Hello Fellow Hunters!
First I want to give a shout to my bf who got back from Iraq about 2 weeks ago. Finally!
I know it has been way too long since we've blogged but that doesn't mean we haven't been making progress on the Crystal Squirrel. In fact, today we saw the first paying customer! Thanks to co-worker Meredith, we are in business.
I will admit that I have been slacking on production but I am doing my best to catch up. Since I don't have a lot of new stuff to showcase, I will use this blog to tell about my sewing work space. Keels and I each have a room in our house designated to squirreling (we've coined that word BTW). My room just happens to also be what normal people would use as their dining room. It even has a dining room table which has turned into a sewing table. The table itself has a story.
The red and chrome retro style table with 4 matching chairs that have seen better days used to be the kitchen table at my grandparent's cabin in Wisconsin. The cabin was built in the late 60s by my grandpa and other relatives. It is a beautiful cabin that sits on a hill overlooking Thunder Lake. My fondest childhood memories happened at that cabin. My grandma's side of the family is quite large and all live very close to each other so we used to spend a lot of time together. Most weekends my cousins and I would pile into the car with various aunts and uncles and second cousins and head up to the cabin which was less than an hour drive.The cabin was three stories with a huge open living room and dining area, windows lining the wall of the middle story. Two bedrooms and one large loft area with about 8 beds. The beds were actually just mattresses piled on each other, maybe a box spring, maybe a frame. My cousins and I had names for each of the beds. Usually the name referred to the color of the comforter or blanket that covered the bed, but I remember that our favorite was the middle bed that was about 3 mattresses high. We always tried to 'call' beds when we got up to the cabin for the weekend. I could go on and on about this cabin.When I asked my grandma where all the stuff in the cabin came from, she told me that they didn't buy barely anything new for the cabin, they got it all from relatives who had extra dishes or furniture or from garage sales (this is where I get part of my thriftiness from). I can't remember exactly where the table came from but knowing my grandma, it is probably written on the underside of the table somewhere. She likes to document things like that, usually on a piece of her famous orange tape. Well years went on and times changed and my grandparent's decided to sell the cabin when I was a teenager. I was able to get a few of the items from the cabin like dishes and a pillow or two but I didn't get the table until I moved into the house I live in now which was about 2 years ago.
My aunt had the table at her house in a shed because she didn't have a place for it. She offered it to me and I gladly accepted. I had to clean it up quite a bit because it had dirt and rust and spider webs on it. It is not in perfect condition even now but I like it better that way. Now I get to sew at that table and remember all the great times I had at the cabin.
You can see that my table is full of scraps and tools and other necessary items... My aunt, who taught my everything I know about sewing, instilled in me the idea that you should not throw anything (scraps) away because you can always find a way to use it. I don't know if I agree with that but I still follow it so now I am accumulating little piles of scraps all over.
Since this room is a dining room, it is only natural that there is a boxspring in it. Well, actually that's not natural but it is reality. My roommate was going to put it in storage but instead it is in the dining room. So I started using it as a clothing rack to showcase finished products.
The room does not have a lot for decoration but it doesn't need a lot when it has this gem. This frame art is titled 'Things we have made' and it is a piece of construction paper with a list of things Keels and I have made and can potentially make for the CS. Essentially, this paper is the birth of the Crystal Squirrel.
