Sunday 6 October 2013

The creativity of crocheting can extend into many mediums!

Howdy! Long time... no crochet? Terrible joke.

It's been a while since my previous post, but I promise to make it a good one! The summer has come and gone, and my time has mostly been spent saying goodbye to lots of new friends I'd made in the last year on my placement, and saying hello and catching up to some old acquaintances as I make my return to University.

And its my FINAL YEAR.

As you would expect, such pressuring circumstances come with major distractions! Actually on this occasion it hasn't been crocheting - and that is what is different about this post!

Moving into student housing holds many stigmas including - everything smells, and the white walls look a little bit brown, and what is that stain in the toilet? - and this house was certainly no different. In fact, everything just seemed to be sticky and this led to me constantly shouting "why?!" (Noone has yet given me answers but I have theories!).

So I've had a bit of time to settle in - and one of the things that has helped me with this is a small - distraction - project to uplift the house a bit!

One of the van full of things I brought with me was an old bookcase! Being a pro at the ol' student thing, one of the other downfalls of student housing is the severe lack of storage. The bookcase used to belong in the office at home, naturally with refurbishments this one became void. So I took it! Initially I was just happy with the storage, but then thought how interesting it would be to try some DIY creativity with it!

This spent many trips to a low cost branded paint shop and buying little taster pots! Whenever there were 5 minutes spare I would gradually paint this bookcase. Very therapeutic! But also.. I have no idea about anything to do with painting and learnt a lot in the process, like:

  • Sticky tape is required for nice straight edges
  • If you get paint on the glass... its ok, you've just found out it scratches off later!
  • But don't get paint on the floor - because this floor does not belong to you.


Learning all of these things were crucial, but its all in the name of FUN.

In addition to this (because you thought the excitement ended there) I decided to wallpaper! Painting, although not formally tried I had intelligent guesses on how it worked - but wallpaper I had not a clue.
But I also learnt lots more of DIY like:
  • There is such thing as too much paste
  • If you haven't got the right tools, a wooden spoon and a kitchen knife just won't cut it (literally).
  • It can be great entertainment to fellow inhabitants.


And voila! A new funky upbeat bookcase! 
Envy of all the students houses!