Month: May 2015

Closet renovation.

I forgot to take a “before” the before picture, but it’s time to change up my closet.  For years I’ve been looking at the space above the shelf in my closet and thinking that it is wasted.  Plus, I’ve been reading the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and she says you should throw away all your old letters and journals.  Marie Kondo and I disagree heartily about this, so I need a place to properly store such things. A place that is not a Rubbermaid Container that sits on the bottom of my closet, overflowing and taking up space.  Today, we utilize!

Here’s me flat on the floor so I can take the before picture.

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Above the door to the closet too!  That space can be used.IMG_3234

One trip to Ikea, 30 minutes of precarious balancing and drilling et voila!  Three shelves are now installed, bring the closet shelf total to four.

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Then it was time for the purge, KonMarie style.  I put all of my clothing on the bed (she says the floor, but I ignored) and checked each item to see if I loved it.

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Shoes too.

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It turned out I did not love very many things in my closet and so bags were filled for Goodwill.

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Here’s the stack of things I’m coming for soon.IMG_3246
And here’s the partially finished project.  I now have room for 30 magazine files, and my sewing machines are tucked away above the door.  The meager amount of clothing I have left has been carefully hung in the closet, or folded and put away.  And Tim Riggins has been restored to his place in the closet.
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And look! The side of my bed is no longer taken up by a dresser, a laundry hamper, a yellow chair serving as a secondary nightstand.  Now there’s a bed (awaiting clean sheets) and a nightstand.  It feels much more spacious, and now I don’t have to sidle out of bed every day.IMG_3243

Even better? I realized that the awesome bottle brush lamp that sits on the top of my desk can easily sit on the dresser and now I have light in the closet!
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Three sentence movie reviews: Ex Machina

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All hail this movie about AI and women and perhaps being a little shortsighted in the creation process. All three main actors (and also the fourth one no one mentions) bring their best to this tense drama, with Oscar Isaac once again pointing out that he’s got this whole acting thing down.  Highly discussable, this was a great date movie, and one of the best films I’ve seen this year.

Cost: $8.00
Where watched: Hollywood Theatre with Matt.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2015/ex_machina.html

Requiem: pocket dictionary

One birthday, maybe I was 25 or so, I took a hunk of my birthday money and bought many magazines, then stayed in bed reading them.  I also picked up two pocket dictionaries, because I am a bad speller and they were handy to have around.  One hung out on my desk and one I carried in my bag for quite some time.IMG_3219

Of course, now I can just look up anything on my phone.  But it’s fun to look at the pages, isn’t it?IMG_3220

Project Rejuvinate Cat Tree

The cats have done a good job sharpening their claws on this cat tree.  It’s time to spiff it up.IMG_3215

First I remove the old, by pulling out the staples.IMG_3216

Then it’s time for the sisal rope.  I nailed it in at the bottom and attached the first row with the glue gun.IMG_3217

Sadly, 50 feet only covers half the post.  So I pounded in another nail when I got to the end of my rope and will have to finish this project another day.IMG_3218

Just call me the bag lady.

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Work bag is in the back of the lineup, full of book and lunch and phone and camera.  Folding bag in the front with old sheet and sewing box.  Fancy bag on the right, holding all my pattern class stuff.  President Obama is in town and I’m not confident that I can get home after work and then to my Pattern Manipulation Class.  So I’m skipping the trip home and just heading over to the pattern class.  But that means I have to carry a lot of stuff.

Hunger Games Sweater Completed

Here I am modeling the Hunger Games Sweater.IMG_3170

It took knitting it to nearly the end, trying it on, realizing it was too small, then ripping out and starting over, but I have completed this project!  I can now stop obsessing about the Hunger Games Sweater, seen on Katniss at the beginning of the second movie.  This is not exactly the same thing, but it’s in the style of .

 You can see the back view too:

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The thing about the Hunger Games Sweater?  It’s great for shooting a bow and arrow as I demonstrate here.

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The problem is, I don’t shoot bow and arrows at all.  I most walk around and, because I’m short, reach up for things, as demonstrated here.

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Sadly, what happens when I do that?  The sweater rides up over a certain protrusion and I have to pull it down.  So I don’t know how long this Hunger Games Sweater will be in my wardrobe.IMG_3174

 

Here’s the yarn I used.  I had 30% off that price listed. I spent $39.37 on yarn and $9.99 on the pattern. The pattern called for too much yarn.  I still had a skein and a half left, even with making the pattern bigger than the biggest size.IMG_3176IMG_3177

It’s properly called District 12 Cowl.  Copyright by Kristina Morrissey.  The pattern was pretty easy for me to follow (I consider myself an early-intermediate knitter) and knit up quite quickly, which is why I didn’t mind ripping everything out and starting all over again.  With a 42″ bust I found the largest size in the pattern was still too small for me, so larger women will have to make the pattern bigger, but I did that with few problems.

Media consumed while knitting:
Treme, Season 2
Downton Abbey Season 5
Austenland
What’s Up Doc?
The Art of Getting By
Agent Carter Season 1
Something Wild
Winter’s Tale
Fast Five
12 Years a Slave

Requiem: Free gift from first checking account.

IMG_3167I went to school at a small women’s college in the small town of Nevada (pronounced Nuh-VAY-duh) Missouri. Back in my day, when you went to college, you had to open a checking account in your college town because it was before debit cards and if you weren’t going to carry cash around all the time, a checking account was what you needed.  I put off going to open my account on the special day they had for college students, and then had to force myself to go on another day. It was my first checking account, and seemed like a very big step and I wasn’t quite ready to make that step.

There were (I think) four banks to choose from in Nevada, and I chose Citizens State Bank because they offered a free gift if you opened an account with them.  It was a crushing blow to realize I’d sold my choice for a pocket mirror. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this token. However, it was for years my eyebrow plucking mirror as I could prop it on the windowsill and use the natural light to find the stray hairs.

I’ve just realized that this was not the last Citizens I banked with.  There was one in Massachusetts, too.

Is Citizens still there?  Apparently, it changed even before I left in 1995.  It merged in 1994 with the Mercantile Bank of Western Missouri which merged in 1998 with the Mercantile Bank of St. Louis National Association which became in 1999 part of Firstar Bank of Missouri, which merged in 2000 with US Bank.  And that bank still exists.

Someday someone is going to write about the many bank mergers of the 90s.  They were super annoying and I’m guessing they didn’t help ME any.  In Boston I had to keep switching banks because I would find a nice small bank and it would be gobbled up by some conglomerate that wanted to charge me tons of fees because I didn’t have a combined balance of $5000.00.

Requiem: Delia shoes.

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Oh Delia*s.  How I enjoyed your catalouges when I was in my 20s.  This is my last item of clothing from that company remaining in my closet; the company has folded.  These shoes were always fun to wear because let me tell you, many men really enjoy big, stacked shoes like this.  “Those shoes are amazing!” many men (always men!) in my age demographic would say.  Perhaps they are not as aware of the fluctuation in fashion and the shoes make them think back to their college years, when all the hot girls wore big shoes like this.

The delia*s logo:

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