i've applied for several fairs and markets coming up this spring and summer, which means i've been contemplating my display strategy. i have in the past used wire baskets that i borrowed from sarah, but then she called and said she needed somewhere to put her fruit and vegetables or some such nonsense.... clearly i needed something that wouldn't be repossessed. i had this idea that old interior shutters would be cool, but where was i going to find old interior shutters?

at my in-laws' house, apparently.

my m.i.l. was finally changing stephen's old bedroom into a guest room. which means, on the minus side, that our house is now full of all the "treasures" that had been in his closet.... but on the plus side, we'll have a brand new queen-size pull-out sofa to sleep on when we stay there, AND i scored the old shutters!



the only thing standing in my way (aside from a little paint touch-up and a good cleaning) was the bar that ran down the center of the louvers:



the whole operation needed to be excised---the bar and the metal bits that were holding it in. i contemplated my removal options:



i tried the needle-nose pliers first...



...and thankfully, with some effort, they did the trick. i really didn't want to have to break out the hacksaw.

and so, voila!





p.s. i had planned on posting all of my fabulous florida thrift scores, but on wednesday night my laptop crashed, all data lost....it's at the shop now, i'm trying to stay optimistic that the tekserve peeps can do their magic.....

happy spring, even though it's 40˚ out!

these are at least making me feel like spring might be here sometime soon....

i went to see the mountain goats (aka john darnielle) play last night and was reminded of how much i love them.

john darnielle is one of my indie artist heroes. solo artistic expression is kind of terrifying, really, (for me anyway)—you're putting your stuff out there to be judged and possibly rejected. and it's all yours, no company or partners to blame or hide behind. so when i love another artist's things, like i love john's music, it makes me believe more that other people will love what i do.

his music is sublime and just about perfect, and you should love it too:

spring training 08

wile and i just returned from our yearly pilgrimage to florida to see the mets and my mom (not necessarily in that order...), and to stock up on the finest used textiles that the sunshine state has to offer. i'll do a big post of all of my thrift store haul later in the week after i've gotten around to unpacking it all, but for now i just have to ask:



have you ever seen anything cuter than toddler bowling shoes? no, i didn't think so.

you can see the rest of our vacation photos here, if you'd like.

frankensweater

i have three shelves of sweaters in my closet, which hold somewhere around 36 sweaters (holy crap, that's the first time i've done that math.....). anyway, i usually rotate between about 5 of them, because most of them are too short for my long torso---i can't deal with any mid-section flesh being uncovered, it just makes me cold all over. plus it just looks terrible.

so rather than just sending 30 sweaters packing to the salvation army, i thought i'd see if i could make some of them wearable.

so i started with these two lovelies, both recently given to me by wile's auntie meg and auntie syd:



i hacked them both in pieces horizontally, right below the bust-line...





...removing the sleeves of sweater #2 as well.

i then chopped the bottom edge off of sweater #2, and inserted the resulting tube o'sweater into the middle of sweater #1:



as you can see, i ended up with some wonky side seams, so i just sewed new ones a half inch inside the existing ones, which straightened things out and also made it fit better, yay.

i was pretty happy at this point, but bored with the neckline:



so i went at that with the scissors too....



i trimmed it with the ribbing that i cut off the bottom of sweater #2 (i don't have a close-up shot of that, but you'll see it in the finished shots at the end). this made things better. but i still wasn't thrilled...it still needed something, but i wasn't sure what...till i remembered a patch that i had from my friend's band, which had been lingering in my wallet since i had bought it at his last show. i grabbed it, and placed it on about six different places on the sweater, but none looked right.....hmmm....then it hit me: pocket! i created a little pocket out of the end of one of the hacked-off sleeves of sweater #2, and attached the patch to it with some fusible interfacing...



found a good place for it on the sweater...



...stitched it on, and voila!



two sweaters i probably never would have worn become one sweater i love very much.



p.s. this is what happens when you forget to turn you flash off when taking mirror pictures:



ooo, sparkly!