A while ago I came across a post on Pinterest that showed how to add some color to your kitchen, through painting the handle of wooden spoons. The instructions weren’t very detailed, but the whole procedure was pretty self-explanatory, so I decided to give it a go. The color used in the example from the post was just regular acrylic color, though that’s not entirely true because the post was referring to some very fancy shades of blue and green of Martha Steward’s extraordinary arts & crafts product line… I chose to give my inexpensive no-name colors in primary shades a chance.
Here’s how I did it:
I wrapped tape around the handle of the spoons and tried to create even edges (not that easy with wooden spoons that come with some irregularities)
Afterwards I applied a first layer of color using a foam brush and a regular brush (to reach into the drilled holes on the handle. Because of the hot temperatures thanks to the ambitious New England summer the first layer dried very quickly so that I could apply a second layer to all the spoons right away. For the darker colors that was sufficient, but the yellow and bright blue needed some more layers.
According to the original post that should have been it, spoons ready for use, but I had the suspicion that the color would not be very durable, given the frequent cooking sessions in our home 😉 I also noticed that the colored handles already had some chipped parts, just by being placed on the table and by moving them around a bit.
With all that in mind I decided to apply a layer of all purpose finish, hypoallergenic and non-toxic (at least that’s what they say…). For that I covered the body of the spoon in a plastic bag so that the finish would only go on the handle. That worked pretty well and it dried very quickly, too. I couldn’t wait to remove the tape and see the results of my work. Here and there the color found its way through the rills of the wood, and on one or two spoons I did not succeed with creating an even edge with the tape, but all in all the result was pretty good. But take a look yourself and get some inspiration for your own wooden spoons! I saw other color options with ombre colors or polka dots, but for the first try I thought it would be best to keep it simple.

This post is somewhat off topic, but nonetheless important to me. Dietrich Strause is a great local musician and his last two albums are the proof that he is capable of crafting wonderful music 😉 For his third album he needs the help of his fans: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/926051333/dietrich-strause-making-a-new-album

I’m excited to announce that the Foolish Owl is going to participate in this year’s Cambridge Open Studios! The coming weekend, May 11 & 12, artists of North and West Cambridge will open their studios to the public to show their work.

After weeks and weeks of preparations and work, just four days are left for the last arrangements! Price tags are printed, business carts are waiting to move into people’s pockets, flyers want to be distributed and snacks to be munched 😉

For Easter we received a package from Germany that, among other things, contained Easter egg decoration kits. My mother-in-law must have thought we (not the ‘Royal We’ but husband and me) would want to color Easter eggs for a whole elementary school because all in all there were at least four different packages 😉 In addition we bought one coloring kit at a CVS store and we also had leftovers from last year… Time to get started! We decided to go with some of the egg sleeves first. You have to put a sleeve around the hard-boiled egg and dip it into boiling water for three seconds. The foil of the sleeve basically shrinks so that it fits the shape of the egg. That’s it! The motives of these eggs are taken from an old children’s comic that used to be very popular in East Germany and other Eastern European countries, and for a few years there seems to be some kind of  a revival of the comic and its figures going on.

The next coloring experiment was no experiment at all (we didn’t want to spend all Easter with egg coloring!) since we used plain old Easter egg colors where you have to add hot water to the color and then dip the eggs into the color. These colors also came from Germany and they already were liquid, but you had to add a certain amount of water nonetheless. I am not sure what the idea of the liquid color is if you still have to add water, I’m assuming it has something to do with the brightness of the colors. But then again I couldn’t see any difference in the brightness when I compared this year’s results with last year’s… However, if you manage to open the color containers mess-free using scissors, you’re almost there.

The third package claimed to be ‘super-easy’ and ‘glamorous’. You were promised colorful glitter eggs in just a few steps. Well, not that I would know! We opened the package and started reading… and we read and read and read until we realized that we were still reading the instructions! And these instructions involved putting on gloves, and cleaning those gloves before applying another color… I swear that by reading the instructions we estimated the time needed for coloring ONE egg to be somewhere between half an hour and eons… So much for that. Maybe next year…

Last package we wanted to try was the CVS package. It caught my attention because it promised colorful eggs with a golden glow. I should have known that this is not an easy goal… At least the manual wasn’t that voluminous. Since we didn’t have many eggs left we decided to use some of the already colored eggs and just try to apply the ‘golden glow’. I can tell you the golden glow was not star dust. It was more a liquid than color you could apply, and you were supposed to use a paint brush. I covered the first egg in multiple layers of gold, but every time I finished a layer I noticed a new spot that wasn’t covered proberly. The egg turned out to be very spotted. I don’t really know why it took me the disappointment of another egg-paint-brush-round to realize that there is a much more effective way to achieve much better results. Next thing I did was clutching a paper towel and dipping it into the golden color. Then I kind of ‘stamped’ the color on the egg, creating that pretty metallic effect. I was quite satisfied with the result and I couldn’t really say which background color I liked best. The gold looked very pretty and almost ancient on the dark blue but it also looked kind of sweet and romantic on the yellow and pink. What a pity that I wasted two eggs with the paint brush…

This is the first winter hat I made, together with a triangle scarf that I created the pattern for.

The ‘pattern’ is really easy, so easy that I’m having trouble calling it a ‘pattern’ at all. You basically have to crochet two triangles:

– start with a chain, crochet in rows and miss a stitch at the end of the row, but just on one side of your work so you have an orthogonal triangle

– afterwards you just sew/crochet the shortest sides of the two triangles together

– afterwards you can add tassles and/or pompons to the corners so that they don’t undulate

The pattern for the hat was a free pattern from Michael’s, and it was rather difficult since it included crocheting clusters which I wasn’t familiar with. But it turned out very well and I added a bow to it that you can take off or put somewhere else.