Nearing the end of the Great Roman Shade drive of 2010/2011 I started getting antsy to work on more immediately-satisfying projects. It's partly what makes these projects take so damned long to complete. A sort of Inceptionesque, project within a project syndrome. What ends up pushing the completion back is my shoe-horning of new tinkerings into the final drive — always at the end of the project — when, if I'd just put my nose down and grind out the job on the ol' sewing machine it'd just be done already.
So, with rod pockets aligned and staple gun set to merge hardware to software, I scanned Teux Deux for instant gratification. It was when I glanced up from my computer, though, that the next project jumped out at me. Set back into my side of the desk/bookcase/hutch is my little message board, half corkboard, half magnetic whiteboard, handy for list creation, postage stamp wrangling and amusing-thing-I-tore-out posting. But cork and whiteboard surfaces are uninspiring things, and I'd already aestheticized similar surfaces elsewhere. And The Boy, on a not enough snow to make it worth going out on a too cold day, was rallying for a project of his own. So together we taped off the whiteboard side, and applied one then another then a third coat of chalkboard paint over the course of a day.
Before I tackled the cork side, though, I interrupted that project to chop a couple inches off the bottom of a pair of pants. Because that's how much shorter I am than producers of corduroy jeans would like. Now, normally, cutting into designer cords would leave me near paralysis with the fear of misstep. I would measure not just twice, but likely five times, marking the incision line with chalk, then measuring another few times for kicks and giggles. But, when the said pair of pants is snagged off the tightly-packed rack of the fluorescent-lit bottoms aisle at Value Village, and brought home without the benefit of a visit to the fitting room because the two children you brought with you would surely escape under the door while your pants dangled from your knees (but you found they fit perfectly anyway once tried on at home during naptime!) you can be more cavalier about cutting precision. And a half hour after I started, I had pants neatly hemmed to a length that didn't have them dragging under my soles in the rain and mud in constant flow here.
That nagging concern out of the way, I could once again focus on the cork side of the message board (remember that?), and I turned to the iron-on-fuse method with some fabric sitting in the stash. Sanded down the rougher spots on the chalkboard side, and returned the board to it's custom fit nook in the bookshelf.
Now, I'm going to take a little breather here, from all the small jobs, to show you perhaps my favorite tool from my ever-growing collection of crafty paraphernalia. The handy 'lil chalk pencil, with tidy little refill chalk sticklets in a lovely pastel array, sharpen-able with any stationary aisle pencil sharpener. Perfect for pattern marking and penning your autobiography (legibly!) one slate at a time. Remember that chalk holder your high school English teacher kept locked in the top drawer of his desk? Remember how you'd come in before class and try to sneak a scribble with it? Right. Sometimes I forget not everyone is such a school supply nerd.
Ok, one final, little thing before I get back to searching for the perfect cleat to complete that first roman shade, already. And I've already shown it to you, so this'll be quick. My new, hermaphraditic camera strap. A cheater project, says Mr. New Media, because instead of working a new one from scratch I simply encased the strap that came with the camera and put a few stitches on it. This one, too, came together in little time (interrupted with the business of feeding a family), and I never quite got to the little lens cap pouch I wanted to build into the strap. So, just add this to the list of projects not quite done.
