No Real Crafting Content in this Post. I will admit I started this post 2 weeks ago. I purchased some amazing shelves from Ikea, the Lavia bookcases. I love that they are about 5″ taller than the other option I was considering. I do plan on painting them at some point and likely putting a backboard on them. There are L brackets on the top and bottom inside to keep these shelves from Racking back and forth, I recommend doing this with any bookcases unless they are custom built from hardwood. I put them on the bottom side of the topmost shelf so that they do not get in the way of any books.
These two shelves are filled up and I do have a 3rd that I need to assemble. Unfortunately that is the last of the progress I was able to get done on these shelves. I finished getting my finances straightened out, then a pipe in my basement froze only to burst when the plumber was here. That resulted in an unexpected plumbing bill. A couple of days after that I woke up with a sore throat and I have been coughing ever since. The cough has lasted a week now, hopefully it lets up in another 3 days or I will have to make a visit to urgent care, another expense I did not plan for. Yay.
All of this to say that I have not been doing much crafting at all. At the end of getting my first two shelves filled I did find some pieces that I had cut out for lined dumpling bags, so I was able to get the first 3 steps of assembling those done in bulk. Right now they are pinned up waiting for me to sew the inside pocket hem that holds the two pieces together prettily, then I need to stitch the outside of the handles. I plan on doing that by hand simply because I feel that I can more easily control the end appearence and the smaller handle is very difficult to manuver on my home machine. I do have a special project that was sent to me by an Aunt, I did manage to get it pressed before I fell sick. I’m trying to avoid all of my crafts until this cough goes away, which means I’m watching too much YouTube and playing too much Stardew Valley.
The theme for next week is, rest, get better, don’t make too much of a mess that you will just have to clean up later!
I hope you have an amazing week and remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
This post was started 2 weeks ago, however I am going to continue adding on instead of starting anew. I have decided to start 2025 strong and do my best to keep up my momentum throughout this year. Prioritizing connections, with friends and family, as well as keeping myself safe physically, mentally, and financially. Crafty Content will begin after the ****** line.
Yes, I know, lofty goals. The last thing that I did in 2024 was to visit my cousin about 6 hours away, it was so much fun and low key. For this first weekend in 2025 I am visiting my sister about 3 hours away. *Edit, the visit took place the following week, it was lovely.* Admittedly, that is more because she is planning on moving 1 day and 14 hours of drive time away from me, so visiting will be more difficult. I hope/plan to continue this trend by visiting my friend in Texas sometime before September. The most exciting for me is that I am going to be able to rejoin my weaving and quilting guilds. This will start in March, I already have the time taken off. My cousin invited me up for their Easter Egg hunt so I hope to make that as well (I already took the time off).
I am trying to minimize my craft spending this year. That does not mean that I will pass by an amazing deal (see the 7 zippers I purchased for less than $3), however I will pass on fabric, etc, that I will not actually use, or that I will store for ‘someday’.
The major obstacle that I have for this is not knowing what I have for each craft. To get things organized I purchased one of the photo keepers from Michaels, on sale for $13 from $40+, and have used this to get my sewing supplies organized. Needles in one, hand stitching thread in another 2, pins in another…well 2, safety pins in 1, etc. I do still have one of the units empty within the larger case, but that will get filled up soon enough. I used an amazing label maker to add a label on the edge of each mini case so when I open the unit I can see what I have in each one rather than pulling them all out to find what I am looking for. This has been so handy I am thinking of getting another, but not until I know what I would put in it…though Jewelry supplies looks like a good idea at this moment.
I mentioned earlier that I visited my Sister in Pittsburgh, this is also the location of the closest IKEA to me. We visited IKEA, this was great for me as it gave me an opportunity to see the various shelf options and organizers in person. I did purchase a couple of bookcases that I am using to practice some personalization options on, then they will be great for storing my craft supplies where I need them in a visual way. I’m not going to show you that process until I have it more refined.
Until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
This last quarter has been healing, however part of healing is recognizing the wound, lancing it, and draining out the…well you get it without me getting too gross here. The wound was recognized and lanced, however that just left the gross parts, taking care of the home that I had neglected in my lethargic/depressive state. This was eye opening, I had not realized my kitchen had gotten that bad. This means that work, financial issues (that should be completely resolved in January 2025), and getting my house back in order have taken all of my time and energy. Crafting has fallen by the wayside while I get myself and my home into a state where crafting is a possibility.
To that end I do not have any fun updates to give you as the year comes to a close. I am very lucky in so many ways that I cannot count them all. Family, Friends, and whatever higher power you believe in have been very kind to me and I hope that I have reciprocated that kindness.
I hope that 2024 comes to a kind close for everyone and that 2025 only brings good things to your lives. Remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
Okay, so I did make one direct sale on Facebook and it really did come in handy since I am also trying to start building my own displays for the jewelry I am making. Right now I have re-opened my etsy store with plenty of earrings and some necklaces. ALittleMoreAbstract.etsy.com
Below are a small selection of the earrings I have been making, they are all on sale right now in my etsy shop with free shipping.
I’ve also made a couple of necklaces, and I will be putting some Embroidered Pendants on sale later this week, likely Tuesday morning.
As you can tell I have been very busy crafting. I also have been destashing all of my ‘good yarn’ to afford a ladder to repair my downspout. This just became a bit more urgent since I found out that the water is seeping into my foundation. If you are interested in bargain priced yarn then you can check out my destash link here: https://www.ravelry.com/people/czeitler/stash/trade/
As you can see I have been trying to ‘hustle’ a bit to get some more income. I’ve also found some Skillshare workshops that have been helping me to price my works in a reasonable way. So that has been my last couple of weeks, hustling to create, trying to build up my website, and working on getting rid of a few items that I no longer use. I hope that your week goes well and you remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
Okay, so as a follow up I still haven’t gotten much done over the past two weeks. My stomach flu came back with a vengeance that Tuesday so I had to call off of work Wednesday. Then the following week my allergies stuffed up my head to the point that I was very dizzy. I took the medication, however, when I reclined to take a nap until the effects kicked in, I became nauseous and did when you do when you’re dizzy and nauseous for about 2 hours.
Needless to say I called in sick to work again. Now I have switched my allergy medications, which should last 24 hours, to the night before and I am looking into getting an air purifier to help with these problems.
All of this being said, I have not gotten nearly as much done as I would have liked. Just this morning, the last nice day for quite a while, I managed to get my rain barrel put together and outside, though I am still working on getting my downspout reattached. I have some crafting plans as soon as I get my house in some form of order, so hopefully I can get the organization done this weekend and get started on crafting again!
Life is full of ups and downs, sometimes the ride makes you nauseous, sometimes euphoric, but you have to stay in the cart and keep riding along. Live Life a Little More Abstract!
Okay, so I have not gotten any real crafting done even though it is over half-way through January. I went to visit family, I was supposed to stay for 4-5 days, then they planned a reunion type event so the stay was extended to 10 days…then two flights were cancelled and I wound up staying closer to 13 days. Fortunately with the holiday I wound up missing only a single day of work and I discovered that I can easily make the drive by myself, since I had to rent a car to get back to my car at the airport.
I had a ton of fun visiting with my Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and cousin’s children while I was there. For a long time I was working 3-4 jobs and taking care of mom so I was unable to go to any family events, plus mom didn’t really want to, so I have a huge gap of time where I lost touch. It is great that I am able to get to know my relatives as adults.
All of that being said, I did not get much crafting done. I brought and completed a small portion of my Tula Nova EPP, however I do not have a photo of it. What I did gain however is a better understanding of what kind of organization might work well for me. One of my cousins has 2 very busy children, however they manage to keep their items in, relative, check with the use of storage furniture. Not just bookcases but storage with drawers that can be labelled. I know, this is not revolutionary information, however I’ve been trying to get away with the cheapest form of storage possible and it just isn’t working. The bookcases always look sloppy and the plastic drawers can rarely hold anything well. I tried ordering Ikea furniture however there were some shipping problems so instead I have some dressers arriving from Home Depot.
Hopefully these can help me to get my materials under control and my home looking like a home instead of a wreck….which honestly right now it looks like a wreck.
Since I am going to focus on getting things in check, then using the supplies I own before purchasing more, my shop is going to take a brief hiatus. I am thinking about switching to a quarterly model where I plan on having a new set of items available every 3 months or so.
I think this is probably enough of an update for now. I’ll hopefully have some crafting content next time, however it might also be some organizing content.
Until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
I know that it has been a while since I have posted. This is mostly because I have not made much significant progress on any of my crafting endeavors for various reasons. If you’re just here for the crafting content, then just skip this post and I’ll try to get back to crafting in the near future.
In October I had the 5 year anniversary of my Mom’s death. I hate that young people, well anyone but the young people get to me the most, smoke. My mom smoked from the time she was about 18 until I went off to college, so over 30 years. She never got lung cancer, instead what she got was COPD. She had to be on oxygen, eventually she caught pneumonia. She had bouts of pneumonia for a year, getting antibiotics and other treatments all the while. In October of 2018 she was, again, hospitalized and they said that she just was not going to get better. They took her off of oxygen and while I was on the phone with the Hospice worker trying to figure out how to transport her home and set up a bed in the living room for her, the nurses came rushing in to get me. I held her hand while mom gasped her last, then I literally howled with grief when I realized she was gone. By nature I am not an introspective person, I try to acknowledge that things have happened and move on, but this hit me a little hard this year, especially since last week would have been Dad’s 75th birthday, this upcoming February it will be 15 years since he passed.
I miss my parents, sometimes I have lucid dreams where I think that they are still alive and we are doing things together. Waking up and realizing that they are gone can make the grief come back just as strong as it was at first. I haven’t had a dream like that in some time, but I have had a couple over the last month. All of this has made it difficult for me to craft and write about new and happy things, but talking with a friend this past weekend made me realize a few things.
I have a coping mechanism for the holidays, it isn’t the healthiest, that works for me. I have a standing invitation to visit my friend and spend the holiday with her family, instead what I’m going to to do is spend the day ‘sulking’ at my house and working on a major cleaning project. I started early by shredding all of the paper’s I’ve had around for 3 years and sorting the bills into a bill box in case I need them in the next five years. I plan on getting the rest of the first floor cleared up so I can work on the second floor and setting up crafting stations that work for me.
I’m not introspective. I don’t like reflecting on things because sometimes I don’t like what is staring back at me, both about myself and my family. I do have to look back sometimes and remind myself, I have a full-time job, my own home, and a reliable car. I have a friend that will be with me through thick and thin, as well as a loving supportive family from dad’s side. I want to spend my holidays alone because I can manipulate my restless energy into getting plenty of work done around the house. I have the opportunity to actually attend the family holiday gathering this year since it will be held in early January, so I am looking forward to that as well as trying to get my crafting mojo going to make some sort of presents for everyone.
I miss my parents. They would have hated the Pandemic. They are looking down and keeping watch over my entire family. I have so many blessings to count. I am far luckier than most.
I’m going to take the next couple of weeks to remind myself I’m lucky and things could be so much worse. I know my reactions and how to keep them from getting too far out of control. I’m thinking seriously about making holiday cookies even though I haven’t since Mom Died. My best friend is getting married in June and I will be standing up with her.
Take care of yourselves throughout this holiday season. I hope to have crafting content for you before the end of the year, if nothing else I’m hoping to have my crafting supplies better organized so I can let you know something about that.
It turns out that stain remover that is intended for oil based paint does not work well on Rustoleum spray paint. I let the first coat sit for 45 minutes + and it moved the tiniest bit. I decided to let the next batch sit for 30 minutes + before rinsing it off. There are some loose pieces of paint hanging off, I did try to use my scraper to try and get more off. I’m planning to sand the rest off tomorrow, the loose paint is sticking to my sandpaper gumming it up fast. I hope it is drier tomorrow and that it sands well.
The front porch is washed with deck wash, the plastic pieces were scrubbed with the Pink Stuff. I’m hoping it’s dry enough for me to stain tomorrow after I pick up my script and bring the stain into the hardware store to get it shaken up since I bought it last year.
Okay, that’s my update for today. I did get to see the lake, spend some wonderful time with family, and picked up shells plus acorns. I’m hoping that the acorns turn into a good dye.
I have made significant progress on several home improvement projects, not only to procrastinate on finishing hiding threads on the quilt…but oh well. The crafting content will be after the ***** if you want to skip to that.
I finished making my lighted walkway look a bit better. In about an hour I used a tined weed remover to loosen the grass and dirt along the path. After that I removed the grass and put it on my compost pile, the dirt went into some flower pots that were lacking in soil, I’ll see if I can plant something there next year. After that I used black weed preventing cloth that I staked down with my lights. After the cloth was laid down I added the rest of the lights and a bag of brown mulch. My grass doesn’t look bad enough for me to worry about mowing so I’m not going to bother just yet.
I am still working on getting rid of the grass between my sidewalk slabs, so please ignore that. I did try to get some of the spaces on my front porch fixed up, I’m going to wait a bit to see if it looks better before I take photos. I did another two hours of sanding on my back porch. I like how the porch is looking so far. I did some filler on the other railing and sanded down the first set of filler.
I know, it doesn’t look like much but this was significant progress for 2 hours work. I’m hoping to finish sanding either this week or during my vacation next week.
*********************************** I did manage to get some crafting accomplished this week. About half of the threads are hidden on my quilt and I figured out how to easily thread the needle to hide the rest. I experimented with some inexpensive templates I purchased from Amazon. I tried to use a pen like knife to cut the card stock, but it didn’t work. Due to that I traced the inside template piece with a yellow marker to maximize the piece of paper, the yellow is very hard to see in a photo.
Once I had the traced them out I used scissors to cut out each shape. Later I am going to have to use the larger outer template to cut the fabric. I will be using a rotary cutter, being very careful to not cut myself.
I have been messing about with a few other things but I’m going to wait a little bit before revealing anything further at this time.
Until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract.
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The DIY bug bit me hard this weekend, combined with realizing that the quilt I’m working on has 6 types of blocks not 5, means that there will not be any crafting content this week. I will be writing about home repairs and the products that I used/recommend to accomplish these tasks.
I did not manage to get any more paper made, I did manage to get some home renovations complete, however. When I first purchased this house the garage was a bit of a mess. Since this house was built in the early 1900s the garage was an afterthought. This means that without back-up cameras getting in and out of the garage would be a nightmare, and my old car did not have back up cameras. Even now that I have the cameras I’m still not planning on using the garage for car storage. All of this to tell you that the busted out pane of glass, hole in the back wall, and door that does not sit flush were the least of my concerns 2 years ago when I closed on the house. Now that I have several of the inside projects completed or handled in some way, I can turn to the garage…though I still need to find someone to patch my roof I’m going to hope it holds out for another year.
I managed to ‘fix’ the pane of glass…if you do not have experience cutting glass and have been working with fabric where you need to lean on the ruler to make sure it does not shift…don’t take this task on alone or get the pane professionally cut, or better yet just buy the right size of glass to begin with if you can find it!
To start with I obtained a piece of glass, that turned out too small, so the first step needs to be measure your window pane. If you can find the correct size glass, purchase it. If you cannot find the correct size then you need to either purchase one that is bigger and cut it down to size using a glass cutting set, this is the one I should have purchased
Brush away any extra dust or debris, wipe the frame down if there is no glass in it, or pick out any glass remaining being careful to not get cut. Wearing cut proof gloves,
is probably a good idea for this step and any steps where you are playing with sharp edges.
Push the Glazing points into the window frame flush with the back where the glass pane will sit. The pointy bit goes into the frame and the sticky outy bits needs to be facing you to hold teh .
Next fit the frame of glass into place, making sure that the fit is snug.
Once you have the glass in place use the window glazing compound around the edges to seal the pane in place and prevent water from getting into the wood. I ran a line around then used a putty knife
I prefer a metal edge, to smear the compound toward the outer edges helping it seal better. Within a day or two it should be dry…as long as you don’t do this in the rain…don’t do this in the rain!
My fix will work for a year or two, and then I’ll get a pane of properly sized glass and take out my mess. I might just see if I can install a new window altogether, but that seems a little to ambitious right now. It does not look pretty (at all) but it should keep the wind, and more importantly cats, out.
The link is to some primed shiplap which would have saved me some time since what I purchased needs finished. Once I have the Shiplap cut down to size I will need to seal it
to nail the boards into place covering the hole. I am not sure what I did before I had a nail gun!
Of course in addition to all of this I decided that August is the perfect time to do all of the home improvement projects, so I will also be sanding off the spray paint I used on my steps last year. Well, I say I’m sanding it off but most if it has peeled off already but there is some stubborn spots. After talking with someone that works in a home improvement store I decided against a cordless variety and I purchased
to help me get the back steps as well as my front porch prepped to be finished. I hope to get the back steps done by the end of the week, and work on the front porch while I’m on vacation the first full week of September. That is about it for home improvement projects this past week, though I’ll post progress photos on my back steps if I make any progress, though they are calling for rain most of this week.
Until next time remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!
A Little More Abstract 