I'd Like to Poll the Audience

I need help. Yes, in more ways than one, but today we're going to focus on project help.

Let me introduce you to my guest room.

It's lovely, and bright, and orange, but the furniture is in dire need of... something.

It's hand-me-down furniture from my Great-Aunt and as you may or may not know, I can't just leave second hand furniture alone, I must reupholster, refinish, or re-purpose it to fit my space. Of course, this bedroom set is no different.

Oh yeah, and there's a third piece of furniture to the set.

When I first got the set I made up my mind to strip the paint, since I'm not a fan of painted furniture, and update the look with a beautiful stain and new hardware. Old furniture is fabulous that way, there's always good bones and sturdy wood that makes these projects worth the time and elbow grease.

Unfortunately, halfway through stripping the paint off the lingerie chest I discovered that the top is not just painted cream like the rest of the chest, it also has some kind of epoxy coating that makes it impossible to take the finish off of.

Now I don't know what to do. The lingerie chest has been sadly sitting in the garage for almost 2 years now and I just can't decide what to do about it. Do I suck it up and paint over everything, including the top? Do I leave the top and go ahead with the stain as planned for the rest of the furniture? Maybe there's some way to take the finish off the top too, I just don't know what it is.

I'm not quite ready to dive back into that project just yet, but it has been on my mind now that the weather is nice enough to spend time in the garage again.

Any thoughts on the best way to proceed with this long overdue project? I could sure use a second opinion!

A Shrug Experiment

Once I really started knitting, it didn't take me long to get bored with long and straight. First I bought a small sweater book and attempted to make a sweater vest, and had to make it three times before it was wearable. I'll post pictures of that someday, I still have the first two ugly sweaters. Then, a revelation, there are patterns on the internet! For free!!

So I found a shrug that looked fairly uncomplicated and went to work. It's Lion Brand's Easy Lace Shrug, if you have an account with Ravelry or Lion Brand it is easy to find, and it should look like this.

So I set to work. I picked it because it was really more of the same, long and straight, but I still had to learn some new tricks to get the ribbed sleeves and seam them.I am pleased to say that it worked the first time, and I still get quite a bit of use out of it. Especially now that the weather is starting to turn a bit cooler, it's the perfect extra layer on a cooler fall morning.

 

I did make one slight alteration from the pattern, after I had finished the shrug I ripped out the sleeves and worked them in the round on smaller DPN's than called for in the pattern so the sleeves weren't so loose. Other then that, it was perfect! I even made a couple to give as Christmas presents last year.