Morro Bay | 365 Days Handmade

February 16, 2015
by FC5 4 Comments

Day 46/365: One Person’s Trash…

Remember this old bureau that I rescued from the landfill yesterday?

I spent most of today fixing it up, with Sean’s help.

Click for a closer look of the dirty, dusty details.

First, I pulled out the two remaining drawers and discovered dust and a spider and a few other tiny bugs and crawlies. So Sean and I carried the empty dresser out to the driveway, where I gave it a major powerwash with the garden hose.

See? Much cleaner.

Sean got started measuring the space where I wanted a shelf, since one of the three drawers had been missing its front panel and was beyond repair.

Measure twice, cut once.

In the meantime, I started painting. I went with two coats and thought that was a good place to stop.

Wet paint!

It was foggy in Morro Bay today, so it wasn’t the best day to be taking photos in natural sunlight. But I think you can get a pretty good idea of where this project is heading.

What do you think so far?

P.S. The name of this paint is Good Life.

Which is kinda appropriate, ’cause that’s what we’re living, baby.

February 15, 2015
by FC5 3 Comments

Day 45/365: Happy Valentine’s Day to Me

Sean and I were taking a shortcut to the Embarcadero by way of a side street off Main. We were passing a parking lot of a commercial building when I noticed some furniture that had been put out near the dumpster.

“Hang on,” I said to Sean and ran across the parking lot to check out the furniture—or more specifically, a bureau that caught my eye. It had exactly the kind of curves that I like. At the same time, the front panel of the bottom drawer was missing, along with every single drawer knob. Still, it had potential. I could remove the broken bottom drawer and rearrange the remaining two drawers so that the top section could be an open shelf.

I ran back to where Sean was waiting on the sidewalk. “Can we go home and get the car and come back and take that dresser home?”

“What do you want that old dresser for?” Sean asked. “It’s all jacked up.”

“Please,” I said. “Humor me.”

So Sean, being The Most Patient and Best Husband in The World, went along with my plan and we walked back up the hill to our house. Then we got in The Rental and drove a half mile back to the dumpster in the parking lot, only to discover (when I went to lift one side) that the bureau was coated in grime and filth, and there was no way that The Most Patient and Best Husband in The World was going to agree to slide that dirty old bureau onto the clean carpeted trunk of his car.

So we got back in The Rental and drove the half mile back up the hill to our house, where I ran into the garage and grabbed a bunch of rags and an old bedsheet, and then we drove back down the hill to the commercial building’s parking lot, and this time we successfully loaded the bureau into the back of the car.

The Most Patient and Best Husband in The World drove us back home and unloaded the bureau into the garage.

“This is your project,” he said. “It’s all you.”

“Okay,” I said, already thinking about my paint color choices and whether I should go for Shabby Chic off-white or Beach Cottage aqua/turquoise. I also thought it best not to say any more, because I was still going to need his help to get the job done. Someone’s going to have to build a shelf in that space where the missing drawer should be.

Click on the image to get a better look!

February 3, 2015
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Day 33/365: Third Completed Pair of Socks for 2015 (Orange and Black Striped Socks)

I was expecting a small package in the mail, and it still hadn’t arrived. So I checked my email this afternoon, found the tracking number, and went online to look up the status of my package.

According to the tracking number, the status was Delivered, In/At Mailbox on 1/24/15 at 12:54 PM in Morro Bay, CA.

I went outside and opened our mailbox. It was empty. I closed the mailbox and opened it again, peering all the way to the back, but of course it was still empty.

You know how, when you’re looking for something and you can’t find it, you start getting so desperate that you do things like look in places where you know the thing couldn’t possibly be, but you figure you’ll check there anyway? Like under the bed and inside cookie jars and behind the front door and in the back of the closet. I was starting to feel that desperation. My neighbors’ mailboxes were lined up next to ours, and I opened each little metal hinged door to peek inside and see if my package might have been delivered to the wrong address. Nothing.

In the past, I’ve received mail addressed to a woman who lives on the next street over. She has the same house number as ours. I thought maybe my package was accidentally delivered to her mailbox. So I walked down to her house and knocked on the door.

She was very friendly and we chatted for a little bit, but no, she hadn’t seen my package. I said goodbye and walked back up the street to my house, just as my next-door neighbors were turning into their driveway.

They were sympathetic to my plight of the missing package, but they hadn’t seen it either. I thanked them and went back inside the house. I was trying to manage my anxiety, but the panic was mounting. Where had the package gone? Who had it now? Did somebody open it? Why hadn’t it been returned to me? Would the company be understanding and send me a replacement item, or was I just shit out of luck?

I went back to my Outlook and found the email with the tracking number again. I clicked on the link and was redirected to the package’s tracking details online. According to the website, my package was In Transit. The estimated delivery date was Thursday the 5^th.

I couldn’t understand it. I looked at the email again. And then I realized what I’d done earlier: I’d looked at the wrong email and followed a different tracking number for another item– one that had already been delivered on 1/24/15 at 12:54 PM in Morro Bay, CA.

Doh.

February 2, 2015
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Day 32/365: My First Completed Quilt

I knit a lot today. I worked on finishing this second sock, and I added several more rows to this sweater. The problem with knitting, though, is that it takes a lot longer to finish a knitted project than it does a crocheted project. It took me about two weeks to crochet, join, and finish this afghan, but I’ve lost count of the number of hours I’ve already put into knitting the aforementioned socks and sweater.

Anyway, rather than show you photos of my two current WIPs with one of them looking like no progress was made, I am sharing a photo of my first quilt instead. This is the patchwork quilt that I made in my Beginners Quilting class back in September and wrote about in this post. And that is our deck that needs painting and where you can see this view. Today was a really beautiful day with a clear blue sky and a flat, glassy ocean. If you’re ever in town, let me know and we can visit on the deck and enjoy the view. We’ll talk, knit, or crochet. I’ll pour you a glass of iced tea.

February 1, 2015
by FC5 3 Comments

Day 31/365: Top-Down Sweater and Heated Leather Seats

Top-down knitted sweater with increases for raglan sleeves. I swear, I’ve been knitting around, and around, and around, and it still looks like it did on Wednesday.

Sean and I got into his new car to head out for breakfast. The car is actually a 2012 Prius that he purchased from the original owner back in September. Compared to Sean’s previous 12-year-old Nissan truck and my now-11-year-old Honda Civic with the manual transmission, manual door locks, and manual crank-that-handle-to-open-and-close windows, the Prius is a luxury car. It’s so equipped with new-and-different-to-us features (cruise control! power doors and windows! automatic locks!) that I’ve dubbed it The Rental.

Sean turned on the power. It was still early in the morning that the windows were covered in dew. “I can’t see out the back because look what’s blocking it,” he said.

I twisted around, expecting to see some large object in the backseat obstructing his view. The backseat was empty. Nothing there, just a thin layer of morning dew covering the back pane of glass. And then a windshield wiper popped up and started swiping the dew away.

Sean gave a big grin. “Don’t be jealous because my car’s got a back windshield wiper.”

He put the car in reverse, and the little computer screen built into the dashboard lit up to show the back of our driveway. “Don’t be jealous because my car has a camera so I can see if any neighborhood cats are in the way.”

I gave him a dirty look. It was early, I was hungry, and my sense of humor was still asleep. “Oooh, I’m Sean. Look at me. I have a fancy new car with fancy back windshield wipers. I have a fancy rear-view camera… You Prius-driving, vegetable-eating, energy-saving—“

He cut me off and his big old grin got bigger. He leaned over to activate one more special feature, my favorite thing about the car. “Here. Let me turn on that heated leather seat for you.”

The guy knows just the right buttons to push.

An old married couple who’ve been together for nearly twenty-one years.

January 31, 2015
by FC5 1 Comment

Day 30/365: Last Friday of the First Month of the Year

This is the view from our house. That’s the sun setting behind the Morro Bay Rock. If it’s too cold to be outside on the deck, you can sit inside the sun room and look out the glass and have the same view. I love that I can see the ocean and the waves crashing on the jetty. At night, the barking of the sea lions and the blasts of foghorns travel up the hill and through our windows. It’s a great spot to sit and knit or crochet, or just gaze, and be.

January 26, 2015
by FC5 2 Comments

Day 25/365: Luchador Napkins! And The Day We Disposed of the Old Toilet

Remember this fabric I purchased the day I was dismissed from jury duty? I made them into cocktail napkins!

Back in November, I took a napkin sewing class at Picking Daisies and learned how to sew fabric napkins with mitered corners. It was on a Saturday afternoon, and Sean drove out to meet me for lunch. He came into the classroom at the back of the shop just as I was finishing the second napkin.

“Look, Sean!” I held up the square of fabric to show him the neatly hemmed edges and mitered corners. “Check it out.”

He reached for the napkin and grinned. “How did you know? I was just feeling like I had to sneeze.”

We went to lunch, and you can guess who picked up the tab.

* * *

On a separate note, today’s adventure involved driving out to Los Osos to look for the County’s community toilet recycling center, to dispose of the old toilet that Sean replaced yesterday.

Here is a photo of Old Broken Wing, posing for the blog at my request. The broken elbow didn’t need to be set in a cast because it wasn’t a displaced bone, but he is supposed to be wearing a sling on that right arm. Then again, he is supposed to be resting that arm, and not doing things like changing out old toilets and lugging them to recycling centers.

Sean says, “Look at all these planters!”

January 25, 2015
by FC5 3 Comments

Day 24/365: The Day We Got a New Toilet

Our house, which we bought in 2012, was built in 1983. It has three bathrooms, which is nice, but none of the toilets are the low-flow kind, which is not as nice, because that means a higher water bill every month. A few days after we had moved into the house, Sean started talking about switching out the old toilets for new low-flow ones. I was on board because it would mean conserving water and a lower monthly utility bill. But he never got around to doing it. A couple of years passed, and then the subject came up again this morning.

“I’m thinking about replacing at least one of the toilets today. I might go to Ace Hardware and see if I can lift one,” old Broken Wing said. “But what would I do with the old toilet?”

“Call the Habitat for Humanity Restore,” I suggested. “Maybe they take old toilets.”

He looked up the local Restore’s phone number and called. The answer was no, they only accepted low-flow toilets.

He set the phone down and looked out the window at our back yard. “Well, you know what that means.”

I knew where this conversation was heading. We’d had this talk before.

“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. We are not going to have a toilet bowl planter in the back yard.”

“Okay, then. So that’s a yes on a toilet bowl planter in the front yard. Even better.”

I kept on knitting and let that one go. I wasn’t about to stop the installation of a brand new water-conserving toilet that would save me a few dollars on my utility bill.

I don’t think he’s really serious about the toilet bowl planter, but then again, you never know. This is a guy who, after that conversation, went to the hardware store, purchased a modern low-flow toilet, brought it home without any assistance, removed the old one, lugged it outside, and installed the new one himself, all with a broken elbow and essentially with the use of one hand.

January 24, 2015
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Day 23/365: A Moment in A Day in the Life

I don’t have any photos of a handmade project today, because by the time I remembered to take a picture, the sun was setting. So instead I am sharing a photo that I took earlier this week, on Monday, my regular day off. You can click the image to enlarge, and you can see a few things that I’ve written about already. There’s the fish hat that I knitted, and the jars of iced tea instead of soda, and my first quilted placemat, and the people’s favorite, the Mexican wrestling masks placemat. There’s a pile of fabric waiting to be made into something, maybe another patchwork block table runner. And of course, there’s Sean, who didn’t know I took this photo, because otherwise he would have made a goofy face at the camera. I like this photo because it captures a lot about the way we spend our time inside the house– relaxing, hanging out, engaged in leisure activity– and definitely not cleaning up.

January 18, 2015
by FC5 8 Comments

Day 17/365: Second Completed Pair of Socks for 2015

For Christmas, Sean bought me yards of cute fun fabric (including this wrestling mask print), and I got him a skateboard. He actually selected the board, trucks, wheels, and bearings, designing it specifically to go fast around the hills in our neighborhood. The guy at the skate shop assembled it, and then I paid for it. They packed and boxed it up, and then we took it home where I wrapped the whole shebang in Christmas paper and set it under the tree.

The Monday after Christmas, we were up and about, lazily considering our breakfast options and discussing what we would have that morning.

“I can make eggs and potatoes,” Sean offered. “But we’re out of eggs.”

“I don’t feel like driving,” I said. “Do you feel like going to the store?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll go.”

It didn’t occur to me at that point in time that he didn’t put up a fuss, because usually he disliked driving to the store as much as I did. If I’d thought about it, that would have been a red flag that he was up to something. But I didn’t, and I kept sewing, or knitting, or scrolling through Facebook, which are usually my top three activities to do when I’m sitting around the house on my day off from work.

(Can you see the sea otters in the background?)

About forty-five minutes passed, and I thought it was pretty strange that he was taking so long to make the one mile down to the supermarket and back. But I wasn’t too worried. He’d probably chosen to drive to another local grocery store a few more miles away. Several more minutes passed, and then he was coming in through the front door with his backpack and baseball cap on, looking sweaty and suspiciously like somebody who did not just drive his car to the store.

“What’d you do?” I said. “Ride your bike?”

“No.” He started unzipping his backpack to remove the groceries. “I took the skateboard.”

That’s when I noticed the side of his pants looked like they’d just been dragged through the street at about twenty-five miles per hour. “Did you take a spill?”

“Yeah, it’s no big deal… Look! The eggs aren’t broken!”

(The ripples in the water really are sea otters. Click for a bigger picture.)

He made us breakfast (a really good meal of over-medium eggs with country-style fried potatoes), and then I went back to doing my thing and he decided to watch one of his Netflix DVDs. The movie was only halfway through when he got up and said, “I kind of am actually in a little pain.”

I stopped the sewing machine. “Do you need me to take you to the hospital?”

“No… But maybe to Urgent Care.”

We went to Urgent Care and sure enough… the eggs weren’t broken, but he couldn’t say the same for his elbow.