Swoonish.

Guest Room Progress: Colors!

If you recall, the mattress and bed frame for the guest room project have been purchased and/or selected. The mattress has actually already arrived (I love you, Overstock!), and the new date to pick up the bed frame from IKEA is this coming weekend (yay as-is section!). Crossing all appendages.

The only thing I can't get around is the pine of the frame; there's just no room for bare pine in our design plans. I'm typically a fan of the natural wood look, but because we won't be making any changes to the room itself, just what's going into it, we want to interject color via the bed.

Last week we took a trip to Target to peruse bed linens, review the current color trends, and feel up on the different thread counts. I'm very fond of clean designs that use a lot of white, but also take care to strategically place pops of color throughout. Seeing as we have two animals who've been blessed with dark fur, one of whom will most certainly sneak onto the bed every change he gets, white is absolutely not the best choice. I do not, however, claim to experience rational thinking at all.

Standing there in the linen aisle, I couldn't move beyond desparately wanting white linens. It's such a clean base to build up from and is the perfect contrasting color to so many others. Caryn, however, was holding up a cream-colored set for my opinion. I may have experienced an internal tantrum because I'm super grown-up and always compromise (ha!). She knows me well enough that I'm sure she sensed the hissy fit going on inside my head, so relented and into the cart went the white linen set (YAY). We'll deal with the animal hair in other ways, I guess, or we'll curse a lot and blame the other one for the poor decision-making.

We also happened to fall in love with a dove gray color while looking around. When we held the gray up to a nearby turquoise, the combination created some serious happiness inside. We kept and purchased the white set, but the gray is definitely going to find its way into the linens or decorating somehow.

Keeping in mind the white linens, we have agreed to paint the frame bright turquoise. Great thing about painting wood? You can always sand and paint again, or paint right over it, if you want to freshen the design up at a later point.

Here's the problem, though: what color(s) do we pick to accent the white and turquoise? I'm leaning toward a dove gray with a few pops of red. That could change later on. (I can sometimes be a fickle creature.)

In research mode again, Caryn found some patterns at Urban Outfitters that we think could work:

  

Can you imagine pops of red against those?

Other options would be:

• to crochet a full/queen blanket using a fingering/sock weight yarn; or
• buy a solid-colored coverlet, then crochet a throw for the foot of the bed.

Honestly, there are too many options(!) and potentially a lot of work for me. The blanket/coverlet issue is going to be the most difficult to settle on, I imagine.

Guest Room Progress: Mattress and Frame

I previously mentioned that we began moving forward with plans for the guest room rather quickly. It was only a few moments after we agreed that, yes, we were (a) crazy, and (b) totally going through with it, that we sat down in front of the laptop, researched mattresses, and made our first purchase for the project.

We knew we wanted to go with a memory foam mattress, particularly since our own mattress is a 10" Bodipedic with a 4lb density, and is easily one of the best purchases we've ever made. For the guest room, however, we chose an 8" memory foam mattress by Serta, purchased via Overstock (love).

Side note: my mother, who has a steel cage and screws in her back to support deteriorated discs, tries to visit in order to sneak a nap on our bed while I'm working, so that's a testament to its awesome powers.

I'm not sure why we didn't think to purchase a similar mattress for a guest bed before. Perhaps it was a subconscious choice not to make guests too comfortable? It's fair to say that we've probably screwed ourselves with that purchase, and, since the money has already been spent, it's a choice we'll have to live with. 

Here's a fun fact about my dear Caryn: she loves research. Even if she didn't, I doubt she could help herself. Because of that, I left her the task to find a bed frame that made the most sense for both us and the space. Without fail, she found an affordable frame via IKEA, which happens to be both simplistic and nice in its original state. What we like about the bed frame is that it allows for a wide variety of changes and improvements due to its clean lines and low price.

If you search IKEA Hackers, many people have purchased the same bed frame and their end products have been amazing:

 
_{Left: Heart Tree Home; Right: Manhattan Nest}

Look at that upholstery! I don't think we'll be doing any upholstering of the bed. If we do, maybe just the inset sections? The only thing I know right now is that I'm getting anxious for everything to begin arriving.

Update: Caryn and I are actually driving the hour and a half to the nearest IKEA tomorrow in order to pick up the bed frame (and maybe other little goodies?). How could we possibly turn down the opportunity to spend time inside that store?

Don't freak; just design a guest room before September

We have a friend coming to see us in September for a weekend of hanging out and being awesome. The problem is that our "guest room" is currently being occupied by us. Long story short: master bathroom flooded out into the master bedroom and walk-in closet, leaving us to have all furnishings piled up in the living room, with our mattress on the floor of the spare/guest room. The property management company is taking their sweet time (it's been 2 months since I woke up and stepped down into the pond that was our room), but we hope it will all be tiled and carpeted within the next couple of weeks.

To keep ourselves distracted from the fuckery (hey, the cursing has begun!), we got to thinking about what we were going to do regarding the sleeping arrangements for our guest. We don't have plans to remain in our current house for much longer--maybe 6 months or so(?)--which means it's a little crazy for us to think about bed linens, color choices, and furniture. In reality, those are all things we'll have to pack and move when it comes time to leave. What are we doing to ourselves?

The problem is definitely one of our own making, but since neither of us are overly fond of offering guests the couch, we agreed to move forward with setting up a proper guest room. Seeing as we'll need all of the same things in our next home, we're generally okay with excusing the temporary insanity.

The basic necessities (mattress, bed frame), which I'll discuss at a later time, were, or will be, purchased right away. I think we acted as quickly (read: impulsively) as we did so we wouldn't talk ourselves out of it, then feel guilty when our friend had to make due with only a couch that they may not find comfortable. Whatever the reason behind the rush, I'm excited to have a project to focus on for a while.

_{Left: "Pond dreams" via Envelop; Right: "Fox boy with singing birds" via Envelop.}

Pillows above are some recent color inspiration that I'm really enjoying the simple act of looking at.

The next steps, though, involve what the pillows above represent--making a whole lot of much harder decisions. For example: what color palette do we want to go with; do we purchase a blanket/coverlet or do I crochet one; and how can we make the most of the space without doing too much work for a house we won't be staying in for much longer?

Abalina: Luxury & Style with the Key-hole Scarf

I've always been a fan of Tunisian crochet. Abalina, shown above, perfectly illustrates why such fanage (fan-age? lots of fanning? Me Big Fan) exists. The honeycomb texture is set off beautifully by the yarn, which is in shades of gold and creamy yellow, while the decrease into the simulated ribbing helps secure it in a stylish criss-cross construction.

Perfect when left to hang loose, or tucked into a jacket, it's never too early to pamper yourself. That's how I felt when I worked the prototype up in a Merino, Cashmere, and Nylon blend. It's a total hug; almost better than snuggling a puppy. Almost. Puppies rock.

You can pick one up here--a pattern for Abalina, I mean. I'm not giving out free puppies willy-nilly.

Yarnography's Final Shipment Contents

I'm fondly remembering the last installment of the Yarnography yarn and photo club I ran under The Yarn Side. It was a really fun club, with a great group of customers who all enjoyed the treats they received.

The final installment, shown above, was made up of two skeins of yarn, a small fiber batt, two sets of stitch markers, a professionally printed photograph from Caryn Drexl, and then 4 gorgeous art prints from the "Heartaches and Poetry" that came from the Best Art Studios Etsy shop.

You can see other installments from Yarnography here.

I should really do another project like Yarnography again.