Make Your Own: Loubuttons

There are approximately 8 inches of snow on the ground right now. A good Samaritan used their snow blower on our sidewalk, but our neighbor still hasn't offered to shovel out my car. Chivalry is only partially alive in Northeast Ohio, and totally dead among college students.

On days when the snow is up to your ankles and your kitchen refuses to clean itself, you sometimes need to add a little glamour to your life. I've been watching a lot of Gossip Girl lately, and while I can take a pass on the Chanel No. 5 and the Louis Vitton luggage, I am incredibly envious of the red-soled Christian Louboutin heels. I'm a sucker for nice shoes with unexpected pops of color. While my current financial circumstances prevent me from making my materialistic shoe dreams come true, my imagination is richer than ever. So I decided to paint the soles of a pair of shoes red. I didn't let my house's lack of red paint slow me down either. I simply used red nail polish.

I am thrilled with the potentially copyright infringing results.

It's pretty obvious that these are not designer shoes, but I'm pretty satisfied with the results. If one wanted to spend some money on this endeavor, one could purchase Louboutin sole paint. A quick Google search reveals that Martha Stewart paints the bottoms of her Louboutins black. This is possibly the first thing Martha has done that I have ever disagreed with (Martha wouldn't have been accused of "Insider trading" had she been a man, but that's a story for a different blog post). The Google search also revealed that I'm not the first person to paint the soles of their shoes red in an attempt to add some glamour in their lives. But they buy paint specifically for that purpose. Even Christian Louboutin painted his first pair of famous heels using nail polish.

So happy shoe polishing. These boots were made for walking and as soon as this snow melts, I'm going to put these puppies on and walk all over the patriarchy.

Why Am I Doing This Again?: Knitting

I've been knitting since I was 10 or 11. My mother, who somehow trusted a 4 or 5 year old me with needles and pins enough to teach me how to sew at such a tender age, taught me the most thankless of the fiber arts (in my humble opinion). Her own grandmother taught her how to knit and sew so she wouldn't be bored. In my family, only boring people are bored. I only get bored once or twice every 5 years. The last time I was bored, I had been on an airplane for 12 hours. If only I'd had my knitting.

But I digress. Whether you are bored (or simply boring), knitting is an excellent way of spending a lot of time only to discover that you dropped a stitch at a crucial part of the project and your sweater looks like a misshapen elephant. Right now your beloved author is feeling a little down on knitting. This is possibly residual from that one time in high school when I made every single one of the girls in my friend group a scarf for Christmas. I knitted around 15 scarfs from Thanksgiving to New Year's, not because I was super popular, but because I hadn't yet figured out how to not be friends with people that didn't actually like me (perhaps I am being a bit harsh on my 16 year old self and my 16 year old friends). But I'm pretty sure the main reason I feel so much resent towards knitting right now is that I've been working on and off on the aforementioned misshapen sweater for the past 3 years. I'm at a point where I think it might actually amount to something and I won't have to rip it all out and start all over again.

Starting this infernal sweater project was one of those times when I should have listened to my mother, but didn't. She warned me that it would be difficult to use thin yarn on skinny needles. Did I listen? Of course not. I was 20 and knew everything. I spent an embarrassing amount of money on this lovely copper-colored incredibly skinny yarn and entirely too much time knitting the sweater the wrong way. The folly of youth.  At 23, I am older, wiser, and no longer a student. It was time to get back on the metaphorical horse and finish this sweater.

This thing that looks like a brown wool bladder is the neck and shoulders of this sweater.

It's hiding the tears of frustration that are currently pouring down my face.  Just kidding.

"Blah blah blah," you're probably thinking. "Cry me a river. Why are you knitting if you're just going to complain about it on your lifestyle blog? Does Martha Stewart whine when her crafts are difficult?"

While I have no answer to the 2nd question (yet), there are several answers to the first question.  Knitting is incredibly soothing, and puts me in a trance-like state that is probably the closest I will ever chose to come to meditation. In addition, knitting keeps me from doing things like biting my fingernails. But the biggest reason that I'm currently so busy knitting, is that it justifies my crippling TV habit. If I'm knitting while watching 5 episodes of Gossip Girl in a row, it's only like I watched 2 or 3 episodes. One should always take potentially pathetic behavior and turn it into productive behavior. And knitting allows me to do exactly that. 

So happy fiber arting or TV watching. Only the boring are bored, so get out there and pick up a hobby that frustrates you to no end. I can't wait to see the results.

And Happy Valentine's Day!

Hello You Lovely Creatures

Hello loyal followers (if you still exist after a 2 year hiatus),

 Welcome back to Janney Lockman Living. Janney is currently working as a freelance writer/web designer/homemaker extraordinaire, and has much more time to update the world on how to be an amazing, empowered, hipsterbilly homemaker. (She is also busy referring to herself in third person).

In the next few weeks, you can look forward to recipes for soup beans and biscuits complete with a list of tips to help you figure out if your potential partner is "biscuit worthy,", a restaurant review of West Virginia's finest dining establishment, a treatise on knitting, the Half-Asser's guide to quilting, and advice on crafting with glitter nail polish.

Being back is a beautiful thing.