Samhain Post-mortem

Montengarde Samhain (Nov 6-8 2020) class: Construction of an Iron Age Finnish dress

A while ago I posted about working on the classes and whatnot for the November 6-8, 2020 Montengarde Samhain event. I don’t know that I’ll end up working on another similar online event anytime soon…. but I thought I’d record som

e of my thoughts about working on the event.

This is another one of those “probably only of interest to me” kind of posts.. and I do geek out a bit with statistics and analytics cus that’s my jam…

Upcycling a ‘treasure chest’

The new upcycled ‘treasure chest’

In an earlier post about upcycling some gifted frames, I mentioned my friend-of-a-friend who had significantly downsized her home. Well when I was going through what she had to give away (which also included.. like … 40 bags of fabric which I re-homed) I found a gilded paper “treasure chest”.

Upcycling frames

upcycled mirror frame in my bathroom

A while ago a friend-of-a-friend was downsizing her house. Like… a LOT.

She was moving from a four-bedroom above grade, two story (plus full basement and two-car+ garage) to a one-bedroom secondary suite. Also.. she had been a “collector” of multiple things for a number of years, and although she’d been destashing for a few years, there was still a LOT to destash as she was moving.

This meant that she had a bit of a free-for-all house pillage, where me and a few friends went in and picked out some of the things she couldn’t take with her that we might be able to use, before it would all be tossed into a garbage bin. Of course, this also happened during Covid19 pandemic, and thrift stores weren’t accepting donations, garage and estate sales were not happening, and other challenges existed.

(I also took home probably 6 big bins worth of things to give away to friends who couldn’t join me as well – so a LOT of stuff has found homes… though I still feel bad for the amount of perfectly lovely stuff that was left behind that will no doubt just be bulldozed and thrown into landfill by the house’s new owners 😦 There was only so much time to go through the house, and so much stuff (like… three pianos….) were just trapped behind too many other things to be able to carry out. )

She is an artist… and this meant along with lots of canvas’ (which my mum, also a painter, took) there were also LOADS of frames. Some were plain and ordinary photo frames, but many were those gorgeous, decorated, molded gilded frames.

Witch Hat Wednesday

Out for a physically-distanced Pokemon Go walk with friends in my witchy hat with ear flaps

This hat was entirely on a whim after watching the ASMR-esqe Bernadette Banner’s Winter Witch Hat video. There was something about the finished version that just made me so frivolously happy that I knew I wanted one for myself. Of course it was right before super-depressing Halloween which might have had a lot to do with wanting to indulge some frivolity.

Plague Mask keychains

Finished red leather keychain-sized plague mask

A few months ago, I began working on a red pleather plague mask for myself, but then the project stalled because I had other things to do (including making courtesy masks) so it got set aside. I’m still not done that – but in the meantime I have a different plague mask project to show off – little mini keychain masks! I plan on putting one on my backpack and maybe turning the other into a necklace…because why not?