The yarn is some kind of cabled cotton from Elann, which was extremely cheap. It's also washable and heavy enough to give the bolero some weight in aggressively air-conditioned summertime buildings. The finished project is probably bigger than it should be, but this also might be because it stretched out in storage.

After some internet research, it seemed like a magnetic system would be the best for us: no matter how small our future kitchens, they will always have a refrigerator. And lots of people have embarked upon this project before. This article from the Washington Post has the right idea (though involves the extra steps of making a mount), and this Craftster thread is also really helpful. Here are another two posts about a similar system to our own, and Spice Rack 2.0 was useful as well.

I ended up buying 48 70mm glass-fronted aluminum watchmaker's cases from Lee Valley, and 48 3/8" x 1/10" rare-earth magnets from the same. These magnetic storage tins look really neat, but were out of stock at the time that I did the project -- boo. And they're much more expensive elsewhere. On the plus side, the rare earth magnets that we bought do a great job of keeping the containers firmly on our fridge. Most of the time spent on this project involved waiting for the Gorilla Glue that we used to fix the magnet to each case to dry, and then waiting for all of the moisture to evaporate from the tins after I gave them all a good washing. Instead of affixing the tins with a sticker of some sort to identify their contents, I used a sheet of magnetic inkjet paper to print out the names of our spices (plus a few others that we frequently use, but happened to be out of.)

Here's the finished product. So far, it seems to be working out quite well -- for one thing, the 70mm tins are easy to scoop out of, and it's simple to tell what we need to restock. I still have my eye on the other Kamenstein containers, but the watchmaker's cases have a decent seal on them. Two of the magnets broke off our tins during washing, but if that becomes a problem I'll just order some more rare earth magnets and stick them on the inside of the spice tins. And while light in the kitchen will no doubt age the spices faster, we can always put smaller amounts in the tins if necessary; besides, our old setup consisted of clear glass- and plastic-jarred spices immediately below a light, so I'm not convinced that it's any worse. We have the extras stored in a box in the very top, closed cabinets in our kitchen, which ought to keep them fresh enough.

We also had some friends over later on the day when we put these up, and they were spontaneous and effusive in their praise. And you can't impress your friends with very many other spice racks, now can you?

An email exchange with my dad assured me that fixing this would be, in fact, just as easy of a project as it appeared. After a shopping expedition to JoAnn's (for fabric and foam) and Home Depot (for a staple gun and staples), we were in business. I selected a cheerily striped fabric from the home decorating section to cover the seat. My mom also noted that barkcloth or tablecloth-type fabrics can also work for this purpose, though they're harder to wrestle. I resisted the allure of the NASCAR-printed blue tablecloth plastic, however.

The process was easy: Pete unscrewed the seat from the chair frame, and used a screwdriver to pull out the old staples holding down the shreddy plastic fabric stuff. I threw that and the old seat foam away, the new seat foam was marked and trimmed to fit the new seat. (In retrospect, we should've left a little extra room on all sides of the foam to cushion the seat's edges, but oh well.)

Then, I broke out the sewing machine and iron and hemmed the edges of the fabric. This is completely unnecessary in most cases, but, as noted above, I have a cat who loves to chew and shred any and all available hanging threads. (Cough, Garth.) This was actually the longest part of the whole process. Pete had to sacrifice and play some Super Smash Brothers Brawl in the interim.

Next, we pulled the fabric over the new foam, and stapled it to the back of the chair. I bought the smallest staples at Home Depot that would fit in our gun, and they're not long enough to extend through the seat back and poke me in the butt. We had to pull out some of the staples to re-do one side because the fabric wasn't initially taut enough, but that was easy enough.

Pete then screwed the seat back on the frame, and we were in business. The whole project was so quick and easy that it was rather anticlimactic.

Now, however, the cat who helped shred the old seat has decided that he likes the new one even better. Not for shredding, but for sitting. The spirit of healthy competition lives on in the Jejune household.

The Good: I'm really digging Burda Style's collection of mostly free, downloadable patterns. While I had fit issues with the Zoe dress, the comments show me that I'm not alone (and have some pretty good suggested modifications). I'm also totally drooling over the Hikaru jacket.

In the meantime, I already have plenty of baking projects lined up for next week, but I am so, so tempted to make some jar cakes.

In happier news, I also just impulse-bought a copy of Selbuvotter from KnitPicks while picking up more needle tips. I've seen pictures of some completed projects from it on Ravelry, and it looks drool-inducing. Never enough mittens, I say.

I've had fabulous success with nearly all of Cookie A.'s sock patterns, and Monkey spoke to me. (Plus, the photographed sock in the pattern is in a colorway similar to the one that I'm working with, which didn't hurt.)

After deciding to use a different pattern, it was smooth sailing. The finished product looks much more fancy than it really is. While I like to try out new patterns when making socks, I would absolutely make these again.

During the time that we've been together, Pete has gained a healthy respect for the time and effort required to hand-knit socks, and has been thoroughly schooled on the superiority of the woolly result. So, I volunteered to knit him a pair of socks, and we emerged from Lakeside Fibers with a ball of grey Trekking XXL for the main part of the sock, and a lighter color of Lang Jawoll (complete with complimentary reinforcing thread) for the toe and heel.

I'm sufficiently adept at adjusting patterns to better fit their recipient. However, with these socks, I ran -- repeatedly and frustratingly -- into the same blockade: Pete's thin frame. His calves are significantly smaller than mine, yet the size of his foot (and his heels) is much larger. This threw the proportions of the socks all out of whack: anything that fit his leg wouldn't go over the heel, and anything that went over his heel wouldn't stay up on his leg.

After much frustration, ripping out, re-knitting, and ripping out, I was finally able to find a size that worked, thanks to the forgiving stretchiness of ribbing on the leg. Unfortunately, this was on Size 0 needles. Not only were these socks in a pretty boring pattern, but they're also for very long feet. Consequentially, the knitting took forever.

I ended up abandoning any and all pretensions to a fancy pattern because of the aforementioned gauge issues, but the Priscilla's Dream Socks pattern was very helpful. It lets you fit a standard sock pattern to nearly any gauge and size, which was exactly what I ended up needing.

Despite all of the difficulties with the project itself, Pete is very appreciative of the finished product. The heels and toes are thoroughly reinforced, so hopefully they'll last for some time. And, now that I know what pattern actually fits his feet, I might, perhaps, even consider knitting him another pair.

Someday.

I was surprised that these skirts had such a high rotation in my summer wardrobe, but -- as stated above -- they're really comfortable. I wasn't sure if I'd really be digging the dropped waist of this pattern, but any scruples that I once had were immediately overcome once I realized just how they fill a unique wardrobe niche.

If I had more surface area to fill, I might move on to creating a more accurate level -- one with a dungeon and a water area, for example, with lots of background. At the moment, however, I'm pretty happy with this. The only downside is that Garth has taken an intense, arbitrary dislike to Frog Mario, so I find him on the floor some mornings

Hobby Lobby seems to have the biggest supply of Perler beads of all the craft store chains in my area, but if you're really interested in making similarly Nintendo-inspired Perler projects then eBay is the way to go. There are several really good stores devoted to selling single-color bags of Perler and Hama (an interchangeable brand with a wider color selection) beads, as well as the desirable 29x29 square interlocking grids. It's also a cheaper way to go, and you won't find all of the colors you need, in the quantities you need, in your average assortment.

This Flickr set is a good place to start for inspiration. However, I also started making my own grids from some images of sprites and other game graphics online -- Googling for "Nintendo sprites" and a working knowledge of a graphics program are all that you need to begin.

The only change to the pattern that I made was to add darts in the back, which are printed on the pattern for one of the dress versions. They took in some of the extra fabric, without making it too tight. You don't want to try and make this top -- as loose as it is -- much smaller than your recommended size, because then the armholes will be too tight, and it will also be extremely difficult to wrestle on and off. I can see why knits are so popular for tops now. (You could perhaps also alter this pattern with a bit of a keyhole and button/loop in the back neckline to make it easier to take on and off over the shoulders, if it's a problem.)