Why Do I Bother?

Off I go on the bottom floor of the townhouse. First of all, I have to finish the kitchen before I put the front wall on it. I have painted myself into a corner there... Once I enclose it, you will only get to see part of the kitchen from the open side of the house. If you look into the front bay windows, you will be able to see the rest. I had half a notion to put blinds on the front windows so that the kitchen couldn't be seen from that side...But then, what would be the fun in that? So here I go again.

It probably won't be as detailed as it would if it was visible from the living room side, but it still has to be done.

I repaired an Eugene Kupjack dining room for the mini museum once and discovered a cool secret. For those of you that don't know, Mr. Kupjack is famous for building the Narcissa Thorne rooms. He also did other rooms and the dining room was one of those.

Anyway, he did amazing work. The room that I did had to be taken apart, cleaned and repaired...While doing it, Pat A. and I discovered that, if it didn't show, it was faked. There were two side doors on one end of the room. You could just get a hint of what was behind them...In actuality, what looked like more beautifully carved furniture, was commercial pieces and blocks of wood! Nobody ever knew or questioned them as other than part of the whole picture.

So I don't feel guilty about faking it here and there anymore. If Eugene could do it, so can I. Fooling the eye can be fun.

Anyway, I got the plans drawn up now on to making it look like there is a fancy kitchen in the space.

As to what I have been doing besides drawing plans, I have been doing some more experimenting with the gourds.

I decided to see if I could make them into pincushions.

Every once in a while I check into the flickr pincushion pool http://www.flickr.com/groups/pincushions/pool/ to see what is going on. I don't belong to the site, but I love pincushions of all sorts. I may just have to join after doing these. There are some really crazy pincushions at this site. Lots of fun.

They could use a little tweaking, but I am having fun with them. I did a couple of rows of coiled basketry around the edges, then stuffed them with a pouf of fabric and decorated the outside like the basket from yesterday.

The first one was the bottom of the gourd and the second one is the top neck with a piece cut off of the very end to make it stand up.

This one, I decorated with a hand carved bone piece and stuck a bone bodkin in the side to match.

I need to figure out how to get the big ugly pleats out of the sides. I think I know how to do it. Wish me luck.

Back to kitchen work tomorrow.

See you then.