Wrapper Action

Dave has always been interested in mastering once-trendy but now-outdated crafts. He taught himself the way of the loop potholder

and the woven hemp jewelry

and now he has conquered the gum wrapper chain! It was tricky, and it was hard to find good directions, so to help out all aspiring gum wrapper weavers, we have included an instructional video. Music composed by dave.

Fix-it Time

We believe that part of being an artisan fixing things when they get broken. This is important because it allows you to practice artisanal skills such as sewing. Moreover, this allows us to remain in touch with the items that we love and resist participation in the extremely wasteful practice of buying, using, and throwing out. What choice do you have but to fix something that you love that isn’t made anymore? For example, when dave’s favorite corduroys get a rip they must be sewed because he has search for a comparable pair for 6 years finding no other pair rivals his favorites. How better to honor those pants that have served you well for years than to mend them rather than cast it out to the landfill? That is what this post is all about.

Dave’s glasses have been an ongoing object of repair. The pictures don’t really capture what has been going on and it is difficult to explain so we hope this makes sense. It all began 6 months ago. Dave’s glasses developed a crack on the top of the left rim (above the lens). It looked ominous but it didn’t really get worse - they pretty much stayed that way for 5 months. Then he dropped them onto the tile in the bathroom and they snapped – the lens flew out, it was quite a scene. If you don’t have glasses you may not know how terrifying this is. The bitter irony of vision impairment is that if your glasses break you can’t see to fix them. Renee picked up the lens and the frames and was relieved to discover it was just a crack along the top rim, the fissure from before had given way and could no longer hold the lens. Time for new glasses??? No! Using some packing tape renee placed the lens back in and taped the top. It looked pretty crappy for days, maybe weeks, until she went back and trimmed to tape more closely. About a 1.5 months later, disaster struck again. While at king’s chef diner dave attempted to clean his glasses. They broke again! This time, the top and bottom cracked, resulting in the glasses falling in two pieces plus the lens of course. Needless to say dave was very crabby and we had to get our food to go. When we arrived home renee employed the packing tape again and dave’s glasses are back together again. We are not sure how long this fix will last but we are hopeful they will hold on a while longer.

Another recent repair has been the mending of one of renee’s skirts. We are not sure how it all started but a 5-inch gash appeared on the back and bottom of one of her skirts. It should be mentioned that things sometimes go for long periods of time before getting fixed in our house; she wore it several times with the hole and it then lived on her craft table for a while before actually getting fixed. renee took a few minutes to sew it up while watching TV at a friend’s house. Very simple, only took a few minutes, and now the skirt will continue to be worn for an indefinite amount of time. It may be a testament to renee’s sewing skills or the type of pattern on the fabric but after the repaired skirt came out of the wash, she had to search and search for the seam!

Sometimes we dread fixing things. When the chain came off renee’s bike last week, it seemed like it would be a big deal to fix it, and we were not looking forward to this repair job. Last summer, both of renee’s bike tires went flat and dave had to fix them not having done it before. It was a stressful undertaking for the back wheel, since the chain and gears and whatnot had to be taken off and put back on. An hours-long job. This time, renee basically just looked at it and flicked it back on with no problems.

This kind of segues into another important facet of keeping your things in tiptop shape – preventative maintenance. This week, we are hoping to take our car in to have a leaky tire looked at, sharpen our knife set, and get dave’s guitar tuned up. They are the sorts of things we continue to put off, but thinking about this entry has helped to motivate us and hopefully will do the same for you. Do any of you have repair/maintenance stories?

Seahorse and Manatee

Last week was not very blogable. It was pretty typical, dave did do some baking but we didn’t create much otherwise. We did our big shop. That is basically a day of grocery shopping with supplies for 2 weeks, which we usually stretch out for 4 weeks. This week we went to three big stores for food and a big farmers market. Very exciting stuff. If you want to be more entertained you can stop reading this and start reading Julie’s blog. Don’t let the fact that she doesn’t like deer scare you off. Her musings of conditioner and dreams of heros are remarkably addictive. I suppose it is not all that surprising that her blog is so fun to read and addictive since she is an actual writer, like an author. She another of our favorite artisans in training. In addition to being a writer she is a generally crafty lady making her own jewelry and curtains. Anyways, we frequently check to see if she has new entries (often several times a day) because we can’t get enough.

Ok, back to the blog at hand. Things picked up for us this weekend. First of all Renee went to Christina’s house for some brewing. Christina chose a sour cherry beer for her first brew. What is craftier than brewing beer at home? Exactly, nothing. A good time was had by all, except for Dave who stayed home to record. Well, he had a good time, but not at Christina’s. He recorded an acoustic version of kathleen for the new compost shark/manatee’s album and my ghost a new solo. Those should be up soon. In addition to working on the new compost shark/manatee’s album dave is working on two of his own albums right now. More on that soon. Then Sunday Renee finally retrieved her current projects from Lin’s house and finished her new computer case. It was very simple, guided not by a pattern but by intuition which does involve some seam ripping but results in exactly what works for you. If you are interested in making one you should know that there is an outside (red) and an inside (blue).

Measure your computer, cut two rectangles, and sew them up! There are two layers of fleece interfacing on the front and the back for extra protection. Depending on how rough you are more may be in order. It seems like two layers is adequate if placing in a backpack or purse.

Friday Music

Hello

Quick post about some music stuff on Friday, 7-10. Dave played at Pikes Perk Downtown from 7-8. Some would say sparsely attended, I prefer intimate. Setlist looked like this:

Westward

The Women

Smoking Jacket

Traveling So Far

Norwegian Wood (Beatles)

Billy

Strychnine and Honey

Strip Mall Town

Souvenir (Ferron)

Mama Boss

This Old House

Lucky Me

Hate To See You Go

She Belongs To Me (Bob Dylan)

Undisclosed

Boxcar Blues

Overall a pretty fun time, and good practice.

On Sunday Dave did some recording for the upcoming Compost Shark album - vocals, drums and guitar for Ode to Maria Shriver and some work on a new song. He also recorded a cover of "Don't Worry About The Government" by Talking Heads. I can't seem to figure out how to post it here, so I will put it on myspace and if you are interested, you can head over there: http://www.myspace.com/daverichardson

Renee had some unsuccessful crafting attempts over the weekend. She is working on a computer case for her macbook and a shirt. She cut out the paper pattern parts with lots of help from the cats and then brought her stuff over to her friend Lin's house on Sunday, but ended up gossiping and then leaving her supplies there.

Have a good day!

Home Dec!

Renee here and I want to talk about crafts. More specifically sewing. Most specifically home dec. Now I have only sewed sparingly since our move last summer but what I have done has been quality. And it has been home dec so I get to look at it all the time. I wanted to catch you guys up on the home dec, particularly my most crafty of friends Bonnie and Libby. These are two extremely crafty women I met while working at spark. Bonnie is all kinds of crafty and Libby is a sewing master. She taught me to sew. I mean, I could use a sewing machine pretty much my whole life but Libby taught me to properly cut fabric and follow a pattern. And never cut paper with my sewing scissors I hope you guys don’t do that. As an aside, somehow in the move I lost my sewing shears and dave got me another pair of super fancy gingher shears on ebay for like $20. Basically anyone can afford beautiful scissors for fabric only and I strongly recommend buying them. Okay, so Libby taught me to sew and I think she taught Bonnie a thing or two about appliqué. Libby has a blog about her sewing/teaching adventures. Does Bonnie have a blog? I could go on and on about these two hip hip kitties forever but basically what you need to know is they are artisans. Possibly not even in training. So I met up with the two of them in boston a month or so ago and I was so excited to talk to them about my home decin’ because they are crafty and Bonnie just moved and Libby was talking about moving to. But the conversation was limited because I didn’t have pictures which are pretty much essential. So here is the story of our house of fabric with pictures.

It all started with curtains in our guest bedroom. I poured over (web) pages and pages of fabric to select the perfect pattern for our curtains. Dave and I were pretty torn about what to get in terms of type of fabric, motif, and color. In the end we settled on this fabric from reprodepot. It worked out really well because they accidently sent us our order twice so we were also able to make a long curtain for the closet. These are lined with plain muslin. The look lovely but do not do a great job of keeping the room dark at night.

Next came duvets. I ordered fabric at the same time for the duvet for our bed and the one in the guest room. For the guest room we were going for the feeling of an earthy sanctuary. We selected a dark chocolate brown corduroy which is really exquisite and very relaxing. It was also ridiculously cheap from fabric.com. The underside is a fuzzy white flannel. I struggled with the zipper installation but it is relatively functional. This was my first project on such a large scale and it was very frustrating to work with huge pieces of fabric, trying to line them up perfectly, especially because the cord and flannel stuck together like Velcro.

For our bed we wanted something that would make us feel energized in the morning but was not so vibrant that we couldn’t sleep at night. I knew I wanted to combine two fabrics that where only somewhat related. This is a look I love. I do not like matching. That is a look I do not love. So again I poured over fabrics, sending dave potential combos and we decided on this. They are both amy butler fabrics. The underside is a fuzzy navy flannel. It was originally an off white broad cloth but I hated it so I ripped it out. This was more tricky because I had to join four huge pieces of fabric for the front verses the two for the brown one. Luckily I had more experience at this point and everything worked out well, including the zipper.

Finally I would like to present our shower curtain. I am not sure it is my favorite project but it seems awfully popular with out guests. It is a heather ross fabric and was unbelievably simple to make. I seamed two pieces of the fabric together to make one piece then I just hemmed all of the edges and made 12 button holes across the top for the rings which I busted open with my seam ripper. The sewing machine actually made the button holes with its fancy button hole foot. It has a slot for your button and sizes according to that. I didn’t have a button so I used a penny and it worked perfectly. At this point I was pretty accustomed to the big fabric and this was a breeze! I am going to make shower curtains for housewarming prezzies from now on.

We still need curtains in our bedroom. I ordered more of the corduroy from the guest bed duvet for our bedroom curtains since it was so inexpensive and I loved it so much. Dave and I want no light to sneak in so we thought they would be perfect. Fabric.com allowed me to place the order and get very excited and attached to the idea of these curtains before coming back days later and saying they couldn’t fulfill my order! I emailed back and asked why and they replied that it could be for any number of reasons. I emailed again and expressed my disappointment. This was months ago and I still haven’t found anything else I liked nearly as much with our price range so we are living with the gold polyester curtains that came with out apt. a while longer.

Hello. Wanted to take a minute to talk about some sweet happenings that went on Monday night. Dave's best friend Sam and Sam's girlfriend Brigid came to visit us. They stayed from Saturday to Tuesday. Sam and Dave were Compost Shark, the southern Maine folk-punk duo. They wrote lots of songs, recorded, played shows. They disbanded in 2002 due to living in different places for college but still made music when they could. This summer they are working long distance on a new album of old and new songs. They played 8 songs at the Raven's Nest open mic night on Monday, including Shirty, Celia, Kathleen and more. It rokked hard. There was some talk of renaming the band The Manatees, but I'm not so sure that will happen, as there are already 3 or 4 other bands named The Manatees. Maybe The Man-O-Teas? The Man-Uh-Tease? Who knows. Here are some pictures and a video of their classic tune, Kathleen. Enjoy.

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Real Live Gig!

Dave is playing at 7:00 this Friday (7/10) at Pikes Perk downtown. It is sure to be a good time. He could play such songs as lucky me, this old house, mama boss... You will have to see to find out so come out and support Dave.

Green gardens grow

We promised to tell you more about our garden, and we figured we have made you wait long enough. This is the story of our first garden. It actually starts way back when we were looking for an apartment last summer, with the goal that we would place where we could grow a garden. D.B., who owns our house, said we could convert the whole backyard into a garden if we wanted to. This spring, we eagerly awaited gardening season. Unfortunately we were told it was too early to plant. It was unfortunate because we were ready to get going and we had already bought 3 tomato plants and several herbs. We faced many obstacles to starting out garden. As planting season grew closer, it rained all weekend long a couple weekends in a row. The next obstacle we faced was the feasibility of getting a tiller to our house, since we drive a toy-caresque Honda Fit. Then we had to go on vacation and we were away from home for 2 weekends. When we returned, planting season had come and gone. But we persevered and started with our herb garden. it is in the front of our house in a triangular plot and has chives, two types of lavender, dill, fennel, and catnip. It has worked our well, and we have been harvesting herbs from it. A warning: neighborhood cats have also been enjoying the rewards of our garden. Never plant catnip where cats can get at it. All in all, the herb garden has gone quite well. Here are some pictures.

Lavender

Chives

Dill

Dave's Blood Orange Tree

The vegetable garden has the true saga. It involved back breaking labor which took hours and hours and days and days. First we had to remove the grass, which involved using a pitchfork and shovel digging down several inches. After this we had to till the soil, mixing compost into our rocky sandy dirt. We never did resolve the tiller quandary and decided to till it by hand using the “trench method.” The trench method is digging a 1 foot trench, taking the dirt out and placing it on a tarp, mixing it with compost, and then putting the new mixture back in the trench. It was horrible, don’t ever do it. By the time our garden was ready for plants, it was so late in the season that all we could buy were cucumbers and peppers. We planted them happily along with our tomatoes which had been living in their containers for close to a month. Everything is looking pretty good now, all of the plants have blossoms and keep growing very slowly, they are still pretty small. We do have one small pepper and a couple baby cukes. The soil looks pretty bad on top, with lots of rocks and pebbles. The plants don’t seem to mind too much, though. And, although I might be jinxing us by saying this, I haven’t seen any critters bothering our plants either, which I kind of expected.

The Garden

Pepper Plant

A Pepper!

Cucumber Plant

A Baby Cuke!

Naturally, we can’t harvest anything except for herbs at this point, so we have to travel to farmer’s markets for our produce. Typically, we plan a menu for a couple of weeks of meals and do a big grocery shopping trip. In the summer this is augmented by farmer’s markets. We have gone to the Old Colorado City farmer’s market the past couple weeks. We weren’t sure about this particular market at first, but they have lots of vendors, including a rice seller who gives away bags of rice to people who can’t afford to buy it, like people who have lost their jobs. Quite touching. This week we stocked up on lots of zucchini and summer squash, and corn. We couldn’t resist the delicious Colorado cherries, and we also picked up an eggplant, basil and a cantaloupe. It is good that the zucchinis are plentiful and cheap, because dave can bake with them. We will keep you posted as to our creations with these ingredients but dave is planning to make chocolate zucchini muffins.