Perilous Paint Mixing

Painting a kitchen is best done by someone who has never tackled the task before. Only a person who has never painted a kitchen full of woodwork, all needing semi-gloss paint,  not satin finish, can approach this without wanting to run away from home.

It helps if you are not too picky about color. If you want something similar to  the color currently in the kitchen and pry off a piece of wood to match visually to an existing paint chip, you will be accosted on your way to the paint department by a flimflam man who has never used the colormatch computer and is just dying to try it. I lost 40 minutes to one of these guys, only to be advised by his manager to go match the painted wood to a sample chip. Sample chips have the recipes on the back. That's what I had planned to do before I allowed myself to be dazzled by the prospect of a quick match.

Fuming, I returned home and tried to revive a can of paint that had spent years in the garage and may have frozen at least once. I got pale lumps for my trouble, and had to pour kitty litter into the can and leave it open. When (if) it solidifies, the garbage men will take it.

This was so much fun (not) that I looked at two other cans of paint that had sat around way too long. A gallon country white was in fine shape. A quart of dark green was fine. The devil  told me to drip the green into the white and blend, blend, blend. The results were scrumptious, but not semi-gloss.

It took awhile to find a paint applicator that was fast and smooth. The flat pad method seemed likely, but was marred by the pad's habit of sliding off the applicator. The fleecy roller (why are all rollers covered with long fur?) left bumps. Bumps! In a kitchen, these will collect grease.

A supersmooth foam roller seemed to offer an alternative. It is fast. It leaves teensy bumps. I thought I could live with somewhat smooth and not semi-gloss,  but another devil told me to coat the painted wood with polyurethane. This process is specifically advised against. Paint websites point out it is easier and cheaper to get the kind of paint you need in the first place. I brushed the super smelly  non yellowing polyurethane on. It promptly yellowed, but I loved the result so that's just fine. What is less fine is that I did it late at night when I was tired, and left uncovered bits, and had to go back and redo some of it.

Thrilled that I had not completely failed, I tempted fate.

 

I added more green to the paint, to use in a lavatory,  and ran the paint mixer for 30 minutes, twice. The result, in wet paint, is only slightly more intense than the wishy washy kitchen color. What does not show is tiny grains of dark green that show up only as the paint pad hits the wall, leaving a line. Rubbing the pad in a circular motion over the line removes it, until the next time.  The shock came when the paint dried.  It was intense, as intense as bottom of the swimming pool blue.  

Home trends tells me that the intense robin's egg blue is desirable. It is growing on me. It is the smallest room in the house. I am not going to spend my life painting it. Anyone who is truly bothered by it can buy a quart of paint and change it.

Lamp Shades and Spiders and Plastic Beads, Oh My

On the theory that you can find instructions for anything online, I researched how to make a lamp shade. Too many instructions start with "Take any old lamp shade and recover it with fancy paper." Or paint it.

There's a sexy pendant lamp made from rings of plywood and cardboard. (Thank you, Instructables)  You need a jigsaw. This would be dandy, except for my fear of jigsaws. I can order one  -- a lamp, that is-- on Etsy for about $50, including postage. This is more than my budget for 4 lamp shades.

Papier mache is a favorite in the crafty crowd. There are pages of Google entries that I will spare you.

Another set of instructions advises me to deconstruct 10 to 15 wire hangers, form 2 rings, and cut 10 vertical struts to be hotglued in place and wound with fabric strips.  Only when that is done do you begin to construct the shade covering, which, based on the precision of the prior instructions, is undoubtedly lined and silk. I'm not using hot glue with anything that I hope will last, such as silk.

I can start with a bare frame from the Lamp Shade Company, which has more listings for youtube videos than for a website. I'm sure this is a mere oversight. The bare frames cost more than I want to spend. And then there are the coverings. The result is a lamp shade that could be sold for $75. But I want lamp shades to disguise my compact fluorescents. That's all.

Perhaps I should take out my handy dandy soldering iron and solder some hanger wire to a metal washer, creating what is known as a spider. The metal washer could fit on to the shade harp, the wire spokes will reach to a ring which can be made of cardboard. And then find parchment paper and glue it to...over budget again.

Perhaps I've been too literal in my definition of lampshade. Perhaps what I really want is a lampshade made of plastic beads heated in an oven until they fuse into a multicolor form.

  Or a screening and wire basket. Or kitchen utensils.
 

 

Or I can go back to the 2nd hand stores and keep looking.

Poor Choices

Lowe's clearance shade

Once upon a time one could buy basic lampshades without hocking one's children. I consider $29.95 for a plain medium sized drum shade -- no fancy shapes, no pleating, ruching, piping  or ruffles -- extortionate for what I want,  essentially a piece of heavy paper on a wire ring.

Lowe's has a shade for under $10. It fits a lamp with a harp, and I was willing to try it until I saw that it is lined with red. I'm sorry, I do not want a red cast on everything. It has a similar sized cousin in a nauseating mustard yellow. No sale.

Target has a whole lot of chandelier shades, and a whole lot of large shades. Nothing medium sized, except for small lamps with medium sized shades at $15.97. I briefly considered plastic cubes meant as locker storage. I toyed with the idea of using ice cream containers, or even plastic planters. 

Reluctantly I perused the WalMart website. While there are oodles of choices in the $15-$40 range, there are a few plain shades under $10 in small and large sizes. Hobby Lobby, too, has shades that will do.

Hobby Lobby self adhesive shade

What do you do when what you need is only offered by stores you'd rather avoid? I weigh the amount of my revulsion. WalMart is a store that is good for no one but the Walton heirs. I object to subsidizing a family that is wealthy enough to buy a third world country. Hobby Lobby sanctimoniously closes on Sundays so its workers can spend the day with their families, but wants to opt out of health care programs because they can't control how the money they pay in will be used.  Specifically, Hobby Lobby wants assurances that no money it pays into a health care system will ever be used for abortion, even when abortion is needed to save the woman's life. This  sort of moral superiority may be even more revolting than soulless money grubbing.  

I suppose I could order metal rings from a lamp supply house and make my own shades. Martha Stewart would. But there's no way she'd stop at 4. 

Will I stand on principle or cave to expedience?  

Patchwork Explorations

I have a love/hate relationship with quilting. I love the way it looks. I love the way stitching patterns transform a plain fabric sandwich. I hate the prep work required to keep the sandwich layers in place, and I'm not all that fond of planning things out to the inch. My rules for patchwork are that I should already have 90 percent of the fabrics I need, and that the pattern be no more complex than a 9-patch. There are LOTS of 9-patch variations. I avoid embarking on large quilting projects. I quilt pockets, cuffs, bodice inserts, pillows, and doll clothes. Random is nice. Bits from an assortment of projects made these strips. They were destined for a tote bag.

My favorite quilted jacket was pieced directly onto the corpse of a too-large plain jacket. I used 2-inch wide stripes of fabrics that pleased me, and added curved bits for yokes and cuffs. It allowed me to use fabrics left over from clothes I had made for myself. I was out of step with the quilting community, which had discovered stripes and paper pieced work.

True patchwork, for me, is random fabric combinations. In college I made draperies of 2 and 4-inch blocks, with poor joins that didn't bother me as much as they should have. Today's lovely pieced quilts of fabrics from the same company, bought at the same time? They are a little too perfect, a little too confining for me. I can appreciate the work. I just can't make myself do it again. I bought all the fabrics for a clever vest pattern in Threads, sewed it up, admired it, and promptly gave it away.

 

In 1971 a roommate introduced me to the joys of Grandma's Flower Garden, a hexagon arrangement that took hours to cut and more hours to hand sew, making it appropriate for a college student. I learned a lot about grain and fiber with that pattern. Polyester/cotton blends were tricky. Some hexes came out well; some were elongated. I've thrown out most of the results. I suppose I could do a pillow or two with the leftovers, but the blocks stay in the UFO box to keep me humble.

In 1973, when my grandmother gave me bow tie quilt pieces cut from fabrics she found at our house, I HATED the way colors from different decades worked together. No, I don't like greyed colors paired with brights. There are some colors and patterns I never ever want to see used together, such as a navy/kelly green plaid with a pink/blue seersucker. I unpicked a good many of the blocks she sewed, redoing them in combinations I found less objectionable. I tried random block placement and hated it. Some 40 combinations later, I gave up, and the pieces languish in a box of fabrics somewhere. Years later, an aunt told me she forcibly prevented my grandmother from giving other brides boxes of pieces because she knew the bride would eventually hate it. And I stopped feeling quite so guilty.

Quilting books pushed eyepopping combinations when my preference was for subtle gradations. I admit that the results work. I just can't wear it and won't use it. The hobo bag was fun to make and looks better than the photographs, but it is unused. Even the Ultrasuede pocket does not save this bag. Still, it is preferable to the one with the bright ice cream cone middle. I've never finished this, and all it needs is a snap and a strap.

In the 60s and 70s applique tended to be rounded and cartoony and sweet. I avoided it until a friend had a bleach accident with a lightly appliqued sweatshirt jacket. I took the jacket  to the fabric store, found a  bright print that worked, and added  bits from my stash. I was hooked. Cartoon flowers of randomly chosen fabrics joined stripes from my enormous collection of bias bindings  to adorn many a sweatshirt jacket. The Koos van den Akker technique of large organic shapes framed in bias worked fine in miniature, for Barbie sized dolls. I haven't tried it in a human scale.

 

 Recently I've graduated to stealing shapes from nature.  I photocopied leaves, making  favorites  in original, medium and enormous. Enormous lost, but medium adorns the sleeves and front of a jacket.