Weaving progress

I took a day off recently and had a lovely day at home. I've been listening to the book Slumdog Millionaire was based on (audiobook) while I weave and cuddle cats. It's been fantastic. A perfect quiet day at home to recharge.

I've made some progress on the weaving and am quite pleased with the pattern. That's the thing about weaving - you never really know how it's going to look until you're right in the thick of it. I find that very challenging. It requires you to commit without really knowing if you'll like it! In this case, it all worked out okay, in other cases I've ended with products that I wasn't so excited about (but others loved, so they found happy homes). Weaving is about learning to move forward even in the face of uncertainty.... I skill I could use practice at for sure.

Here's hoping I have enough yarn on my spool to finish!

Chainmaille complete

I just realized I haven't posted pictures of my finished byzantine chain necklace! I can't get over how fast that project was - I remember the first time I did chainmaille, it seemed so hard and confusing..... now I find it easy, not sure why. Anyway, I'm very pleased with it! And I had enough rings left over to make a bracelet too. (click to see bigger)

Weaving!

There is weaving in progress again, finally!

This is my first weaving project that actually takes advantage of all 4 shafts of my loom and had a complicated threading pattern. So far everything is going okay.... it's taking me a while to select a weft yarn that I like - I've decided to go monochrome and use the warp thread for the weft. I feel the diamond pattern is quite busy and having it in contrasting colours is too much for me.

Now that I've actually made that decision - this will probably go pretty fast!

Cats in Plain Sight

One of the things that has always bugged me about living in a small apartment has been the lack of out-of-the-way places for the litter box. We're pretty good about emptying it very frequently so we don't have to smell anything, but still, seeing it in our living space is.... weird.

I've seen a few good Ikea hacks where people have successfully hidden their litter boxes (examples here), so I've been working on my own for a while. Our cats are very upright-facilitators, so we needed some piece of furniture that was quite tall, and the only space in the apartment that was available was the narrow area behind the front door, so it took a while to find the right bit of furniture for the job, but I think we did! It's actually a drawer unit from Ikea, designed to hold your PC. Fits perfectly behind our door and I found a plastic tub that slides in. The glossy white finish matches our decor (as much as we have decor right now), so I'm very pleased. Just debating on whether or not to fuss with hanging a fabric curtain or some other cover over the entrance or not. Thoughts?

Entryway before and after (please note that the tidy 'after' photo is totally staged, I expect this area to be total chaos within a day):