Sweetie has been doing a small kitchen remodel. He’s taking out the L-shaped wall that separates the kitchen from the living area and replacing it with an island. I joke that the only way he can get rid of the yellow walls (which he truly hates, BTW) is to tear them down. But, half of the kitchen walls are still intact. Haha!

The studs on the left are now gone. My father has the plywood and is building the island’s shell, as I type this. Once we get the shell in – probably next week sometime – we will face it with some blue and buggy that was salvaged from James’ grandparent’s house when it burned down. We are going to use the classic white-and-gray marble floor tiles for the top. And the countertop’s trim will be cobalt-blue ceramic.

After the island is in, we’ll update the floor with vinyl tile. We already bought some for the project, but now I’m rethinking the pattern. We may end up going with something else and using the tiles that we’ve purchased elsewhere.

I still haven’t done the second coat of white paint on everything (or the first coat on the drawers). I should probably get on that…

On the crafting side of things…

I’ve been kind of obsessed with cowls, lately. They are great projects for me… They work up quickly (great for one such as myself who has startitis). They are quite useful in our area. And they don’t use a whole lot of yarn.

This was fun to make. I like the front-post stitches. I used Cotton-Ease yarn, which is a mixture of cotton and acrylic. It’s my new favorite yarn. I made simple one out of this yarn for sweetie, but I didn’t take pictures. The pattern for this cowl can be found here. This cowl turned out a bit too long for my taste. It wasn’t long enough to wrap twice and it was too long to do much good. I ended up giving it to my niece.

This was just a simple granny stripes cowl using Red Heart Earth and Sky yarn. No pattern involved. I really like it, but unfortunately I have to pull it on over my head. Since I usually wear my hair up, this can be a bit of an issue. I made one of these in the Red Heart Pink Camo colorway, but it wasn’t tall enough. I gave it to my niece, too.

I found the pattern for this button-up cowl to wear when my hair is up and I don’t want to pull something over my head. It’s really cute, but I need to move the buttons; they are too close to the edge and as such gaps are created.

I’ve also made a couple of doilies in the last couple of days:

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As you can see, I made this one from yarn rather than thread. It is called Octoberfest and the pattern can be found here. I’ve never done a spiral like this before and it was fun to watch it materialize.

I stayed up late last night and made this one for sweetie. I chose it for the cute little hearts. He much prefers doilies made from thread. He’s pretty much the only person for whom I will crochet with thread. I very much prefer tatting with thread rather than crocheting with it. This pattern can be found here.

Still in the works are the kitchen curtains. A few weeks ago I had a very frustrating experience with them and have walked away. Now that there’s no wall to hide the kitchen, I get a daily reminder of how unattractive bath towels hanging over the windows are.

And here are some gratuitous critter pictures: