So I lied...

My first real post will not be about knitting as promised. I know all you faithful readers—all two of you—are severely disappointed. I may throw in a little knitting shop talk at the end just to spice things up. But for now, I present my beautiful, "new" parquet coffee table. Many of you already knew and loved this table in its youth. What a fun-loving and jovial kid it was. With a flair for obnoxiously bright colors and the uncanny ability to keep sticking around, this table has gone through several reincarnations since it first came into my life six years—almost to the day—ago. Here's a brief history of the table for those of you who don't know or have forgotten. I bought this table used for $5 at a sketchy back-of-a-warehouse second-hand store in Buena Vista, Virginia, when I was in college. (Oh sketchy trips to BV...but that's another story). My roommate and I decided to paint the table hot pink to match our living room decor and proceeded to slather on apparently hundreds of coats of shiny, sticky hot pink paint. I assume the table had the lovely parquet design and some sort of decent finish when we bought it, but that was sophomore year. A lot of it is kind of hazy now. We gave the table a loving and happy home for nine months with only the occasional college party—ahem—"get-together" abuse. The table stayed with me through college, moving into the sorority house and later the slightly more whimsical house I lived in senior year.

When I started graduate school the following fall, I decided hot pink was a bit too juvenile for my geriatric tastes, so I repainted it lime green, a so much more sophisticated choice. Obviously, I didn't first strip the pink paint, I just added on another couple hundred layers of ridiculously colored paint on top. Lime green table survived through graduate school and moved into storage during my first year in the "real world." Which brings us to May of this year, when it moved out of storage and into my brand new, beautiful, grown-up, working-girl apartment. I had new furniture and new decor and it was obviously time for the green to go. So I decided to refinish it. I read up about wood refinishing online and headed to my friendly, neighborhood Lowe's for supplies. I naively thought this project would take me a weekend. I bought only one jar of paint stripper and just a few sheets of sand paper. Now, numerous weekends and about $100 worth of paint stripper, sand paper, chemical-resistant gloves, stain, and finish later, I have a beautiful new table to show for it. I have to say, all the hard work was well worth the effort because my "new" table adds the finishing touch to my lovely grown-up living room.


And now for the knitting. See that pile of whiteness on the ottoman in the picture above. That's the fun, little summer project I started on two months ago. No longer summer and, frankly, no longer fun, the Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2007 lacy dress will be finished if my life depends on it. I'm on the last sleeve. And now that my table is done, I might be able to spend a few more weekend hours finishing it. Until then, I must get back to work...