When is clutter not clutter?...

When it's display...

So, recently I got around to two tasks that had been on my 'to do' list for a while.  That mirror at the top of the photograph?  Yup, that's been leaning against my bedroom wall for about two years.  I have now hung it on said wall (no scrutinising the angle at which it hangs, or its dusty state, please) and no longer have to stoop to see myself in it.

I also managed to nail up two strips of moulding and thereby got six pairs of shoes off the shoe rack in the hallway that was filled to overflowing.  It was a very simple job, and here's how I did it:

1. Buy 2.5m length of pine moulding
2. Leave length of moulding leaning in the corner for a while to acclimatise
3. Keep meaning to get around to putting up that moulding
4. Finally determine that today's the day
5. Measure the width of a pair of your shoes - remember to this across the widest part and with the heels a little way apart, I didn't and it's only by sheer luck that each end shoe squeezes on
6. Assess how many pairs of shoes you will be able to fit in the available space
7. Take your moulding and saw lengths of (width of shoes) x (number of pairs)
8. Do a lot of strange holding up shoes and lengths of moulding to figure out how high to put them.
9. Figure out which nails will be short enough to go all the way into the wall without bending
10. Position the moulding as levelly as you can (lesser mortals use spirit levels for this sort of thing) and tap in a nail about a quarter of the way in from each end
11. Hang shoes!

How to: Christmas house decorations

This year I plan to make a few of these little dudes (can a house be a dude? I don't know.  Perhaps I should schedule a post on the personhood of inanimate objects someday) for various folks - as 'first christmas in your new home' type gifts, 'thank you for having me' gifts and 'here, have a tiny village' gifts.

Step 1:  Select a short length of wood left over from making a play tent, I cut mine down to about three times its width:

Wood all marked up, lookin' shiny in the dim hallway lights.

Step 2:  Mark a cross through roughly the middle of the wood if you want two houses of equal height, or at some other point if you don't.  Mine was slightly off-centre, for artisticals.

Step 3:  Rig up a slightly dodgy-looking clamp assembly in your hallway, because it's too cold and dark for outside nonsense:

This is the first outing for my 'table vice'.  You can find marvelous things at Lidl.

Step 4:  Being moderately lazy, put together your electric saw:

There's a pre-step about charging your batteries, but your saw is probably more charge-holding than mine.  Or not electric, in which case, fuel it with a banana, or some festive lebkuchen.

Step 5:  Cut along one of your diagonal lines to separate your houses from each other.

Step 6:  Cut along each of the remaining diagonal half-lines to leave your house-shapes:

Little housies.

Step 7:  Change the saw-attachment for the sanding attachment, for you are nothing if not lazy.

Step 8:  Sand the roofs and edges of your little housies to make up for your shoddy sawing.

Step 9:  Tidy up after yourself, you dreadful slattern:

We have the niftiest little multi-vac thing in our house - great for jobs like these, plus it's cordless, so you can only hoover for a maximum of 20 minutes.

Step 10:  Mark out the features of your little housies with pencil:

Confession time:  I only did this for the first one, I freehanded the second.

Step 11:  Select a tip for your burning iron, fit it and turn the thing on.  This is yet another fabulous Lidl purchase, it's lots of fun, but you do have to be careful because it gets VERY HOT and the cord is quite short.

Step 12:  Carefully burn over the pencil lines, or freehand your way through it.  Add a roofline because your girlfriend says it needs something at the top.  Try to to hunch over your work too much or you will get hot smoke in your eyes and won't be able to see the table properly.

Step 13:  Burn snowflakes onto a bunch of little wooden discs you have lying around that were sliced of the excess from your morris-dancing sticks, just so you don't waste the heat in your iron.

Step 14:  Admire your handiwork and stretch your spine back into a more normal configuration.  Ignore any alarming cracking noises.  Sigh with relief.

Finished products.  I'm trying to decide whether I prefer the leaded lights of windowpanes.  There might be a prize if anyone spots the difference.

I think I could get quite the little production line going for these.  I'll drill little holes in the snowflake discs and use them as gift tag/tree decoration combos.  I may also wash the housies (or maybe just the doors) with a little paint or stain for colour.

Old Clothes

Une Femme posted an outfit on Already Pretty this week that included a scarf inherited from her grandmother and this got me thinking about my clothing heirlooms.

Velvet Jacket

This jacket belonged to my great uncle Stuart Wynn Jones and I inherited it (possibly by way of my father) when he died.  It featured heavily in my wardrobe from my early teenage years until well into my university years.  I think it may even (along with the top two thirds of a three-piece pinstripe suit from the same source) be the item that began my interest in more structured tailoring.  I am astounded that this St Michael cotton velvet has stood up to so much punishment.  I have no idea how much wear it received with its first owner, but the elbows had already developed a bit of a sheen in my earliest memory of it.  And I have been wearing it for the better part of 20 years now myself.  I wore it to my aunt's wedding, on a daily basis to lectures, carried a flaming torch at the Castle Ceilidh and it still bears a parafin wax drip on one sleeve.  This lovely jacket doesn't get out as much these days, as it's a bit big around the middle, but it is still an important item of clothing to me.  My great uncle was someone I never got to know as well as I would have liked - he died when I was eight or so - and wearing something that belonged to him helps me feel connected to this whimsical, witty, creative man.

Hawaiian Sundress

I haven't exactly inherited this one, more borrowed it for a while, but it is older than I am so I think it counts as an heirloom.  This used to hang in my mother's wardrobe all through my childhood and I was never slim enough to wear it (I overtopped my mother before I left primary school, while I was still firmly planted in my tomboy phase) no matter how long I gazed at it in longing.  When I dropped a couple of dress sizes at university I finally fitted into it and was able to sneak it away from my mother every now and again.   I love it, it's so colourful and happy feeling.  The square neckline and empire cut are really flattering on me.  I wore it to go and hand in my Masters dissertation after a full all-nighter to get the formatting working.  I chose a shower and this dress over 2 hours sleep and I think I made the right decision, everyone else in the class looked like death warmed up but I was walking on sunshine.

There are other inherited items in my wardrobe but these are the most significant right now.  My paternal grandparents both died last year so I have a collection of evening gloves and silk scarves that belonged to my grandmother, but they haven't infiltrated themselves into really becoming mine just yet.  And I have no idea how one would classify my flatmate's 'camping jumper' that belonged to the father of my uncle (by marriage) which he passed on to my father and thence to me and subsequently now resides with said flatmate.  Is it still inheritance when the one you inherit it from is no relation at all?

Horticulture, I has it

Mantelpiece Moment

I have lived in my wee flat (it has two-and-a-half bedrooms) nearly a year now.  One of the things that I liked about it when I was looking for somewhere was the fact that the whole front garden on this side of the block are belong to me.  Now, none of my more ambitious plans have been put into motion just yet, but in the spring some seeds were bought.  And the past few weeks a cohort of sweetpeas and poppies have been emerging.  This has encouraged me so much that I have even done weeding!

So now my mantel has the first fragrant blooms gracing it in a little Kilner spice jar and I feel I have accomplished a Thing.  Now I just have to figure out what to do with the rampant fennel - any suggestions?