Once I painted the guest room, I began the search for a comforter or duvet for the bed in there. I quickly discovered that comforters are:

a. Expensive
b. Ugly

The ones I liked were, without exception, over $230–a good deal more than I would be willing to spend on an oversized pillowcase. On top of that, the room was yellow, which proved to be a difficult color to match accessories to. If you go yellow on the bed, your room becomes nauseatingly cheerful. If you go away from yellow, you risk clashing or fighting with the color.

Finally, I decided to make the bedspread. After a lot of shopping, I came upon this beautiful French-navy-and-white heavy cotton at Joann Fabrics. It was $30 a yard, though. Apparently my expensive taste doesn’t just extend to bedspreads. However, I happened upon it when it was 50% off, so it ended up being $15 per yard. So, I bought a large panel and framed it in this off-white cotton poly, which was going for $2 per yard.

So overall, I got a darn nice bedspread for $60-$75. It still wasn’t free, but it looks as good as most of the ones I saw in the stores–AND I have enough cotton/poly left for curtains and pillows.

Since I bought a dishwasher this month (!), I ran out of re-modeling money–and what money I have left must be spent on plants for my garden–so I resorted to making the things that will decorate my house.

For example, I made another pillow. This time, it’s a tube pillow for my office chair. I didn’t really know how to make a tube pillow, so I kind of winged it, but it seems to have worked out:

The fabric is from some upholstery samples I have had lying around for awhile. (My chair is missing one of its buttons because it is a thrift store find and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.)

I also made a clock for my living room. Well, Kyle helped a little. We drilled a hole in a plastic plate from Target and put the clock mechanism through it.

I am especially pleased with this one because I hated all the clocks I saw in the store. There are some ugly clocks out there, people.

The other night, I dug into my stash of fabric samples and made my first thing with it–a pillow. Since I was too lazy to get my sewing machine out, I sewed it all by hand. I am pleased with the results. I had never made a pillow before.

Unfortunately, I don’t get much light in my house in the morning, so this is the best photo I could get of the pillow. I am too lazy to mess with lamps. Someone buy me a camera light!

Since I have no expectations for myself as a jewelry designer, I am absolutely thrilled when I sell something off my Etsy store. There’s nothing like getting money for something you would do anyway.

Something I haven’t sold yet:

Quartz Pendulum Necklace

I am updating my Etsy shop again. For the next few days I’ll be adding jewelry and photographs on there. Keep checking back if you’re interested.

I thought I would try selling a little bit of my jewelry and other craft/art projects, so I opened an Etsy account. So far I’ve put up two necklaces and a pair of earrings. Here’s the earrings, to give you an idea:

Don’t they look like something Carmen Miranda would have worn? You can check out my Etsy store here.

Because I can:

Enough short stories to fill a collection
A sundress
New placemats
Weird paintings with talking animals
A mushroom quiche
Fingerless gloves
A collage or shadow box
A silver wire necklace
Sausage and pepper pizza
A hat
Lists, lists, lists
A novel.

I overworked earlier this week, so I had to force myself to stop and rest so my hands don’t get like this.

So I made a necklace:

Last night, I had to re-do the bodice of a dress I’m sewing three times before it looked right. It was annoying and frustrating, but in the end, satisfying. I was glad I took the trouble to make the dress hang well on my body.

This morning, I tried to remind myself about that while working on a particularly difficult section of my novel. I’m just re-doing the bodice until it fits with the rest of dress.

This takes a considerable amount of faith. You have to see past the momentary irritation and despair and believe that it will all come together in the end. But even more, you have to believe that the finished dress will look good enough to make all the trouble it took to sew it worthwhile.

In between all the other things I have been doing, I’ve been experimenting with wire working. Above is part of a necklace I made this week.

To make the necklace, I cut 50 pieces of copper wire at 6.5 inches, curled both ends with pliers, and then hooked them together.

I’ve been playing with beads since high school, but I like working with wire more. You have no need for crimp beads or clasps or connectors or anything like that. However, I now understand why metal necklaces are so expensive. They are not hard to make, but time intensive. Good thing they look good on.