Now that the nicer weather is here, I hate using the dryer and would much rather hang my clothes out to dry. There’s nothing better than the smell of line-dried clothing or linens. There isn’t really a suitable place for a clothesline in my garden and so I use a clotheshorse from Target instead. If I can find a spot for it, I will add a retractable clothesline (also from Target) to my life as well…

Of course, I like to overthink things and, as I was hanging my clothes out yesterday, I started wondering about line-drying clothes vs. drying them in a clothes dryer. I never see clotheslines in people’s yards but I can’t be the only one that likes to line-dry laundry, can I?

A little googling assured me that I’m not. LaundryList.org is an advocacy group promoting the use of clotheslines. For those a little less politically-minded, the BBC website has online tips for maximising your line-drying experience; I wish they’d included a photo of their towel hanging technique. That is the main complaint I hear around the house about my spring and summer laundry habits…the towels aren’t soft enough.

And for those with an artistic bent, there are many shows, installations, and pieces celebrating this most mundane of household tasks.

It’s no secret that lifestyle trends follow the economy. In times of plenty, we see new! and exciting! designs and crazy-ass food creations. Similarly, when the economy slows down, we see a resurgence of old-style “comfort” items, both for the home and for the table.

I can only guess that is why I’m seeing chenille just about everywhere. So far it’s been mostly vintage bedspreads hitting the design blogs around the world. Can it be long before textile designers start rethinking chenille-based designs and putting a new spin on them?

I sure hope not!

Vintage Chenille Bedspread from Cat Nap Cottage on Etsy, found via How About Orange.

One of my favourite travel rituals is packing my “trip bag”.

What goes in a “trip bag”? Well, anything you think you might need on the road! This road trip is relatively short as far as drive-time is concerned so I didn’t bother packing some longer trip essentials like my well-worn copy of The Next Exit or my Motel 6 booklet (hey, when you’re travelling with dogs, you stay where they let you!). Trip bag contents for overseas trips usually include language dictionaries, airport maps, and vital phone numbers. What I did make sure made it into the bag this time around were directions to the wonderful Valley River Inn, the latest issue of Dwell, the new DWR catalogue, and my cell phone charger.

A dear friend gave me my current trip bag, a Hound in the Round tote bag from the William Wegman Collection for Crypton Fabrics:

It’s roomy enough for all my bits of collected flotsam and it’s made of virtually indestructible fabric.

Crypton Fabric has really expanded their consumer product line in the last few years, now offering kids’ furniture along with their bags and pet beds. I’m currently torn between the Wegman Pet Twin Bed and the Outdoor Pet Bed. If only those dot.com days were back again…

Crypton Fabrics’ Website

If one is a happening and two is a coincidence, does three make a trend? I couldn’t help but notice the sudden appearance of everyday items in white ceramic.

It started out in January with CB2’s white milk carton vase:

Earlier this week, Alyssa Ettinger’s white ceramic repros of vintage milk bottles made the rounds of more than a couple of design blogs:

And then today there was DCI’s porcelain “I Am Not a Paper Cup” cup, available from A + R:

Trend or no, I love them all!

A trip to my mailbox told me that Caroline Coile’s article on the whippet myostatin mutation for Dog World Magazine has hit the streets. Finally, an article has been written about the process of identifying the mutation and then getting a test developed for it rather than the usual “oh those horrible people who must have genetically engineered this in their dogs” (as if we’re all backyard geneticists!).

Kudos to Caroline for a great article!

It’s not too often that I will spend money on anything (yes, I’m horribly cheap) but recently I splurged and bought myself a real treat…a beautiful Madagascar vase from Bauer Pottery (in Bauer Orange yet!).

The original Bauer was one of the first American potteries (if not the first) to use those wonderful bright and cheery colours (you know, the ones that Fiestaware made famous). That Bauer Pottery was closed in the 1960s but, luckily for us, a new ceramic studio took up the torch and started creating Bauer 2000 pottery (thus named to distinguish it from the vintage pottery).

My new treasure sits next to my bed filled with some tissue paper blossoms I made just for it and every time I look at it, it makes me smile.

Bauer Pottery

With Rogie’s big show debut fast approaching, I reckoned I’d better do something about his show lead…it was too big.

We started out with a fairly plain martingale show lead made of polyester cording. The length that would go around the dog’s neck was just an inch or so too long for Rogie’s neck. I reckoned that section needed to be shortened or the lead needed to be reconfigured.

First on my list of things to do was to inspect the lead and see how it was constructed. The metal rings and the metal slider band were all contiguous with no seams. That meant if I was going to take the lead apart, I’d need to cut the cording rather than open any rings or bands. The lead-side loop of the martingale was also very long.

My first step then was to cut the lead-side loop as far from the neckpiece as possible. I melted the freshly cut end with a match and, after repositioning one of the rings close to the end, I sewed a small loop using heavy-duty upholstery thread to hold the ring. What was formerly the martingale slider band now became a decorative accent to hide the newly sewn loop.

I’d just made a choke collar lead out of my martingale.

Now instead of being too big, the lead was too small and didn’t fit comfortably over Rogie’s head. So I needed to figure out a way to extend the choke part of the lead.

Thank god I’m a pack rat as I found a tin of wooden beads given to the Spawn ten or so years ago. Using needle-nosed pliers, I removed five wooden beads from a partial necklace in the bead tin and connected them to each other. Next up was to insert them in the choke collar.

I cut the choke collar close to the loose ring and burnt the ends of the cording with a match. A filigree bead thingie was sewn onto each end and then, using the pliers, it was compressed around the cording end. With it securely fastened, all that remained was to sew the bead chain to both ends of the cording.

Like this…

And it fits beautifully!

After last week’s brief foray into paper cutting, yesterday saw me finally getting back to stationery and working on another design — this time for thank you cards. A combination of low-tech (you can’t get a whole lot lower tech than Gocco!) and high tech (QR codes rock!) really appealed to my sense of irony.

Not quite so ironic was the nasty folding job done on the cards used. Very disappointing as I thought I’d found a more local source for cards. Around half of the cards were folded all wonky so I decided to shorten the run and put them all on sale.

When I get back from Oregon, I’ll run some more of these lovelies (and this time the fold will be perfect because I won’t be using Strathmore cards again, will I!).