Travis has been hard at work staining some unfinished wood furniture we bought at least *coughcough* months ago - he's working on the enormous dresser now, and we have determined that unfinished wood furniture is Not. Worth. It. ('Cuz it turns out that "all you have to do is stain it!" translates to "all you have to do is sand it, pre-treat it, apply two or three coats of stain to it, polyurethane it, sand it lightly, and polyurethane it again!")
But they ARE turning out beautifully:
(Which you're just going to have to trust me on, since I can't take a decent photo.)
And it'll look beautiful with our NEW DINING ROOM SET! We picked up a gorgeous table, six chairs, and buffet server on Sunday. The table and chairs were a mad deal because they were floor sample (a little Murphy's Oil should take care of that.) I'm so thrilled - we've lived together for about 18 months, and been in this house for a year, and we've been eating off plates perched on our laps on the sofa for alllll that time. (I am so excruciatingly picky about dining room sets, and I hate spending that kind of money so I'm reeeeally slow to commit - but I have finally had enough and want a place to EAT!)
Oh, wait, back to that little end table. We found the neatest little drawer pulls at Anthropologie.
I'm not sure if they actually are flowers, but they look like roses or carnations in resin. I love them. And since this table only needed two, we splurged a bit. I don't think the dresser, with its twelve knobs, will be blessed with six-dollar drawer pulls.
Now all he has to do is finish the dresser and then it's just a chest, a side table, and two nightstands. Hurray! It's starting to look like a real home! And it only took us a year! (I acknowledge that it would help if I did something besides sit around and knit all the time.)
Bellocq progress update:
There are three 36-row pattern repeats for the (ingenious!) calf shaping, and I'm 12 rows into the second repeat. It doesn't look particularly tall yet. But it's getting there. I would be much further along, perhaps into the thigh shaping already, if I hadn't screwed up something (I still haven't figured out what or where) in the shaping. So yeah - Aimee, thank you so much for being worried for me, but unfortunately, I have to confess that no, I wasn't joking. (Oh, how I wish I was.) I ended up having to rip back to the lifeline, about 24 rows down. I did try ripping back to just a few rows down, and then to a few rows down below that, but .... what a mess.
And yes, you should place the lifeline every 12 rows at the most. Don't ask me why I didn't. It's too painful. Okay, it was something about how long it takes to thread the lifeline through. (Yes, I see the irony now.)
Since it doesn't look very tall all there by itself, here it is with one of my Embossed Leaves socks for scale:
Eh, I'm not sure it looks all that tall with it, either, but hey, isn't that Embossed Leaves sock (Embossed Leaf?) pretty? Yeah, still haven't worn them. They're just too pretty to put on feet. I'm concerned I'll also feel that way about the Bellocq when I'm finished and end up wearing them on my arms or something.
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