Friday, February 28, 2025

February first reads

 Cutting it close this month 


This month's options:

  1.  Fall Risk (short read)
  2. Mister Whisper (police procedural)
  3. Not Quite By the Book ()Women's Fiction)
  4. Grave Water Lake (thriller)
  5. Something Like Fate (coming of age)
  6. Missing in Fllight (action)
  7. Unlikely Story romance)
  8. The Warbler (gothic)
  9. Name Not Taken (suspense)

I don't usually do gothic stuff, but I went with The Warbler.  The other two that looked good are already on order at the library.  

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Curtains, part 1

 The Offspring wanted new curtains for his bedroom this winter, being a fan of color and stuck with mismatched clearance-aisle beige curtains from Target.  Colorful curtains are hard to find, and expensive when you do find them.  Enter the notion of fabric dyeing.  We've done tie-dye half a dozen times or more, and last fall I dyed three pairs of pants for the Fan of Color, so I've moved on to curtains. 

Muslin was the first notion, but it wasn't thick enough.  Then I saw something on Rit's website or on Facebook about using dropcloths as the dye base.  So, we measured the windows in his room, and I spent some time on Amazon looking for cotton dropcloths in light colors.  We need 4x6 foot curtain panels, so I found a 4x12 dropcloth.  Cut it in half, hemmed it, washed it twice (lots and lots of lint), and put in a 3-inch hem on the selvage end for a rod pocket.  


 

Then it was time for the dye.  The 4x12 dropcloth weight almost two pounds, so I went with 2 boxes of Rit powder dye in Purple for the first curtains.  Plus, of course, a dash of dish soap, a cup of salt, and a bottle of Rit's dye fixative.  Oh, and the sacrificial plastic spoon for stirring.  Ninety minutes of stirring later, and a third trip through the wash, we have curtains! 


His bedroom has two more windows, so two more pairs of curtains are in progress - fuchsia and aquamarine.  Two more dropcloths are on the way, and I need to see if I need more thread in similar colors.



January First Reads

 Another pick-two month.  

  • Rules of Fortune (family drama)
  • Into The Fall (domestic thriller)
  • Eleven Numbers (shsort story)
  • Glamorous Notion (historical fiction)
  • there's Something About Mira (romantic comedy)
  • The Killing Plains (crime thriller)
  • The Art of Starting Over (romance)
  • Voice Like A Hyacinth (Dark fantasy)
  • Some Other Time (women's fiction)
  • Their Shadows Deep (historical fiction) 

Scratching the romance, thriller, and dramas cuts down the options. Ended up with Some Other Time and Something About Mira.