R & R weekend on the coast..........

Peace and other things..........

Peace - don't we all wish for it these days, and tolerance and kindness. Such sadness with the latest attack. I love this peace sign fence along the harbor in Bandon - what a creative way to fence in the yard. We spent 5 days on the coast, the weather couldn't have been more perfect - we left coastal temps in the low 70's yesterday to come back over the coastal range to 92 in the valley, today it's forecast to be 98. What happened to spring this year???

 I started a new shawl while over there. The colors start out dark burgundy and progressively gets lighter until it reaches a hot pink.

 We (mostly Sam this time) did some work on the guest bath - it's now finished. I should have taken a before picture. I painted the vanity and a mirror, we put in a new sink, faucets, lighting and pulled out the sliding glass doors on the tub/shower and put up a shower curtain very similar to other curtains in the house, a sheer with shells and starfish on it with a shell trimmed valance. I haven't painted that shelf on the wall yet as I'm not sure if I want to and if I do, what color.....so it stays for the time being. I can see those coral seahorse handtowels have to move elsewhere in the house, I've got some handwoven towels that will match perfectly.

Here's another view. I found this mirror at a second hand store, it was originally part of a dresser. I painted it to match the vanity that I painted. The knobs on the vanity are starfish. Sam built the new countertop with formica and a wood trim that was painted. I should have taken a close-up of it, it's sand colors with a bit of teal in it. The sink has a rope look trim, it's so pretty. It took me a long time to find lighting that I liked, something simple and not too expensive.........we are doing work on this house on a budget. Now we're working on the master bath - sink is pulled, drywall fixed where the big mirror was removed. I've started priming the linen closet and vanity.  The new floor and new baseboard had been the project before we started on the bathrooms.

The inside of the house will be completely done after the master bathroom is finished. I can't believe it. We'll eventually move on to extending the front porch a bit and adding a deck area to the front of the house - we do have a big older deck already across the back. Then finally yardwork. This will take a while as we like to play when we're over there too............

This and that........

 We spent the past 6 days over at the beach cottage - the weather was picture perfect, couldn't have been any better. My 24" Macomber resides over there, for years I've dealt with the ratchet brake, which I hate. I finally ordered a friction brake so that got installed a few days ago..........only the old crank handle doesn't fit on the new drum - argh. Sam will take the handle to the machine shop at work to see if they can make the square hole bigger, otherwise I'll also be buying a new handle. I also put 400 new heddles on the first 4 harnesses, decided to order 400 more which were already waiting at the post office here at home today - will replace the old bent heddles next time at the cottage.

 And then there was the new IKEA cart I had to get. I've been lusting after this cart (Raskog) for 3 or 4 years but am so conscious of the limited space available so hadn't bought it. Well, I saw it on someone else's blog last month, commented how I've been good at not buying one.........but then friend Kathy emailed not one hour later saying they were stopping at IKEA in Portland on their way home from WA and did I need anything. I said no, didn't need a thing. Then I quickly emailed back telling her to get this cart for me........which she so kindly did and I met her at the highway as she was passing by my area to get it. It must have been a sign seeing it on a blog and then being asked if I wanted/needed anything at IKEA - it might have been bad luck if I hadn't bought it.........

 So, what's really been going on at the cottage is new flooring. Here's the living room with the new flooring. The house doesn't smell anymore like dog pee in the old carpet from a previous owners dogs - hallelujah. We went with Coretec Plus which is a 'luxury vinyl plank flooring' with a cork backing. Real hardwood was out of the question price wise - wood composite was also out of the question as it can have problems getting waterlogged.........like when big dogs drink water and leave a trail throughout the house. This is perfect, totally waterproof.  Cousin Jim was a huge help in laying this flooring. We still have the guest bath to go - new carpet in the bedrooms will be installed soon.

 And here's the dining room, we also put this flooring in the kitchen, down the hall, laundry room, mater bathroom and the guest bath is the only room left to have it laid in. What's really special about this room are the new French doors we put in.....well cousin Jim and hubby Sam put them in last Thursday. There had been an old rusty, rickety, black sliding glass door that looked terrible and was hard to use. I convinced Sam we couldn't leave it..........what a huge improvement. Pictures are deceiving, this is a fairly small house with small rooms - my camera does a great job of making it look big.

I recently found this fun tote bag that seems fitting for the grower's market on the coast - "Always be yourself unless you can be a mermaid, then always be a mermaid"

I'm still here........

.....just been gone so hadn't posted. I didn't take many pictures this past 9 days but here are a few showing what I've been up to.

The major reason for the longer than usual trip to the beach cottage was to paint - argh. I've painted so many houses over the last 38 years - I'm tired of it - I don't want to paint anymore, but it must be done. Since we bought this house 5 years ago we've been slowly updating/fixing it up. We need to get the nasty smelly carpet out of there and lay some composite flooring but first we need to paint all the windows, doors, trim, baseboard, doorjambs, etc.  I love stained wood trim but this was an ugly dark color so we decided to paint it white. What a job!  First a deglosser to clean it off and prep it for paint, then a primer, then at least 2 coats of paint, in some areas 3 and even a few spots needed 4. Here's Sam taking down the blinds in prep for painting.

Here's Sam putting the blinds back up after we painted - we painted every single window/trim and door jamb/trim in the house. The doors are started, baseboard to come on another trip over but that's a quick painting job in comparison to all the windows in the house....much of the baseboard we pulled out to paint.  Unfortunately we can't do anything about the black windows and grids that are in-between the panes - we just have to live with those.  I love how much bigger the rooms look now. I should have taken a pic of the hallway - it must be only 14 feet long, very narrow and it has 6 doors in it - yes 6 doors!  It looks so much better without all that dark wood.

Here's the dining room put back together....ignore those leaves all over the floor that were blown in the back door.

I don't remember if I posted a pic of the quilted placemats actually in use or not so here they are.

I may have shown one of these tables before, just had to share again as these are my favorite types of tables and I have several of them and will buy more if I see them at a good price. I remember my grandmother having one by her back door when I was growing up. Sam says I brake for any kind of small table but especially these. I don't know what era they originally came from - the 30's or maybe 40's???  Anyone know?

I finished knitting a pair of sox - my second in this colorway as one pair are a gift.

I started another pair of sox just because there always has to be a pair of sox on the needles.

Started another secret project with dropped stitches.

I snuck in a few hours to weave and finish off the towel warp over at the beach cottage......that day I was really tired of painting.........

Here's the pile of towels just pulled off the loom, different colored wefts, some plaids, some solids....now these need to be washed and hemmed.

Fire over near Bandon Dunes Golf Resort this past week while we were at the beach cottage (pic pulled from the local paper website). I had been painting windows on the back side of the house, finished up and walked to the front door and saw smoke enveloping us. Silly me not having fire on the mind over there - they can just as easily have fires as we can here in the valley. Fire started on the beach by someone with an illegal fire, it caught the beach grass and gorse on fire which is highly flammable. Luckily the fire was put out quickly before spreading.  The town and miles around it burned to the ground in 1936, from 30 miles inland right to the beach.

Final shot of wind surfers.  Sorry it's so hard to see, we were far away and I only had my phone with me to take the shot. There are windsurfers with the sails on their boards and there are the ones being pulled along by kites. This spot is famous for windsurfing - it's just north of Gold Beach, around an hour south of our place.

So now I deal with, as I call it, re-entry - have much to do as I have cataract surgery this week and since I'm not getting the standard lens but getting a premium one that will give me a better range of vision and correct my astigmatism I have some restrictions on close up work/reading for a week. Last night after getting home I pulled and boxed up orders so they're ready to mail tomorrow. Today I will be tackling the huge Ashland Bay roving order that came in over 2 weeks ago that I ignored......I'm out of way too many colors in the shop so I must deal with it now.

A mini weaving studio

I finally got a small weaving space carved out at the beach cottage. This bedroom used to have 2 twin beds but there have never been 2 guests staying in here at the same time so only one bed has been used at a time. Out goes the second bed and in comes my small Macomber loom.

It's turned out to be a really comfortable, welcoming guest/weaving room. I hung the quilt that was on the other bed and love the way it looks. There's even room for my extra spinning wheel in this room. My shuttles and other small tools are stored in the two little boxes on the magazine table. Bigger weaving items are hidden under the bed and will come out when I'm weaving.

I put all my little Cape May, NJ houses up on the quilt rack, they look so much cuter there than in the window seat. From the age of 13 thru college I spent my summers in Cape May Point, NJ at my parents beach house - my fondest summer memories are from those years and I get to be reminded of them seeing these and some books I have on Cape May even though I'm on the total opposite coast. I can't wait to get a warp on this loom, it's going to be a lovely space to weave in. I've brought all the cottolin over there so towels will be on this loom for quite a while.

I started knitting a new shawl using the black baby alpaca/silk blend I spun recently. I'm stuck. I'm not so sure I like it but I don't think it's the pattern, it's the handspun. It's much hairier and fuzzier than I was thinking it would be and I don't like that. So for the moment this will sit until I decide if I want to continue on or rethink how this handspun will be used.

This is a Vellela vellela jellyfish. Starting last year I was seeing the clear sail/cellophane looking top of these jellyfish all over the beach but I thought it was trash, not from a living creature. Then I saw photos of them on two different blogs from beaches north of us.....and this past weekend I saw an intact one so I snapped a photo. Apparently the clear cellophane looking part acts as a sail on the ocean. These aren't anything like the giant jellyfish from the east coast that I got stung by more times than I'd like to remember.

I got nuttin'

Hard to believe I haven't posted in a while but I got nuttin'. My time has been lost going in directions I'm not always happy with but can't do anything about at the moment........and the April calendar looks to be a killer. I can remember the years that I used to weave at least 5 days a week, pretty much all day, now I'm lucky if I get one day - it's very depressing, so depressing several times last week I was teary eyed over it.

In the evenings, here and there, I am still working on my shawl knit out of my handspun - I'm getting close to the border, which means I'm almost done, then comes blocking. I way overestimated how much handspun I might need from my blending board rolags so I may be knitting a matching hat, fingerless mitts or socks with the leftovers. Here's the rolags I spun - and here's the start of the shawl. I still have those 2 scarf warps on the looms - hoping to at least get one day of weaving in this week.

This past Wednesday I presented a guild program to the Webfoot Weavers over on the coast in Brookings (near the CA border). It was a program I had given my own guild around 6 years ago on beaded embellishments.  What a fun group they are - I always have fun when I go over there. Friend Pat went over with me, we stopped at a few thrift stores on the way home, the liquor store (cheaper in CA) and Taylor's Sausage in my former town of 11 years. I stocked the freezer with some yummies.  So, yes, there was some fun this past week even though not much weaving.

As a side note on Taylor's Sausage, not to be confused with Taylor's Pork Roll from the NJ area. Most of the products there are from home grown pigs (sounds nicer than hogs) that were raised a few miles from our previous house. Around 18 years ago (that's a guess) the barn burned along with all those cute little pigs - we could smell bbq'd pork at our house. Ok, so you probably didn't need to know that but it just came to mind when thinking of Taylor's. Anyhow, they make the best pork products around - when they expanded they added many other products to the big country store they built - it used to be that we went to where they actually do the butchering to shop (a few blocks away from the store) but that's all changed now - progress.

We spent this past weekend on the coast - more kitchen cabinet painting - I've only got 4 drawer fronts and the front of the lazy susan to go - whoo hoo........of course then it's on to painting windows, window & door trim - it's never ending.  But we did pick out flooring (above) - a waterproof laminate with a cork backing - it's going to be so nice to get those stinky dog pee carpets (previous owner's dogs) and ripped up linoleum out of there......probably a summer project. I did take time out from my painting to go visit the spinning group in Bandon at The Wool Co. - always a fun group to see.

So, yes, some fun here and there in-between the other not so fun duties on the calendar.........but not much weaving.........

Beach decor

In 4 days of painting kitchen cabinet doors at the beach cottage we found a little time to go to second hand stores. I found some wonderful silver trays for $2.00, $1.50 and another small one (not pictured) for 25 cents!  Above is a work in progress on the dining table. I have a little silver bowl to add to the mix next time over. I love the mercury glass pieces I found for less than $10 for the two of them. I have fabric set aside to sew some quilted placemats for the table - just need to find some time for it.

This tray is on the coffee table, will look for some old silver candlesticks I've had for eons to add to this.

As I was painting cabinet doors I was dreaming about getting back home so I could get back to my current spinning, get a shawl warp on the loom, twist fringe on scarves, design and sew quilted placemats...........then reality set in - way too much administrivia to deal with including pulling together all tax 'stuff', personally and business, so I can sit in front of the computer for even more hours with Turbo Tax.  Ah, the downside to having a business..........

New countertops

Thursday we had to rush over to the beach cottage, in a big rain/wind storm as new formica countertops were being installed on Friday..........we've been trying to get someone out to do them for 6 months so we couldn't postpone a sure thing.

First we had to pull off the old countertops which was easier said than done - here they are ready for the new. The old had been glued and screwed with the formica installed on top of that. We had to chip off the old formica to get to the screws and then try to pop the glue to get them off........many places they had to be sawed off.  What a job - we were worried we wouldn't be ready the next morning for the installer.

Here they are - formica with the look of marble. Where the old backsplash was removed is a mess - drywall work up next to repair before we put up a new backsplash.

This morning before heading home I taped brown kraft paper on the wall to audition how we want to install a glass backsplash. Now we have to go shopping to look for something in a glass tile maybe with a green seaglass look......we'll see what strikes us........that's affordable.

Now I need to get back to painting cabinets - I didn't want to start on the lowers until the countertops were installed. I still have doors to paint the second side of for over the fridge and the pantry cabinet that can't be seen in this pix. There was no painting this weekend in this storm, just too damp for it.

The kitchen looks so much bigger now - but you get more than one person in there and it still feels just as small as always........

Back to reality......

We spent this past holiday week on the coast. Now it's back to reality with a crazy re-entry period - sometimes 're-entry' does me in. I have stacks of orders to pull, box up and print postage for so they can go out in the mail Monday.  One order is for some roving that sold out a couple days before but Etsy relisted 21 of them - I've never had 21 bags of any single roving in stock at one time - argh. I saw that a few others had this same issue the past few days. I'm hoping my customer will be ok with waiting for me to get more in - I wasn't planning on placing an order with Ashland Bay for 3-4 more weeks but looks like I'll be placing one Monday morning.

I did some more painting of kitchen cabinets at the beach cottage.  I didn't get a picture of the two sections of upper cabinets I painted but I did take a picture of the new shelf Sam made and I painted to hang under the high kitchen cabinet. I love it.  The kitchen is going to look really nice when we're done - eventually we'll have new countertops if we can ever get a contractor out, then we'll put in a glass backsplash with some color. The only thing in the house we can't do is the countertops (unless we do tile) we've been trying since August to get contractors to respond. We're giving it one more try before we decide to install tile (which we've picked out at Lowe's) - we don't want tile but if we can't get someone out to put in countertops that's what we'll resort to.

Here's a close-up of the side of the shelf. The seahorse sides were actually from another shelving unit I picked up for a few dollars but didn't know where to hang so we took it apart, cut part of it off and used it for this shelf.

I love all the texture in the sand at low tide

 

This makes me think of collapse weave

 

Hmm, wonder who lives down here - my guess is shrimp since I've seen a fisherman digging up shrimp for bait. Originally I thought clams but Mr. fisherman said nope, it's shrimp in this spot.

The lighthouse on a perfect sunny, blue sky kind of day..........although very cold with a good stiff breeze coming off the ocean.......I was bundled up.

Bailey was having a grand time

 

Life is good.........

 

 

Beach art

We've been looking for a piece of art glass to hang in the opening we cut between the living room and kitchen at the beach cottage.  We've admired these recycled windows by a gal on the coast many times but they were all too big for the space we had. We went in our favorite antique/salvage/upcycled shop up in Coos Bay and found that she had made some small ones. This was our anniversary gift from last May, we knew we'd eventually find something.

This is looking from the kitchen into the living room - it's the perfect size - we didn't want something that would be in our line of sight.

Here's looking from the living room into the kitchen. You can see the first painted cabinet to the right of the window......this one will get a shelf underneath it to display from pretties. I'll eventually get to the rest of the painting.

And here's a close-up - see all the pretty shells, seaglass and even little crab bodies in it? It's perfect for our space. Other than finding this treasure we pretty much did nothing the past 5 days on the coast - we did go look at tiles for the kitchen counter but no decision made on color yet, getting close.......we gave up on having someone install a countertop as the contractors on the coast are notorious for not getting back to folks - we've given up on them. We've installed floor tile so we know we can do a countertop.