Friday 16 December 2011

Crochet Lampshade

April this year, L and I took our two small humans, our preggo cat, our boy cat (not the dad - shocking, I know!) and our doglet and we moved. Yes, we moved to a tiny, tiny town.
A town so tiny it is in fact, smaller than most tiny villages.

We bought our house from an elderly lady who had gone into a care home. Her children sold us the house and it was in the most incerible state. Not a bad state, but like a time warp. Like Sleeping Beauty had pricked her finger and time had stood still in each room in various eras.
The kitchen had its original range cooker and sheila-maid clothes drying devices, faithfully hanging from the ceiling, slowly gathering dust as they hung around doing nothing. The garden was lost under a sea of nettles and brambles. The lounge was a vision of the 60s (but not in a good way) my eldest son's room was tarred with 80s wallpaper of silver,pink and red stripes, can you believe!!! And baby F's room was last decorated some time around the 50s with (what I think was pink and green) floral chinzy wallpaper and clashing lampshade in blues and oranges, but, when you opened the 'cupboard' door you found a faded teal wall with PINK skirting boards - it was decorated in the 1930s..I thought they were stylish then but that was the room that style forgot.

Anyway, as with the rest of the house, when we moved in we found that the overall darkness of our lounge was a bit much - we're still dealing with the 1920s brown twisted wiring (well, not anymore but we were at the time) and that gave out little to no light.

Now, I have a love for car booting, I love the flthy haggle over 20p, 50p ohhhhh (sharp intake of breath) a POUND! A car boot sale is the only place on earth I will be disgusted that I am about to pay a whole pound for something. Take me to John Lewis and I'm fairly sure I'll find a reason to spend scores of money on a ball of wool or a bit of fabric..but when car booting, the challenge is on!

After many months of being utterly fed up of sitting under the previous owners pendant lamp with hideous gold plate and frosted grey petals I decided that I HAD to do something about the fecking lounge...urrrgh. So we went out, and we walked about the local car boot sale, and in amongst the awful, awful items and (sorry to be mean) awful, awful people...and other haggling maniacs and chain smoking ten year-olds, stood a vision of a woman. A woman with glowy silvery wavy hair, soft minty green, welcoming Hush Puppy nana shoes and a lovely cable jumper - she was just the biscuit for me! And whilst admiring the lovelyness of her items (all mid-century, she was having a clear out) I spotted an awesome old teak standard lamp. Now I have seen these bad boys sell for a pretty penny online and because of that I have never justified buying one - until now..I smiled at her and nervously twitched like some kind of mid-century junkie...''how much for the lamp?'' I hurriedly asked the dear sweet woman, she took AGGGES to reply and with a sorrowful and almost apologetic look on her face she said..''ummm, aaah, umm, would a pound be ok?''

''YES''

''yesitwouldbeabsolutelyfine'' said I, almost barking with eagerness..whilst shaking her hand manically as if buying a car or a house (oh the shame)

Then she produced a giant lampshade from inside the car I didn't just buy and she said, ''you can have the original shade too if you don't mind the state of it?''

PAH! - the state of it. It was huge and suddenly my woollen urges began to kick in, Why.. I could crochet a lampshade, it would be the first bit of 'me' in the entire house, and I could see the light shine through and the colours would be glowy and lovely..mmm yes, crochet lampshade. The state of it was grand and so I handed over my pound with utter joy and bid the old lady a very happy and slightly over-excited farewell and went off with standard lamp under my arm to squeeze it somehow into my tiny VW Polo - never mind the kids, they can walk home..yehhh. What? 'but one is a baby' I hear you cry..well, he can crawl, and he needs the practise.

Eventually we got home (all of us) in the car with the lamp sticking out of the ragtop roof  in the pouring rain..and I lunged towards the wool, grabbed the nearest 4mm hook and began planning. After a while I decided to draw some grids out on the original shade and figure out how many squares and what sizes etc..then I went to work. I tore the awful cover off the lampshade and admired the bare bones of it..then, square by square I made it, its new outfit, all blues and greens to match my soon-to-be teal chimney breast wall..

And here it is, the beast, the very teaky boyo that I speak of..and how I love him. (before the new cover, before I hung the giant picture that looks eerily like L's dad , before I got rid of that old sofa, AFTER I had ripped the awful plywood cover off that original door you can see there  - I will strip it soon)

Once I had ripped the cover off this is what I was dealing with, a warped and rusty frame.

Please excuse all the crap in the photos, we were in the middle of decorating - we still are

With new outfit of squares :)

Stitching squares on the frame

Almost there...



Annnnddd....

TAAAHHHHDAHHHHHHH!

One crochet lampshade.
It's not perfect but I like it very much.
:)

The End.x

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