Monthly Archives: January 2017

Floor Cushions

Lloyd and I both like sitting on the floor so when we needed some extra seating for a party, we decided to make floor cushions. First, I ordered some 4″ upholstery padding, some black cordura, and 7.5 feet of upholstery zippers. Once they arrived, I pinned up a mock-up of the cover. I wanted to sew the covers from two folded rectangles with a zipper on the small side, but encountered a problem: the padding would not slide across the fabric. I tried both sides of the cordura, including the slick side, and no sliding. So the padding would have to be placed in the cover and then zipped in place.

A quick redesign later, and I had this:

Fold along the dashed lines. Sew numbered sides to the corresponding number and attach the zippers to the dotted sides.

Fold along the dashed lines. Sew numbered sides to the corresponding number and attach the zipper to the dotted sides.

A pinned together mock-up worked well and looked great so I sewed it all together.

These are really comfortable!

So far I’ve only made two of the floor cushions. We have the padding for two more, but I ran out of zipper. Each cushion needs about 84″ of zipper! The plan is to cover the last two cushions in upholstery fabric, so I’m holding off until I find a good fabric store here. In the meantime, our two floor cushions are getting a lot of use!

Soos Creek Trail

By us there is a nice little walking path along the Soos Creek where we have gone for a couple of pleasant walks. It’s nothing fancy, just a really nice place to go and wander around outside. It is always good to find an outdoor retreat just by your house to go wander around in, and now that we have lived in Renton for a while, we are beginning to find them.

The path is pretty much entirely paved which is nice for the wet winter, but detract a bit from the rustic feel.

The path is pretty much entirely paved which is nice for the wet winter, but detracts a bit from the rustic feel.

Even has some concrete bridges.

And poor ducks standing on top of a frozen pond.

Point Defiance

We decided to buck our usual north and east traveling and go to the southwest and Tacoma. First things first – Tacoma seems really nice! I always imagined it as the slightly grimier industrial neighbor to Seattle, but I was pleasantly surprised. Now, granted, we only wandered around one section for a day but, still, the takeaway is Tacoma has some niceness.

Most of the trip was a hike around Point Defiance, a park jutting out into the Sound. We decided to go for a walk around the outside of the park and walk mostly foreshore. We were very happy with our choice. It was extremely scenic and it has been a while since I have had as hard a time choosing only five pictures for the blog post. The only “downside” was that there was some technical rocky beach walking. Also, if you timed the tides wrong you could get stuck in some sections for a couple of hours, but we are used to this by now.

So expect to see more from Tacoma on the blog in the future!

The path started by the zoo and was quite wooded. There were a number of crisscrossing paths similar to this in the park.

Abundant wildlife at the point. A pod of seals was just off the beach. I think we say a round two dozen.

Abundant wildlife at the point. A colony of seals was just off the beach. I think we say a round two dozen.

And we have to share any navigational aids we find with a larger audience.

And an obsictical course of trees awaited us at the beach, guarded by an unkindness of ravens (not pictured above). Also a group of ravens should be a mockery not an unkindness.

An obstacle course of trees awaited us at the beach, guarded by an unkindness of ravens (not pictured above). Also, a group of ravens should be a mockery not an unkindness.

And a tricky rocky section of the beach hike. (excessive slippery rock not pictured above.)

A tricky rocky section of the beach hike (Excessively slippery rock not pictured above.).

New House in Renton

After many comments about the new house in Renton, I was reminded that we never put up any pictures on the blog. Jasmine and I are super excited to have a house and we are enjoying being home owners so far. This being said, we still have a fair bit of work to do to get the house up to our standards – but we are at least starting for a reasonable base.

American Romanticism

Fireplace + couch + windows = best room in the house

We have a library again! Jasmine has it half set up and I have the parts on order for her to finish next week.

PLUS WE GET WINTER HERE!!! And a dozen fruit trees to boot.

Crochet Phone Case V2

I got a new phone a couple of months ago and needed to make a new phone case for it. This time, I went with a slightly different design with more fillet crochet. This meant that I didn’t have a separate pouch for my cards but, since I can put them in with my phone, this hasn’t really affected functionality.

I also made this phone case in two parts; both were large rectangles that I sewed along the edges to make a bag and a wristlet strap as described below. I was pretty happy with how this one turned out and have used it whenever I don’t want to carry a whole purse.

This rectangle became the case. I folded it over with about 1.5 inches left at the top and sewed the side seams. The excess at the top was then folded over the opening and sewn in place to make sure the phone can’t fall out by accident.

The wristlet strap was even simpler. I just sewed both ends to one side of the bag.

And the finished product.

Cougar Mountain Waterfalls

In the same Issaquah Alps range as the previous hike on Tiger Mountain, this weekend we went on a hike on Cougar Mountain. As there are a ton of trails that go through the park, it was a bit hard to determine the route we were going to take. On close examination of the map, there were three waterfalls in the park so we just made a loop trail that hit all of them and called it good.

It was a delightful hike though an inch or two of snow on a partly cloudy day. Or, rather, part of the day was all grey clouds, part of the day was all sunshine. For a winter hike, it was as nice as you could hope for: cold but not windy, and the ground was cold enough that our feet stayed dry. The waterfalls were all quite pretty, each in their own slightly different way. I don’t know if it’s the cascading streams or the cedar forests that I like so much, but I certainly would rather hike around the Northwest than pretty much anywhere else.