And another painting job done

After having spent hours painting my little storage box table thingy, I had quite enough of painting pieces of furniture, especially such with loads of holes in it. But then there was this little wooden folding table, plain and simple, and very useful, but not really very attractive. I kept it in the basement, only taking it up ocasionally, when needed. Certainly not something I would want standing around in my home. 

Like my box table, I had wanted to paint it for ages. But although I could hardly stretch my aching back, and hardly hold a brush with my blistered fingers, I knew that if I didn't paint it now, it would stand around in the basement for another 5 years, and anyway, I still had some paint left, and I would never be able to open that tin of paint every again if I didn't use up the paint now.

So off I went again. With all its flat surfaces and no holes, it should be a quick job. And it was. After those endless holes, painting the table was a delight.

And thanks to the fast drying primer, acrylic paint and varnish, I was finished in less than half a day. And what a difference it made! This little table certainly won't go down into the basement again.

I want to mainly use it as a neutral surface for photography, such as for taking pictures of these lovely wooden horses from Sweden, which I took for my next post in my "Stockholm i mitt hjärta" series, which I'll be posting very soon, hopefully.

But now, I really don't fancy any furniture painting for some time!

A different painting day

When I decided that Saturday was going to be a day entirely dedicated to painting, I had something quite different in mind that what I ended up doing. But there was this thing, that had been bugging me for ages. That little box thingy from IKEA, that I'm using as a sofa table. I'd been wanting to paint it for ages. I remembered about it last weekend, but with temperatures well over 30 degrees, it was far too hot. But this weekend was perfect. Dry, sunny, and about 25 degrees.

So went to the DIY shop early in the morning to get some paint, and at about 10.30 installed myself in the shade under the old apple tree, and happily started painting away. There was a light breeze, the birds were singing, butterflies were dancing around the lavender bushes, and as I started to apply the first brush strokes of paint, I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do later in the afternoon, when I was done with my little painting job.

It soon became clear to me that this would take me a lot longer than I had thought. All those holes turned out quite tricky to paint, and very time consuming to do. And because of them, I had to paint the insides too.

One finished...

Four more to go... And this was actually only the first layer, a special primer for wood, to avoid warping.

By the time I was finished with all five pieces, it was half past five in the evening. At least the primer dried within minutes, so, after carrying everything back inside and taking a short break, I could spend the rest of the evening applying a second coat of white paint. This time, I didn't bother about all the holes anymore but applied the paint only on the outer surfaces. Just don't look too closely, and it all looks quite alright. On Sunday morning I applied a last varnishing coat to protect the surface. Again only on the outer surfaces.

I must admit that had I known how long this was going to take, I would probably never have started in the first place. But I'm quite glad I didn't know, because the white looks sooo much better. I really love my little new old table thingy.

Will I ever get it finished?

I found my knitting basket with some left over wool and all the knitting needles in the basement the other day and it made me want to do some knitting again. There wasn't enough left of the left over wool to turn it into something useful, so I bought some new wool for a nice, soft, long scarf. I just love the textures, and colours, and feel of wool. Quite irresistible.

Unfortunately, I'm not a very talented knitter, and scarves is really all I can do. I didn't quite realise how thin the wool was when I bought it, and now I'm afraid that I'll never finish my scarf, at least not before the end of winter. Especially as I keep dropping or accidentaly taking up additional stitches. So at the moment, the progress is three rows up, two rows back... And it's really a very  very simple pattern - just knit one, purl one (I had to look this up in a dictionary, in German it's just right and left stitches). But I still have to concentrate so much... and keep getting it wrong... :(

I'm combining two balls of wool in different colours, both to make it thicker and to soften the difference of colours rather than having three distinct stripes of colour. But still there's so much wool waiting to be knitted and turned into my scarf. But I'm enjyoing it, after all, and I'm looking forward to when it will be finished at last.

It's not really cold outside yet, and it's raining all day now, but there has been some talk about snow on the radio, so I keep hoping - and knitting.

2. Advent ~ Getting into Christmas mood

It's the 2. Advent today already, and therefore...

... high time for the Christmas decoration to go up. I've never been one for Christmas decorations, until last year. And now, I can't think how I did without :). (I'm far too afraid of burning down the house to actually ever light those candles, though...).

A friend of mine intoduced me to the Steiff teddybear Christmas limited editions collection a few years ago. And of course, once you start, you just have to have one every year. I'm still waiting for this year's teddy to be ready to be picked up at the shop. It's a snowflake!

It's definitely beginning to feel a lot more like Christmas time, even though there's still no snow, at least not down here.

It's all definitely helping to get into Christmas mood. Have a wonderful 2. Advent!

More Space and Light: improvements in my studio

Okay, light, and especially space are not really terms that apply to my studio. And even studio does not really describe it. It's a "studio" really. A mix of a study-cum-library-cum-place-where-I-create. It's small, and getting messy with colours usually requires some shifting of both stuff and furniture. Not practical, really, but all I have at the moment. And better than nothing. And I've been making some improvements over the course of this year. A new, big and bright lamp on the ceiling, a lovely new cabinet, and, more recently, a bigger desk and some more storage space. The window was the last thing to tackle. I had a lovely semi-transparent orange curtain, which bathed the room in a golden light in the early morning sun - but made it rather dark for the rest of the day while covering up the window board. I had been thinking about how to get the maximum of light while avoiding passersby peeking through the street facing window. Well, it's a mezzanine flat, actually, so not street level, but I'm a bit paranoid in that respect... I must admit though that I love peeking into other people's homes :).

Well, I finally found the perfect solution: a simple blind and transparent (or is it translucent?) window film. I found, and mail-ordered, the perfect window film at one of my favourite shops in Stockholm, Designtorget. Very conveniently, it arrived on Monday last week, on my day off, so in the afternoon up went the blind, and on went the film, and my little "studio" was perfect at last. Well, as perfect as it can be, anyway :). And I had now the perfect space to hang up the lovely gift I received from my cousin three weeks ago.

Now I have space for my brushes and other painting stuff, without having to be afraid of it fading and /or getting otherwise damaged by the sun. The blind allows so much more light to get in, without me feeling exposed and observed by passersby and neighbours.

And there's now room and light to paint by the window. Creating the right atmosphere in one's creative space is so important.

But one of my most favourite things still are the fairy lights. I love fairy lights, and this one is an espially long one, which goes around the cabinet, over the door and along the bookshelves, covering half of the room and lighting it up beautifully.

I really love how different the window film looks depending on the time of day and light outside. The blue hour is my favourite time of the day in winter anyway, but now, it's even more magical.

My dream of a proper studio (and I tell you in my head I already now exactly how it looks like) still seems light years away, but until it, hopefully, may come true one day, I at least have a room I'm happy with and enjoy spending time in.

I Am What I Read

Week 2 of my 52 of "Twenty Eleven Project". This week's theme is: This is me.

It is said that if you want to know what kind of person someone is, you have to take a look at their bookshelf.

Well: this is me :-)

Two of my bookshelves, there's at least one bookshelf in almost every room of the flat and piles and piles of books virtually everywhere. No matter how many bookshelves you have, it is never enough for all the books... I simply couldn't imagine a life without books.