Makeover Monday - Sweaters (and a Contest!)

Difficulty - Easy

I have a secret.

Ready?

I'm not very good at laundry.


I'm pretty good at remembering to do it on a (sort of) weekly basis, but double-plus-un-good at remembering to do things like check for money/train passes/lipstick in the pockets or ensure that there are no random red socks mixed in with the white towels. I also suck at remembering that I have a wool setting on the machine. This is why I have pink towels and a pile of sweaters that used to fit me, but are now more suited to my 18 month old niece.

Weep

You may have noticed that I don't like to throw things away. Like my formerly trashed shoes, these jumpers have moved with me more than once. But when sorting through things to go to the charity shop last week I started to feel bad about not doing anything with them - I can't wear them, no one else can wear them and they are taking up a lot of space in the wardrobe. So this week my makeover project is to turn those tiny woollen reminders of my ineptitude into something useful: cushion covers.


For this project, you will need:


1 sweater (this can be acrylic or wool)
Fabric to create the reverse side of the cushion
Fabric to back the sweater
Heavy duty needle for your machine - denim or leather rated
A cushion
Pins
Scissors
Iron

When finished, you will have two matching covers.

Step One: Work out how big your cover needs to be and make sure that your jumper is big enough. 


I bought my cushion at Wilkinson - they're cheap there and a pretty standard size. To make sure that the jumper was going to be big enough, I shoved the cushion inside it.

Wide enough? Check.

Long enough? Check.

It is okay if the sweater has a V-neck and some of the cushion isn't covered.

Step Two: Cutting the sweater

Cut the arms and shoulders off roughly in line with the cushion. (You can cut through both sides of the sweater at the same time.) Cut below any edging at the neck - even if your cushion pokes above the V-neck like mine does. You don't have to measure to get this perfect. Remember - knits stretch. So long as it is really close, you'll be fine.

You can use the arms and shoulders of the jumper to make a draught excluder if you want. I'll do this as another project at some point.

You should now have a knitted tube. Cut along the side seams to give yourself two squares. Set these aside for the minute.

It is best to cut so that you wind up with one seam on each piece.

 Step Three: Backing the wool.*

Right, as mentioned above, knits are stretchy. Over time they lose their shape. To keep your covers looking nice for as long as possible, you need to create a lining to go between the square of knit and the cushion. You can use almost anything as long as it is washable and doesn't stretch. I've got some leftover fabric from when I re-covered a sofa for a friend, so I'm going to use that.

Measure your cushion. Mine is 18 inches x 18 inches. Cut out two squares this size from your backing fabric.* (You'll need one for each cushion.)

Set these aside with the squares from the sweater.



Step Four: Cutting the outer fabric.

Only one side of the cushion is going to be woolly. The other side can be anything you want, as long as the fabric doesn't have any stretch. I'm using some upholstery samples that I've had forever.

Just to show the pattern size

Cut two pieces of your outer fabric the same size as your cushion  (18 x 18 in my case). Cut two more pieces as wide, but only about one third to one half as long. (I've cut mine 18 inches x 7 inches). One full size and one half size piece will make up the back of each cushion.

Showing the wrong sides

Fold over a small section - about 1-1.5 inches, wrong sides together on the 18 inch sides of each piece. Press. Sew.

Set these aside.



Step Five: Putting it all together.

**The first few instructions are for the backing fabric. If you skipped step three, scroll down past the pictures with the blue acanthus backgrounds.**

Lay out your backing fabric square with one of the knit squares on top of it.

Make sure that the square from the sweater is really square (a slight curve in the bottom edge is normal -  just make sure that the top and sides are square) and pin it into the middle of the backing fabric.

Starting at the corners, Stretch the sweater material out to cover the larger piece of backing fabric. Pin it in place.

It helps of you pin the four corners first, then stretch the sweater to fit the backing fabric, pin in the middle of each side, stretch it again pinning smaller and smaller sections down.

 Your end result will look a bit odd and lumpy, but if you stretch the backing fabric out flat, it should look fine.

Sew the sweater onto the backing fabric. You don't want the stitches for this to show on the finished cover, so cut your normal seam allowance in half. In the picture below, I would normally have the edge of the fabric running along the line furthest from the needle. If you are worried about sewing in a perfectly straight line, load your sewing machine up with matching thread and shorten your stitch length. If your seams do end up really close together in places and peek through, it won't matter.

Once the sweater is sewn to the backing fabric, take all of the pins out. With the right sides together, lay the big piece of outer fabric over the sweater square.* Lay the shorter piece over top of this so that the finished edges are overlapping.

Pin the sides the same way you did when pinning the sweater onto the backing fabric, stretching it out to make sure there are no folds. Be sure that the bigger piece of outer fabric is on the 'inside' of the overlapped pieces.

This is where you will need the heavy duty needle in your machine. There is a lot of fabric to sew through and a standard needle may not be able to take it. 

Sew all the way around with a normal seam allowance. Remove the pins.

Step Six: Finishing

Before you turn your cover the right way out, cut the corners off, making sure that you do not cut through any of your stitches.

If you don't do this, the corners of your cover won't look nice when you turn the cover the right way out. The corners will be bunched up and lumpy because there will be too much fabric in them.

Turn the cover the right way out and put the cushion into the cover.

Back

Front

Done.

Now for the Contest!

I wanted to thank everyone for their interest in my makeover projects. A lot of you have said that you wished that you sewed so that you could do some of them and others have made suggestions for projects that they would like to see. Some really good ideas. So I'm throwing it open - what would you like to see in Makeover Monday?  Comments will be open for suggestions from 9 am Monday January 31st until Monday Feb 7th. I'll then pick one of the suggestions for the Feb 14th Makeover Monday.
But wait! There's more!

In addition, Random.org will pick one comment to win a pair of small cushion covers (for 18 X 18 cushions) made from this fabric, left over from my bedding makeover:

You can enter up to five times, but each entry needs to have a different suggestion for a Monday Makeover.

And yes, this is open to international entries.

* You can make the cushion without doing this step, but using a backing fabric makes the whole thing neater and will help to keep the cover from stretching out over time.

*I am not adding seam allowances to any of the measurements for this project. When you make covers for cushions, you need to account for the fact that you will want to cushion to be kind of fat and squashy rather than thin and flat. To get that, you need to make the cover just slightly smaller than the cushion. By cutting everything to the size of the cushion rather than adding seam allowances, my finished cover will be slightly smaller than the cushion and will enhance the squashy-ness.


*Right sides are the sides you want to show when the project is finished. In this case you want to lay the right side of the outer fabric against the sweater with the backing fabric against the floor.

Friday Finds - Fashion

I will sell a lung.
I will sell one of my kidneys. Both of them!
I will give you my first born and not even try to weasel out of it by guessing your name.

Just please, please, PLEASE let me have something from the Dior Spring/Summer 2011 collection.

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/S2011CTR-CDIOR?viewall=true

Top row, second from the right has to be the most gorgeous thing I have seen so far this year.

Overheard

On the train.


Three girls: Girl in School Uniform (GiSU), Girl with Pink Scrunchie (GwPS), Short Girl in Muddy Trainers (SGiMT)


GiSU: I don't know why people watch the X-Factor.
GwPS: I'm not having this conversation with you again. Some people. Like. It.
GiSU: They can like it, I just don't get it.
SGiMT:  (kicking back of seat, dry mud falling all over other trainer) I don't understand Music.


(GiSU & GwPS stare at her.)


GiSU: Well, the X-factor isn't really what I'd call music.
SGiMT: No but, like it's all just noise, innit? Like why would people listen to it?
GwPS: What? Listen to the X-factor?
SGiMT: No. Music. Like why do you listen to music. What's the point. It's all just...I don't know. It's all noise. I don't get it.


(Long pause)


GiSU: I don't get you.

Trash Tuesdays - Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

Welcome to Trash Tuesdays. Watch out for the Binja.


I love China Mieville. My Masters thesis was based on three of his 'grown-up' novels. I love the way he builds worlds and characters. I love the way he manipulates words and convinces them to mean the same thing but in entirely new ways. I love the way he quietly gets you to think about government and the way you live, without being overtly preachy. Reading Mieville makes you think about life and language in entirely new ways. In Un Lun Dun Mieville abandons grown-ups for YA.* 


Weird things are happening to 12 year old Zanna: Sycophantic graffiti, clouds in the shape of her face, animals bowing and strangers congratulating her on the street. Zanna is the Chosen One - chosen for what, no one is exactly clear, but she's Chosen, and that's enough for their support. But then something happens to Zanna and her best friend Deeba has to ditch her role as side-kick and become the Un-Chosen one.


The book is split into two halves. In the first is the story you think you expect. In the second is the story you need and ultimately, the one you wanted all along. When I reached the division I thought 'finally!' and my irritation with the book started to fade. Zanna is about as interesting as any stock 'chosen one', which is to say she isn't. Deeba, on the other hand, is who I'd back in a fight.* Like Deirdre last week, Deeba uses her own brain to figure things out, does her research and makes her own decisions based on her values.  Strong Female Protagonist FTW! (Especially if she has a pet milk carton).  


Un Lun Dun has an environmental message, and at times this gets a bit heavy handed. Maybe obvious is a better term than heavy- handed since I'm not sure the target audience would pick up on the same clues as an adult reader. I will say that for a book aimed at tweens and early teens, it's amazingly frank about the world around us and pulls very few punches.


Mieville draws on lots of my favourite books for this: Alice in Wonderland, the Narnia books, Neverwhere, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Wizard of Oz - the wonderful weirdness that saturates these books and makes them so good is here, but it's mixed with something seriously sinister. The coating on this book isn't sugar, it's a film of petrol.


On to the Brownian Points:


Day One: BR: 6/10. Enjoyed it but ticked off by the age adapted writing.


Day Two: BR: 7/10. Okay. Protagonists are actually 12. Age adapted writing not so bad in context.


Day Three: BR: 7.5/10. He-he - carnivorous giraffes!


Day Four and Five: BR:  8/10. Ninjas + Dustbins = binja = AWESOME.


Day Six: BR: 8.5/10 - I'd like a suit made out of books.


Day Seven: BR: 8.5/10. Carnivorous GIRAFFES!!!


Final Brownian rating: 8.5/10. Like so many of Mieville's books this one sticks with you. The longer I think about it, the more I like it. It's definitely different from his other work, but equally enjoyable. It didn't win the Locus Award for nothing.


Next week: Graceling by Kristen Cashore.






*A bit Y-er than I initially thought when I bought it which put me off for awhile, but it grew on me. 


*Yes, even though she's 12.

Makeover Monday - Bedding

Difficulty: Easy

Husbando is fairly tall. I am fairly not. We used to bicker about the amount of space we had in the bed. Then we got a new bed. A big bed. A lovely, argument killing, blissful sleep machine.

Except then the duvet was too small.

When we bought the new, super-wide duvet we thought that one of our existing covers (too big for the old duvet) would fit. It didn't. I managed to find one cover at J-Lew*, but there was only the one and subsequent searches for a cover big enough have not been successful.*

So this week's makeover is going to take one of my King-size duvet covers and make it fit my super-wide duvet.

For this project you will need:

1 duvet cover
Similar weight fabric to expand the cover - the amount will depend on how much you are expanding.
A measuring tape
A sewing machine
Pins
An iron


First thing to do is work out exactly how much bigger the cover needs to be.

Step One: Measure your duvet.

Round UP to the nearest whole inch. Mine is 85 inches long (head to toe) by 100 inches wide (side to side). (Write this down).

Step Two: Measure the cover that doesn't fit and work out how much bigger it needs to be.

My plain white cover is 82 inches long by 89 inches wide. (Write this down too). You need to be sure that you are measuring like for like - figure out before you measure which side is width and which is length on both the cover and the duvet and be consistent in your notation. Otherwise you might wind up with the opening of the cover along the side of the bed rather than at your feet because you have added the fabric to the wrong area and that is how it now fits.

So, my duvet cover is 3 inches too short and 11 inches too narrow. This means that I need to add a piece 3 inches x 100 inches along the top and a strip 11 inches by 82 inches along the side. If I did just that - added the new fabric along only two sides, it would work. But it would look weird. So:

Step Three: Decide where you will add the expansion.

There are two easy options for where to put the extra fabric.* If you have space big enough, lay the duvet cover out on the floor. (I do not have a space big enough and so I can only bring you step by step images courtesy of Microsoft Paint this week.) Imagine that this is my white cotton duvet cover on the floor:

Isn't it lovely.

Now, the first option is to cut the duvet into four equal pieces (the duvet isn't a perfect square so the pieces won't be perfectly square either) and add the fabric in the middle:

Showing where you would cut for option one.

Going with this option means that the new fabric will create a cross in the middle of your duvet. It could be a really interesting look - especially if you have some vintage fabric. You have to be really, REALLY careful when you measure and cut the duvet with this option though. If you don't get the cuts straight, it will throw everything off, will be really annoying to sew and the finished product will be wonky.

The other option is to open the side and top seams of the duvet and add the new fabric in a band around the edges, splitting the 11 inch wide piece into two 5.5 inch strips:

I'm going to go with the band around the edges for two reasons. Firstly, it's easier. I don't need to worry about cutting straight because all I'm doing is opening up side seams. Secondly, the duvet cover is white and I live in England. The duvet could end up looking like this:

While we support the England football team when they are playing, there is another red and white flag that takes precedence in our house, thank you very much.*

Step Four: How much extra fabric do you need?

I have some old Ikea curtains that are helping out on this project, but if you need to go out and buy fabric, you need to be sure that you get enough. You also need to be careful if you are using a fabric with a pattern.  Take account of patterns when you are working out your yardage. I am using stripes so I have to make sure that I have enough fabric to ensure all of the stripes end up going the same way or my head will explode.

I'll use my measurements as an example of how to work this out.

The longest piece I need has to be 82 inches high x 5.5 inches wide. I need two of these, one for each side. I also need a piece that is 100 inches wide x 3 inches high.

BUT WAIT!

A duvet has two sides, that means I actually need bigger pieces than that.

Because I have chosen the around the edges option, this is not a problem. Simply double the smallest numbers in each measurement.

100 (w) x 3 (h) becomes 100 x 6 (both sides of the top),
5.5(w) x 82(h) becomes 11 x 82 (you still need two of these - one for the left and one for the right).

You also need to add some extra in for the seams. If you make half inch seams, you should add 1 inch to the measurements - all around this time.

101(w) x 7(h) for the top - cut one
12(w) x 83(h) for the side - cut two

Add your (w)'s and your (h)'s ONLY COUNT 1 PIECE OF 12 x 83 IN THIS. (I will explain why in a minute).

101 + 12 = 113(w)
83 + 7 = 90(h)

So you need a piece of fabric that is at least 90 inches high and 113 inches wide.

The reason you are only counting one piece of 83 x 12 is because when you cut it out you can do this:

All of my stripes will be going in the same direction with this layout.

Problem is - you aren't going to find a lot of fabric 100 inches wide. The maximum is usually about 60 inches with 45 being about about average. You need to tweak the layout.

My fabric happens to be 54 inches wide so I'm going to divide the top piece into two of 51 x 7. (I've rounded up to 51 because I need to include the new half inch seam allowance where the two pieces will join in the middle).

So my actual cutting layout looks a little like this:

If I was buying fabric for this project I would look for fabric at least 51 inches wide and buy 2.8 yards of fabric. (83 + 7 + 7 = 97 inches. 100 inches = 2.777 yards)


Step Five: Cut everything out

Once you have checked your measurements (make sure you wrote everything down at the start) you can cut out your pieces. Remember rule 1: Measure twice, cut once.

Let me say that again in case you missed it:

RULE # 1 : Measure twice, cut once.

I can't male the font any bigger. You'll just have to trust me on how important it is to get your measurements right.

Step Six: Preliminary sewing and ironing.

Stitch together the two 51 inch pieces to make one piece 101 inches wide. Fold it in half (right sides together) so you have a double thickness piece 3.5 inches high and 101 wide. Iron it. Sew  half inch seams along the 3.5 inch sides. You should now have a piece 101 inches long, open on only one side (one of the 101 inch sides).

Fold the 12 x 83 inch pieces so you have two pieces that are 6 x 83. You want to fold right sides together again. Iron. Don't sew yet.

Step Seven: Open up the seams on the duvet cover

You can either spend time carefully cutting through the overlocked edge I'm sure you have on the inside of your duvet cover, or you can do what I did and just cut the existing stitching off right up against the stitches. This is much faster. If there is a partial seam along the bottom to either side of the closing snaps/poppers/whatever you call them, leave this as it is. It will help to keep clear where the top is and where the sides are.

Step Eight: Sew on the expansions

It's easiest to sew the sides on first. Turn the duvet inside out. Pin one side of each of the 12 x 82 inch pieces to the duvet. You will be making two long seams.

Now pin the other side of the duvet on to the free edges of the 12 x 83 pieces and make two more long seams. Once the new sides are sewn in, you can stitch along the bottom edge of the addition.You should now have a cover wide enough for your duvet.

Leave the cover inside out. Pin the folded 100 x 3.5 piece along the top, starting at the corner formed by the new side fabric. You should have pressed this so it will be easy to see where the seam on the 100 x 7 piece meets up with the crease on the expansion.

Handy Tip:

Turn your 100 x 3.5 piece the right way out. (The duvet cover should still be inside out.) Put the 100 x 3.5 piece inside the duvet cover so that the right side of the fabric is touching the right side of the duvet cover. The top corners of the 101 inch wide addition should be pointing down inside the duvet.  Match the seam on the 100 x 3.5 piece with the creases you pressed into the 12 x 83 inch pieces.

You should now only be able to see the wrong sides of both the expansion piece and the duvet cover. (If you have ever short sheeted a bed, it helps to picture this when you are trying to get the layout right.)

Sew all the way around the top edge and turn the whole thing right side out to check that you got all the bits in the right places. You should now have something that looks like this:

Since my bed has a foot-board and the duvet is always tucked in, I'm not worried about the fact that the bottom edge is odd.

That's it for the cover. Wrestle your duvet in and all your measurements being well, you should have something that fits.

Step Nine: What to do with the Spare fabric?


I don't like waste fabric and I love things that match almost as much as I like cleaning. So I decided to use the spare fabric to make two pillow cases. These are easy.

9a)Measure the long side of a pillow case. Double it. Add 10 inches.
9b)Measure the short side.

Long side: 28 inches (doubled +10 = 66)
Short side: 20 inches

From my spare fabric I cut two pieces of fabric 67 inches long and 21 inches wide (including seam allowance).


p

 Fold over the 10 inch addition so that the wrong sides of your fabric are together. Iron it. (This is the bit you fold over the pillow when it is in the case). Now fold the fabric in half so you have something 28 x 20, right sides together. Sew along the 28 inch sides. Turn right sides out. Fill with pillow. Repeat with as many pillows as you have in whatever measurements they are, always remembering to add at least 10 inches for the inner fold.

Now go and make your bed.

Next week: What to do with those wool jumpers you accidentally washed at 65.

*John Lewis

*Actually, I can find covers. Finding them isn't the problem. The problem is that I'm cheap and I'm not going to spend £80.00 on a duvet cover. Not when I have a cupboard full of covers that ALMOST fit, a sewing machine and a room full of fabric.

*And loads of difficult ones, but I'm not into difficult this week so you're getting the easy ones.

*See above re: easy. A maple leaf applique is not easy.

Friday Finds - Furry

http://www.smallanimaldecency.com/

I really think this needs to be seen to be believed.

Overheard...

I take the train home. Sometimes the people on the train make me want to get off and walk. Other times they make me want to cheer. Overheard today:

Gum-Smacking-Heavily-Made-up-Mother: Stop making faces.

3-year-old-girl: No. (Makes even more horrible monster face)

GSHMuM: Stop. Making. Faces.

3YOG: (More faces, this time with monster noises and hand-claw actions)

GSHMuM: If you make faces you won't be pretty. Don't you want to be a pretty girl?

3YOG: (Thinks about this. Looks around train. Looks at GSHMuM) No. (Resume monster faces.)

Trash Tuesday - Lament by Maggie Stiefvater

Welcome to Trash Tuesdays, brought to you by Brownian Motion.

'Brownian, when Rollercoasters aren’t enough!'

This week: a tale of music and faeries and out of the ordinary boys. At the end I've summarised my daily reaction and given the book a Brownian Rating (BR) out of ten.

Maggie Stiefvater* is the author of The Wolves of Mercy Falls  trilogy, which so far consists of Shiver and Linger. (The final book is due out of July this year - hopefully with simultaneous UK and North American release dates.) Shiver and Linger are both excellent but for various reasons, mostly because they've been done dozens of times already, I'm not going to review them here.

Instead, I'm going to look at Stiefvater's earliest book, Lament.

I like Faeries almost as much as I like Angels. Which is to say, not a lot. If I wasn't already hooked on Stiefvader's writing style, this one would have gone back on the shelf. Also - I'd already read Fallen at this point and liked it.*


I'll get my one big niggle out of the way first: Celtic salad.* Harp, bagpipes, four-leaf clovers. Yowza. If Deirdre played the flute, I probably wouldn't have noticed, but there's a reason I avoid Diana Gabaldon and it is Scot-overload. I'm happy to lay this reaction at the bleeding feet of my Highland dancing PTSD though. 

Enough Celtic moaning - where was I? - right. Dee plays the harp, and on the day of the big regional competition she meets a Mysterious Boy(TM). Dee has problems with stage fright and so throws up before Every. Single. Performance. (Actually, suddenly the harp makes a lot more sense. You can’t throw up inside a harp). MB(TM) helps her clean up in the bathroom.

And here we get to the first thing I really like about the book. Mysterious-Boy (Hereafter known as Luke because it's shorter) is different from standard YA Romantic-Boy because he isn't automatically cruel to her for no reason. You know the drill: They Must Stay Apart – No He Will Drive Her Away and Fight! Against! Fate! (For Her Own Good!) (!!!!!). I really enjoyed that this didn't happen – and it’s a perfect example of why I like what Stiefvader does with her characters. It would have been so easy to go the usual route with this, but instead she stays true an actual, believable behaviour. Just because something isn't a good idea, it doesn't mean that you - particularly if you're a teenage you and the opposite sex is involved - are going to do as you're told.

Luke immediately decides that he and Dee need to perform together at the recital/competition/thing and they spend all of two pages rehearsing. And of course they're brilliant and everyone loves them.

If you aren't reaching for that iron horseshoe already, I’m worred about you.

Luke is an Assassin. An assassin working for the Faerie Queen. (This isn’t a spoiler because it's on the back of the book.) He turns up everywhere Dee is, freaks out her near and dear, sets Dee's little heart aflutter and you're never quite sure exactly what's going on. Is he good? Is he bad? I'm not spoiling, but I thought it was reasonably well done.

There is an acceptably creepy amount of peril in this book as well. The bad-guys don’t seem to be all that dangerous – but one of the major themes in Lament  is that appearances are deceptive. Almost nothing is what it seems, including our Heroine, who has the spine that Luce was lacking. 


Dee often saves herself from potential danger (she does some pretty stupid things too, but I'm letting them slide a bit because they mostly happen early on before she really believes what is happening). The most impressive thing? She uses her brain to outwit the faeries on several occasions. She does some research, she extrapolates from comments made by others and manages to muddle through. Often with Luke nowhere in sight. Three cheers for capable female characters.


So, Brownian Scoring:

Day One: BR: 6.5 The book was pretty good. Not great, but I did like it better than Fallen. 


Day Two: BR: 7.5 Actually, harps and bagpipes aside. It was really good.


Day Three: BR: 8.5 There's a sequel!


Day Four: BR 7.5 It's stand alone.


Day Five: BR: 7.0 And it's about the best friend.


Day Six: BR 7.5 Okay. It has no sequel. There just happens to be a book with some of the same characters in it. I can live with that.


Day Seven: BR: 7.5 'I think you should borrow this book.'


I will pick up the companion book, regardless of my feelings about James (the best friend). Stiefvater writes well enough that I have the feeling she'll become one of those authors I watch out for and give the benefit of the doubt to. 


Final Brownian Motion Rating: 7.5 (and possibly still rising)

Next week - Cina Mieville's Un Lun Dun


*Husbando refers to her as Magic Darth-Vader.

* Moral  - Don't judge a book by its mythical protagonist.


*I have to admit that less than twenty pages into this book I was seriously beginning to lose faith in ol'Maggie. I suspect that my tolerance of ‘Celtic-ness’  is slightly lower than the average person's, having spent a good portion of my youth in cold basements learning to dance with swords and keep my spine ram-rod straight while simultaneously trying to stay on the balls of my feet and keep the bottle caps in my shoes from digging into my heels. To this day I tend to walk on tip-toe when I'm tense. The kilts were awesome though.

Makeover Monday - Shoes

I'm going to re-post the Jacket to jumper project when I get a chance to trim down the final post - Blogger seems to hate it right now and nothing is coming out in the right way. Text and picture soup.


In the meantime here's another project. A nice simple one. I'm going to makeover some shoes. Well, give them a second life anyway. The reasons for trying to make them over are twofold. First, I'm broke. Second, I've done something to my left Achilles tendon and can't wear heels at the moment.

I've been wearing my other trainers - the ones I wear hiking and climbing.  They're okay, but they really don't go with skirts. A nice pair of 'converse' is exactly what I need. Except that mine currently look like this:

 I've had them for about five years, but haven't worn them in at least two. Why-ever not, I hear you ask. Did you look at the picture? My office job has a fairly flexible dress code, but there is no way I could get away with wearing these as they are. They are filthy bordering on thrashed!* In the state they are in, I'll never wear them, but I've moved twice with them so part of me clearly doesn't want to throw them out.

For this makeover you will need:


1 pair of dirty converse look-alikes
1 toothbrush
1 bottle of thick bleach
1 mug
1 facecloth you don't care too much about
2 permanent black markers
1 pair of shoelaces
** if your shoes are not black you will also need a permanent marker the same colour as your shoes.


So -first step. Get rid of the old laces. You can try to wash them, but honestly it's a waste of time. they don't really come clean. So toss 'em.


Second Step: Break out the cleansers. I tried several - flash and cif showed some progress, but it wasn't as fast as good old bleach. Pour a small amount of the bleach into the mug - less than 1cm deep. Dip the toothbrush in the bleach and start scrubbing!*

Be careful not to get any of the bleach on the fabric of the shoe. You will wind up with a few tiny spots; if you get the rubber really clean I guarantee it - just try to get as little as possible on them. 

Scrub in small circles. Wipe the foam that builds up away with a dry facecloth occasionally. Depending on how dirty the shoes are, the scrubbing may take only a few minutes or it could take 20. My shoes we at the latter end of the spectrum. Clean the toe caps first and work your way around the sides. 

That isn't a reflection from the flash - the side of the toe really is so clean you can't see the pattern! :)

Third step: Once the shoes are clean wash out the facecloth and use the wet cloth to give the shoes a wipe and make sure that all of the bleach is off. It doesn't hurt to repeat this step a few times to be absolutely sure. If you can see where you got bleach on the fabric, give those areas a few dabs with the wet cloth to rinse them. It is not necessary to soak the shoes though.

Fourth Step: Time to examine the damage. The fabric and the soles of the shoes are fine, but the rubber is cracked in a few places, especially where my toes bend along the edges of the toe cap. There is nothing you can do about this - not in this Makeover anyway. But you can do something about the surface appearance so that the other damage is less noticeable. 

My shoes have had most of the black markings worn away.  I debated using a gold marker to fill these in and giving them some individuality, but there was enough black along the sides that I decided to just stick with the original colour scheme. With a permanent marker start filling in the worn out areas.

The black line was totally worn away over the toe. I've filled half in again.

 
For the markings on the side, it might be a good idea to give yourself some guidelines. Draw the top and bottom of the line in and then just fill in the blank area.

Fifth Step: Once all of the black markings are drawn back on, set the shoes aside for 24 hours or so to make sure that they are really, really dry. I didn't leave enough time and had to scrub black marks off the toes again because I'd smudged everything. You also need to make sure that the fabric of the shoe has time to dry if you got it wet when cleaning off the bleach.


Sixth Step: When you are sure that the shoes are totally dry, check them over for any areas on the cloth part of the shoe that you might have bleached. Use the marker that is the same colour as the shoe to re-colour any bleached spots.

Finally, put in your nice new pair of laces.

Which one would you wear to work?

One thing to mention - I made sure that the marker I used will be rainproof by making a small mark on the side and trying to wash it off using just tap water. I needed to check three or four of the markers in the house before I found one that worked. If you live in an area known for the moisture content of the air, like oh, say London or Vancouver, you will want to do this as well. 

In addition, writing with marker on rubber can be difficult depending on the pen. It is useful to have a sheet of paper nearby to occasionally scribble the pen back to life. Using less pressure on the pen also helps.

And there you go: an old pair of shoes that look like a reasonably new pair of shoes. And all I bought was a new pair of laces. My tendons are already thanking me!

I admit that this was a bit of a cheat, but I'm trying to ease my way back into posting and this was a nice simple project that really needed to be done. I plan on making Makeover Monday a regular thing. If you have a suggestion or a request, drop a comment in one of the Monday posts and I'll see what I can do. 

*They only cost me £20 so I was never concerned enough about them to keep them nice. 


*I have to admit, this was my favourite part. And yes I do have spare toothbrushes just for things like scrubbing grout and shoes. Doesn't everyone? Why are you looking at me like that?

Friday Finds - FREAKY!

'Oh my god that's disgusting'

'It reminds me of sponge cake at school. It's great...oh it's okay.'

'Ergh! Water isn't supposed to smell like that.'

Yes. That does say Sparkling Water with a touch of CHRISTMAS PUD.

Trash Tuesday - Fallen by Lauren Kate

Taking a page from the Divine Ms Em and Stupidgirl, I'm going to theme some of my days in an effort to be more consistent with my blogging.

So: Trash Tuesday is born.

'What's Trash Tuesday?' I hear you ask.

On Trash Tuesday I'm going to post Book Reviews. But not just any book reviews. There will be no Booker or Orange prize winners here. I'm going to review mass- market brain-candy. Mostly Young Adult mass-market brain-candy because I plough through them like popcorn - and like popcorn one bite always makes me want MORE!

So, the first tome to be reviewed?

I'm going to go with Fallen by Lauren Kate, if only because I tripped over it so many times last week that I when someone asks me about the bruises on my legs I want to be able to shake my head and say 'blogging injury' in a knowing tone, perhaps with a sigh and one arched eyebrow.

No. Actually Fallen was ok- but wait! I have yet to introduce you to:

BROWNIAN MOTION

My patented* ranking system, named after the strange phenomenon that occurs when you read a book by Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown.*

Brownian Motion Ranking works like this: I read a book (with me so far?) and when I finish reading it I note down how I felt about it. From 'Wow! I'm gonna read it again RIGHT NOW!' through to 'Meh'. Then I wait 24 hours and think about how the book makes me feel. Is it still as great as it was yesterday? Or is it still pretty good, but maybe not so fantastic that I have the urge to carry copies around with me and give them out like the Watchtower.* I do the same on day three and so on until day seven when I complete the review.

So, with the method out of the way, here comes the madness.

Fallen actually has a Brownian Motion rating that dates back to long before I actually read the book. I saw saw it at Waterstones, liked the look of the dress on the cover and picked it up. As soon as I saw the word 'Angel' it went back on the shelf. I had absolutely NO intention of ever reading it.

But then I went on what can charitably be called a reading binge*. I picked over the choicest morsels first, not thinking that eventually I would be left with only tins of spam and noodle-coodle.

Fallen began to look like a possibility.

Finally, in the middle of December I caved and picked it up to complete a 3 for 2.

Lucinda (Luce) Price has been sent to a decaying southern reform school called Sword and Cross for something that gets hinted at, but not revealed, for a good chunk of the book. She doesn't come across as the type who gets sent to reform school, so you figure out pretty quickly that she was either framed, or the EVENT was pretty bad. While at Sword and Cross she meets Daniel, a gorgeous boy who (like all gorgeous boys in recent YA novels) spends half of his time treating her like crap and the other half acting like some kind of Romantic ideal all lip melting kisses and walks by moonlight. Oh yeah, also like every boy in recent YA, Daniel isn't what he appears to be. He's an Angel.

Cue the 'he loves me, he loves me not' melodrama and the 'our love is greater than time and space' hyperbole. So far so good on the 'Be-a-YA-Writer-in-Three-Easy-Steps' check-list.

Where Angels are involved, so are Demons and Luce and Daniel soon have something to occupy them other than laps in the schools pool (a converted church) and alternately avoiding each other and the bodies that start to turn up. Luce is in danger, Daniel wants to save her, not everyone is on the side you think yadda yadda yadda.

And it was good. I enjoyed reading it. The mystery about how Luce got sent off to reform school is pretty well handled, and though you kind of guess the what, you certainly don't guess the how. I'll be interested to see if the tiny seed that gets planted in that reveal comes back into play in the final book of the series.

I did mention at the beginning that this book has Angels in it, right? Okay - well then to try and stay semi-spoiler free I'll only say that some of the Angel characters are pretty bad-ass and others are just pretty bad.

That's actually my biggest complaint about it - my day three thought. Why weren't the two main characters as interesting as the supporting cast? As a wannabe writer, this really bothers me - mostly because I'm afraid that I do it too. (I'm trying really hard not to!) Luce suffers a lot from Bella syndrome - in many scenes she seems to exist solely for the other characters to demonstrate their awesomeness. In others she's better and you can begin to see that there might be something worth rooting for there, but it isn't enough to make me connect with her.* I get no sense that there might be a reason she is so flat - and Lauren Kate has the perfect reason, she just never seems to make use of it. I think that's really at the root of my feelings for it. There are some serious questions that I felt needed to be answered - just what are Angels doing in reform school anyway? And had I been given an answer - any answer to that question and the one above, I probably would have accepted it. For example, Luce had been sent off to Catholic/Protestant/Buddhist/Whatever boarding school for her transgressions, I would not even have questioned the presence of Angels. As it is, I did. Like the question of why Luce so often seems flat,my questions are something that 90% of the supporting cast could and in some cases, should comment on, but never do.

Fallen certainly isn't the best YA book I've read this year. But it certainly isn't the worst. Not by a long shot. Lauren Kate writes well. She writes most of her teenage (human) characters in a believable way and the humour dotted through the book doesn't feel forced. I enjoyed it while reading and my appreciation dropped only a little over the week. I'm willing to admit that the nit-picks listed above might only occur to someone who reads the book with the aim of reviewing it.

So, Brownian Motion Rating starts in the sub-basement on first contact, rises to indifference, reaches acceptance, peaks at enjoyment and then levels out back at acceptance one week after reading. It's an easy read and annoyances are often iced over for several chapters before reappearing. There are some really good characters - Arianne, Pen and Miss Sophia all deserve more than their allotted number of pages. But the two main characters often feel a bit flat and those nit-picky questions DO keep popping up. I'll probably read it again. As mentioned below, I have already finished the second book in the series and book three comes out this summer. Fallen gets 6.5 out of 10.

Next Trash Tuesday I'll review another YA novel : Maggie Steifvater's Lament. Faeries and Music and Magic. Oh my!

* It's very shiny.

*While reading a book by Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown (at least the first time you read one of his books or if you are perhaps, on a beach holiday and spending a large percentage of each day slightly drunk) most people really enjoy it. You read the book and you think, 'Wow, this is great. This story is fantastic. I can't wait to find out what happens next.' You give yourself paper-cuts you turn the pages so fast. You ignore family friends and personal hygiene. The book is that good.

The day after you finish a Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown book, you sit around in a happy glow. The book was really good. You can't quite stop thinking about it.

On day three you think, yeah. That was good. I enjoyed that, but I'm not actually sure the story made that much sense. What was the point in making the Evil Monk an Albino? And why is everyone introduced with both their name and profession?

By day five plot holes and the overuse of adjectives are seriously beginning to bother you.

By day seven you think that if no one ever finds out that you read a book by Best-Selling-Author-Dan-Brown, all the better.

*There is actually a book that makes me feel like this. I have purchased multiple copies specifically to give to people as un-birthday presents.

*I worked my way through the 3 for 2 offers with the same single minded focus I usually reserve for a box of peanut butter daisies. I was reading three or four books a week, EVERY WEEK. In the month of September alone I spent over £300 on books.

*Okay SPOILER I've also read the second book and I'm now thinking that this is either intentional or else Kate has become a much better writer really quickly. Luce has fewer wallpaper scenes and more spine in book two. She's a definite work in progress. If she ends up somewhere 'real' I'll forgive her characterisation in Fallen and revise the rating accordingly. Until then, I'm annoyed.