A finished item and a decorating saga

The Dark Forest shawlette is finished. It did come out a touch smaller than expected, but it is just big enough to wear as a neckerchief which was always the intention.

The pattern was reasonably challenging to my skill level and I did enjoy that (when I wasn't ripping the rows back anyway). A lot of ripping back went on with this one, but the end result is a shawl that I am very proud of. I cannot get the yarn to photograph properly, it has a greenish/teal cast to the blue which is very attractive and has very subtle sparkle in the yarn.

I haven't accurately weighed the project but I think this used just under 50g of the skein, leaving scope to make a further neckerchief in a different pattern, which is rather nice. The colour goes well with denim and I think will cheer up jeans and a long sleeve top in the autumn, rendering the outfit slightly more chic. If my neck is warm, I have discovered that I feel warmer all over, so this may mean I can delay my descent into Michelin woman layers for winter by a few weeks, which would be nice.

And in other news, there has been much decorating going on in the house. Two weeks ago, the kitchen and dining room were painted (ceiling, walls and woodwork). Last week, the ceiling in what was the downstairs loo was replaced (there was a burst pipe during last winter's very cold snap and the ceiling was ruined). The sanitary ware was removed about a month ago and I am turning the room into a cupboard to keep control of the domestic clutter that seems to be taking over my house. I do wonder why architects design houses with nowhere satisfactory to put such critical items as the hoover, mop bucket, laundry basket, wellingtons, coats etc.

Anyway, as is often the case with any sort of decorating or change of use, there were some snags. When the toilet came out, some of the floor came with it. So off I went to the DIY store and got a large sack of gravel and some quick drying cement. Filled the hole with the gravel, put the cement on top. And voila. A hole-less floor (though a rather lumpy one it has to be said).

Then I took off the eight tiles that had formed a splashback behind the sink. And the plasterboard came off with them. So I got in the car again, and trotted off to the DIY store, and got some Polyfilla and some natty little metal plates on mesh which the package assured me were self adhesive and would cover holes in plasterboard, and came home feeling most efficient.

Applied the patches... then put another couple on top of the first one... then some more on top of that... then pulled them off and filled behind with the entire pot of polyfilla.. then some kitchen paper to sort of fill the gap a bit more... then put the patches back on. Et voila. A sort of smooth (ish) wall.

The next morning the patches had fallen off onto the floor. So I sellotaped them to the wall (having begun to ever so slightly lose patience with the whole process) in the hope that would persuade the supposedly self-adhesive patches to adhere themselves as per the packets assurances. Cos they just needed some support you know.

So, I went into the garage, and got out the special, very expensive, liquid sanding stuff that I had bought. And I applied this and I removed this and I was most pleased with my little self. And out into the garage I went once more and got the gloss paint to do the woodwork.. and verily my gloss paint had dried into a plasticised crust of doom. So I took myself off to the DIY shop (and carefully chose to go through a checkout that did not contain anyone who had seen me on the previous occasions) and bought gloss paint and ceiling paint (for the latter had also encrusted itself onto the tin with no hope of removal).

I got home and realised that really, I should fix the fact that the door didn't shut properly on my new cupboard, before I actually painted the door. So I went off to my mother's house and rooted about in her garage until I found a plane, and carried it triumphantly home and applied it to the door.. and applied it some more... then had a rest, and applied it some more... and this went on for a day or so, until the door would shut and my shoulder hurt a lot.

Then I FINALLY put paint to woodwork... Three coats on one of the doors because the paint went funny on contact.

Then I had a bit of a rest whilst that dried and I did things like go to work and finish my new shawlette. Then came this weekend. Today to be precise. And I retrieved from the garage, all the items I would require, and then retrieved further items from my mothers garage, and placed them all on the tarpaulin spread over my living room floor.

Mum was assisting me with the task of paperhanging. So, we unrolled the first roll of wallpaper, and all was well for three drops then we found that the rest of the roll we were using had been cut into shorter drops, evidently by someone who had planned to decorate some other room, in some past house. It was my leftover wallpaper so I guess it was me that did it, though I don't recall doing so and can't think of a legitimate reason why I would have done this. So, our patchwork skills were brought to the fore as we measured and patched and somehow, in a VERY unorthodox way, achieved full wallpaper coverage of the cupboard walls. With about forty inches of wallpaper left over at the end. So no wallpaper left for the hall then. Ah well. Then we found the other roll of wallpaper, the one that evidently had NOT been cut up into weird sized pieces,which had rolled under the edge of the tarpaulin. Not enough to actually wallpaper the hall, but enough that some of the more unusual paper matching arrangements might have been less than necessary.

So then I painted the ceiling, (and my arm, and my head, and my face) and managed to actually eat some paint by accident because I was talking and it fell off the brush into my mouth.

Tomorrow I am going to paint the walls.... and put down the floor tiles. I wonder what bizarre problems that will raise.