Mmm colours

We picked up some cheap pine chairs from Ikea a few weeks ago and tried hide this fact by staining them to match our dining table. The main factor working in our favour was that there was a store nearby full of staining gurus who could custom-match the colours. The really enormous factor working against us was that the chairs were made from (presumably) cheap pine and the table most certainly wasn't.

Despite this, the gurus managed to find a colour combination that turned a patch of the chair into a colour nearly identical to that of the table. Once we got all of the materials home, I lugged everything onto the balcony and started to apply liberal amounts of stain to seats and backs and sides and undersides and even to bits that would never, ever see the light of the day once they were incorporated into an actual chair. Visions of elegant matching furniture and throngs of admiring DIY-ers danced in my head...well...once or twice.

It didn't turn out that way, of course. Despite being practically marinated in stain, the chairs are still several shades lighter than the table and still look like they came from Ikea. Fortunately the differences aren't as obvious indoors.


I'm sure my technique was flawed, but the wood should share the blame; after all, a niddy-noddy to which I applied some leftover stain turned out fabulously.

Chair and niddy-noddy pieces.


World o' knitting/spinning

I saw the Yarn Harlot at Third Place Books last Friday! She spoke for over an hour and answered a couple of questions, but then we had to surrender the area to another Friday group. I already had a signed copy of her latest book, thanks to Rachel, so I left right after the talk.

I churned out the gusset part of Monkey sock #2 during the talk and finished the rest of it today. Hooray for Monkeys and Trekking yarn! The pattern was easy as anything and the colours looked so cool in the sock that I NEARLY gave into the temptation to make the socks in my foot size instead of that of the intended recipient.

MMMMonkeys!!!!

There's an enormous amount of yarn left over, but I'm not sure if there is enough for more socks...maybe I'll try making mittens or doing colourwork or something.

Leftover Trekking yarn with average thirsty adult male cat for scale.

I also finished spinning and plying some pinkish roving that I picked up last year. It's 2-ply, about sportweight, but I don't know the length.

Pinkish 2-ply yarn on fabulously stain-absorbing niddy-noddy, with CatRuler(TM) for scale.