Crochet Triangle Scarf

I found this pattern for a triangle scarf on ravelry, if you are a crochet or knitting person you have to have an account here. The account is free and you have access to so many free patterns. There are also people on ravelry who sell their patterns but you can usually find something similar to what you want for free. Ok enough about ravelry. Here is the link to the pattern I used, Triangle Scarf with Fringe .

            This is the second triangle scarf I have made and seriously it helps so much if you are already familiar with how these scarves work.  If you haven’t done a triangle scarf before don’t worry you can do it, also when you start the beginning looks like crap but don’t worry it will turn out well. This pattern isn’t very difficult and once you get going it is really easy.  You do the same stich over and over and add 2 stiches in each row, one at the beginning and one at the end.  Also this scarf calls for fringe but I wanted to use this for winter so I didn’t add the fringe.  

I chose to use a mint colored 4 medium yarn for this one, cause well I love mint right now.  I also used a different size hook cause I am super unorganized and couldn’t find the right one, so I used a J 6.00mm hook. 

I am also going to gift this scarf to a friend and I am always worried that someone isn’t going to be wearing the scarf right so I like to take a picture and send that with the gift so they know how to wear it.

Up-cycle Using Chalk Paint

This was a side table my friend was getting rid of because she was moving. I had just finished my dresser makeover and this time I was really excited to use a different type of paint. I used chalk paint. So as someone who has not done a lot of furniture painting or up-cycling, I was super excited to see what this was like. I went onto youtube and watched some videos on how to use chalk paint.  These videos were super long and boring so I never really made it all the way through a video, lets be honest. 

            So I watched a video that said you didn’t need to prep the surface at all and it would only take one coat of chalk paint.  This did not happen for me I did 3 coats to get a nice even consistent coat. I also wanted to put a pattern on the top of the table, so I had some extra latex white paint around and I bought a stencil and a stencil brush. This was a little tricky I wasn’t very good at the painting and there was a lot of bleeding and the lines weren’t so crisp and also when I was taking the stencil off after painting it took the chalk paint off. This was by far the most time consuming and frustrating part of this up-cycle.  I redid and retouched this maybe 4 times and it never really came out perfectly. If I was more motivated I would totally redo the top, but I am not that motivated and it will stay as it is.

            The top coat for chalk paint is wax I was super nervous about this top coat, and again watched more youtube videos.  I was very nervous about this everyone was saying don’t use too much wax so I was very careful to use the wax sparingly, and because of this I had to do 3 coats before I thought it was really thoroughly coated. And then you have to buff it and supposedly the more you buff the shinier it gets, this was not the case for me I buffed and buffed and it was the same. Also the feel of this finish was different than any other finish and honestly I prefer the feel of more classic finishes.  Other people say they do not like plastic feel of the more classic finishes but I actually prefer it. So will I be doing wax paint again…….. yes yes I will when the mood strikes me but I think I will mostly be using latex paint and more traditional finishes.