some hokey pokey (that's what it's all about!)

Sometimes, as you possibly know, finishing up a DIY project of anything bigger than a breadbox can seem to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r!  I just looked back to my first post about our work on the loft area, and it was February 12!  Wow!  I did not think it was actually that long ago!  No wonder it seems like forever!  Well, we are now back to living in that space (mostly) and I love getting everything back in its place!  I wanted to add a little more desk space, but haven't found the right piece of furniture for that yet.  Then I remembered an old table stored in the rafters of the garage for many years, and decided to explore the possibility of using that.  It turned out to be the right size to fit in the space, although it is higher than a standard desktop.  It will work for now.  I'm not sure of the history of this table, I thought it belonged to my mother-in-law, Ruth, but turns out I am wrong about that.  It is maybe from the 50's?  It was in a sorry state of filth when we got it down to look at it, but after some vigorous scrubbing, it cleaned up pretty good!  When I first saw those yucky dirty metal legs, I wasn't sure this would make it.  But look at the 2 on the left, after scrubbing with a brush and SoftScrub.  Nice and shiny!

While working away on this out on the patio, I completely forgot about the fact that the cleanser has bleach in it.  Well, my t-shirt came away looking like I had dribbled bleach all over it!  Now it is my cleaning and paint shirt!  The table top has only a couple little divots, so pretty good shape!  The little strip of turquoise trim that goes around the edge is partially broken off, but that side is up against the wall so it is OK!  It would be good to replace that, but in my little bit of googling to find a source, I have come up empty.

Another finish for my English Paper Piecing projects for my Paper Pizzazz class at Bear Patch--

This is a project that I designed for my English paper piecing monthly class at Bear Patch.  It is made to exactly fit my small rotating cutting mat and a few other essentials.  The cover sports a rogue Lucy Boston block, a type of block from an antique quilt that definitely did not include the pirate skull and crossbones!  I just was playing around a little bit and wanted to do something far removed from the prim and proper traditional fabrics in that quilt.  The red fabric in the clear vinyl pocket is my pocket design wall!  It's a layer of batting sewn to the red cotton and there are 4 squares of stiff interfacing (timtex) sewn into it.  It is about 12" square, so makes a good surface to lay my little pieces on for these English paper piecing projects.  And it can be folded up with them enclosed.

When I saw this picture on Facebook, I had a good laugh!  It reminds me of indoor recess (due to rain or snow) during grade school at the Excelsior Elementary School building.  We had some rousing Hokey Pokey dances!
Here's to good memories!