The end in sight

Favorite Photo Friday # 4

I know this is the first one I've participated in. I'll try to do better. Nothing says spring to me like the March Bank at Winterthur. I took this shot in 2008.

Woodworking continues

I've always been a girl who needs a deadline to get things done. Best way to make sure the house gets clean? Plan a party. Best way to finish a dining room table? Plan a dinner party for 22! So, April 9 is our deadline, and work continues at near furious pace.

This weekend we:
Determined the final width and trimmed the bread board ends of the tabletop (photo shows before the cutting).

Drilled holes through the tongues / grooves (which will be pinned with walnut dowels)

Cut all the mortise and tenons for the legs / skirt.



Sanded, ad nauseum.


Since I failed to update, last weekend we:

Cut the grooves in the bread-board ends with my dad's router.
Cut the tongues on the long center boards with the dado blade on the table saw.
Sawed the glued-up legs to 2 1/2 in. thickness, and cut them to length.

In another medium

I know this is supposed to be a blog about my knitting, and occasionally my sewing. But, sometimes a girl ventures into another medium and doesn't want to start a new blog. So, this is an update on our dining room table. Medium: cherry and walnut. Craft: woodworking.

About a year and a half ago, I bought my friend's wood working tools when he moved out of the country and sold his house. With the tools came some HUGE pieces of lumber which I've always intended to turn into a dining room table to replace our $25 IKEA special that DH has had since college.


One impediment was the fact that the wood was too big to plane in our shop. So, on MLK day, my brother and transported the lumber to a professional's shop to get it ready for the next steps.





My challenge with this particular lumber has always been to design a table using what I've got: one plank that is 18 inches by 12 feet, and another that is 12 inches by 12 feet. The other criteria is that it has to seat eight and work with our existing dining room chairs.




After much deliberation, I'm happy to unveil the design. Now I just have to build the darn thing :)

Has binding. Is blocked.

I thought I'd post a little update with this weekend's progress. I improvised a binding with overlapped edges that I've deemed to be an acceptable substitute for the mitered binding that I didn't want to figure out. I'm so happy with how much the yarn relaxed after blocking.

Adventures in Fair Isle

I've been working on a fair isle pillow for awhile now, and I finally cut the steek this weekend. Eek! Now I just need to finish the binding, block, and make the backing (probably a piece of chocolate brown linen).

After cutting, my pillow cover measures about 18 inches square. The full-scale blanket pattern called for 5 repeats across and 5 repeats high. This is only 2 repeats by 1.5 repeats! So, if knitting an entire fair isle blanket is as daunting to you as it was to me, I'd recommend making a pillow. Heck, it only took me 7 months to get this far. I don't even want to know how long it would take me to make a blanket at that rate.

Snow storm

I can't complain about this morning's record snowfall (a full 21 inches measured at 9:00 a.m. in both our front and back yards)! It gave me an excuse to spend a good part of the morning with my knitting, and my fair isle throw pillow is now well on its way (pics of that soon).