good idea of how long the glaze keeps the different areas wet for blending in the next color of paint.  And worse comes to worse?  I just sand them down a bit and spray the tomato red version of Krylon Fusion on them.  Well spray it on multiple times to cover up the undersea thing.

And what will tie in the lamps to the wall mural?  Why the decals i found online of fish!  And reasonable too.
For instance this sailfish  or this mahi mahi .  The first one is probably too large for the lamp perspective wise but also the lamps have a raised ridge that goes vertically which will be challenging to sticking a fish decal onto my undersea mural.  that raised ridge also had a great deal to do with my choosing to not turn them into lighthouses as I'd be battling the look of stripes over ridges not to mention bleedage of paint colors even when masked off.  So you see I've been busy creatively lately and in many different ways than in the past and enjoying this burst of creativity in my life once more.

Gosh not even a picture?  Okay I'll go find my favorite sunset picture from the spur of the moment MB trip and leave you drooling over that image.