How to Clean a Self-Healing Rotary Cutting Mat

My rotary cutting mat with a lot of fleece stuck in the cuts

Recently, I've started using more fleece which really gets pushed down in the cuts of my self-healing rotary cutting mat. I decided to take it to the laundry room tub thinking that wetting the material would "loosen" it. This did not work very well so I then scrubbed it with a nylon brush trying to get the material unstuck from the cuts. I decided that I would eventually ruin my mat/scrub off the cutting lines if I kept doing that. Previous to this water scrubbing technique I did Google 'how to clean a rotary cutting mat' and the only advice I could find was to use a sharp blade in my cutter; which is very true, but not the answer I was looking for.

An eraser grabs the material

One day I was cutting more fleece and the fleece was once again sticking into the mat and I suddenly had a "clever" idea to clean the mat. So over to my desk I bound and grabbed a generic white eraser block. Yeah, the kind you use to erase pencil lines. I rubbed/erased a spot and was in total glee that the eraser grabbed the fleece from the cuts. I danced and skipped around my stacks of fleece and baskets of yarn. Whirling with delight, I just knew I had to share this "secret"... with YOU!

After cleaning the mat with an eraser

BTW, I totally love my rotary cutter blade sharpener! It rocks and was very well worth the cost (especially if you use a coupon or it's 50% off notions day at Joann's!)  [edit: if you run over a pin and put a nick in your blade, the sharpener will not fix that]

Dritz Dual Rotary Blade Sharpener - a worthy investment!

Microwave Bags!

I recently discovered the simplicity and satisfaction of cooking baking potatoes, sweet potatoes and acorn squash in the microwave. Yep, the microwave! The best part is they come out pretty darn close to oven baked spuds and squash! When I say "pretty darn close", I mean it! The skin is a little different, but they are light and fluffy inside and not at all gummy like when you just toss a potato in the microwave. The best part.... not running the oven for over an hour!

So, of course now I am making those too! I have 3 sizes ranging from the person lunch box size and a family size bag. If you haven't heard of this before, it's definitely worth giving it a try!

Bags can be purchased from my DetroitKnitter Etsy shop in my bags/totes/holders section. There's way more information about the bags and how they work there too!

In the meantime, I'll get your taste buds watering with this Microwave Twice Baked Potato recipe:

MICROWAVE TWICE BAKED POTATOES – Large Baking Bag

4 baking potatoes

3 green onions, thinly sliced

2 tbsp butter

½ c. hot milk

½ tsp salt

dash black

pepper

dash nutmeg

dash paprika

4 slices bacon
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese, divided

2 tbsp grated sharp Cheddar cheese, divided

You will also need a Large Microwave Bag, a few microwave safe bowls, a microwave safe plate, and several paper towels.

 MICROWAVE

1. Wash potatoes (do not prick, do not cut). Wrap each potato in a wet paper towel. Put the potatoes in a large microwave bag. Microwave for about 10 minutes at high power turning them over after 5-6 minutes. Remove from microwave; do not remove from bag. In the meantime get the other ingredients ready. Then…
2. Place bacon strips on a paper towel on a microwave safe dish. Cover with a second paper towel. Microwave for 4-5 minutes. Let cool. Crumble.
3. Combine butter and green onions in a small microwave safe dish and cover. Microwave on high power for 1 ½ minutes or until the onion is soft.
4. Put milk in a large microwave safe dish. Microwave for about 1 ½ minutes to get it hot. Do not boil.

ASSEMBLE INTO THE LARGE BOWL OF HOT MILK:  

1. Add the green onion and butter mixture, ½ of the crumbled bacon, the remaining ingredients (you may save a sprinkle of cheese to dress the top of the potato) to the bowl of milk. Stir.
2. Cut the potatoes in half and scoop the pulp into the milk bowl with the other ingredients. Do not discard the potato shells.
3. Mash the potato mixture until light and fluffy. Stir in half the crumbled bacon.
4. Spoon the potato mixture into the potato shells. Sprinkle with remaining bacon and cheese.

MICROWAVE

1. Place the filled shells on a microwave safe plate and cook on high power uncovered for 1 to 1 ½ minutes.
2. Serve!

Makes 8 potato halves. Adjust contents to your taste.

How to take Photos with a pure White Background using a Cheap Camera!

before and after

Achieving a white background for a subject photo is not really all that hard and you can do it with many programs including Photoshop Elements which is a free download from what I understand. I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro version 7 and I use a 2 year old $200 camera (Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ4K). Yes, I do like this camera! To the right are two examples of pictures with bad backgrounds. The original is on the left and the fixed picture is on the right (not that you couldn't tell!) The yarn background was dark and gray and the card holder had a yellow tint. The fixes aren't perfect, but way better than before! The ones I have the hardest time with are the ones that come out with a green-yellowish tinted background. I have some rather simple things you can try; I'm not guaranteeing they will work for you, your camera and your editing software but it's worth a shot, right?

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This was my 2nd light box

MAKE A LIGHT BOX: There are really just a few things to do to achieve awesome photos that look like they are floating. The first thing I would suggest is building a light box. STOP! This is not hard! Honestly. It's pretty much necessary to achieve the totally white background look. There are many resources online for building one. I have now built three and each one has gotten a little bit bigger. I was pretty happy with my 2nd one, but needed it bigger to photograph totes, plus I use it for knitting videos and the one before was a little tight for that. The first one I made was about 16" square, the second one is about 24"w x 24"h x 20"d and the one I just made is 28"w x 24"h x 22"d. The 1st two were made from cardboard boxes and the 3rd is a simple wooden frame; I thought wiser of making one of pvc since the clamp on lights won't hold well due to the round edges. Also for the first two I used wrapping tissue for the sides (which I don't advise since it's easy to punch through) and this last one I've lined with banner making paper from a 4' roll and I've experimented with white muslin fabric - IMO all 3 yielded about the same effect. I also found no remarkable differences between shining the light through from the outside and shining the light directly into the box. The lights are suppose to be filtered so the ones inside the box are pointed at the sides and top rather than directly onto the object. So basically with my cheap camera I still have to do some digital fixing. A quick word about lights. Like many others I use the cheap clamp on lights found at Home Depot and Lowes. The lights are the curly florescent energy saving ones in 120 watt equivalent and I'm using 3 lights. When buying lights look at the specs and pick ones that are at least 5000k; my understanding is that 6000k-7000k are better white lights, but I didn't know that when I bought mine. Oh and they do get hot, so don't leave your light box unattended with the lights on.

METERING: Change your cameras metering to spot. Check your manual or scroll through your tools/settings on your camera to find it. Here's a description of what the different metering options do.

Click for bigger picture if you can't read the text

STABILIZE: Use a tripod! Or stack up books and set the camera on it; this is important for clear photos. I always use my timer too because even the slightest movement by pushing the shutter button can cause a bit of blur. When taking pictures through the top of the light box, I use a piece of wood with a hole large enough to stick the camera lens through; the wood rests across the top of my light box (pictured above). If I had a fancy tripod that tilted, I would use that, but I don't and I'm thrifty and the scrap piece of wood works just fine.

PHOTOGRAPH: For the purposes of this "lesson" I set my camera to "automatic" or iA on my dial and took a few pictures inside my light box - the ones above of the skein of yarn and business card holder. Yes, I realize that they aren't very good. The reason why they are so out of whack is that the levels are off. There's too much dark; so we adjust the dark! With my editing program there are actually several ways to accomplish the fix and really they all can have the same result; I've included pictures of what these windows might look like in your program. Look on your menu bar of your editing program for the following type of editing options:

my histogram screen shot

Histogram
Levels
Curves
Highlight/Midtone/Shadow

Generally I make my adjustments using the histogram. I'll explain this with the histogram method in mind, but you can look at the pictures and see that this adjustment is done very similarly to levels and curves features. The Highlight/Midtone/Shadow menu does the same thing, but doesn't have a slider. Look at the Histogram window. See the spike to the right of the histogram display window? You want to move the input slider (circled in blue) on the right hand side toward the middle. Ideally the slider should fall right under where the right side of the big curve ends. When you slide it over, you will see the input levels change (circled in red). This will even out your picture and bring the darkness more in line with the lightness of your photo. The middle slider represents the gamma and sliding it to the right or left has the same kind of effect as if you adjusted the contrast. The far left slider brings the lightness into align with the darkness; you would use this if your photo was over-exposed and would move the slider to the very left side of the furthest left curve. Usually the curve of the histogram is much more noticeable, but since I've already posted these photos this is the sample I'm going with (lazy?) Notice in all 4 windows the similarities in the circled items. You should be able to find at least one of these adjustments in your own program or something that adjusts the input/output levels.

my levels adjustment screen
my curves adjustment scren

my highlight/midtone/shadow screen

turning down the yellow highlights

What I notice with a lot with my photos is that even after adjusting the input levels there is a yellow hue that still remains. Oh it's not too bad, but so easy to fix! I won't include a bunch of photos for this, but basically you want to reduce the yellow highlights and by doing so you will be adding blue as I have done in the color balance window (pictured right). You can also make this adjustment in the histogram window by editing the blue factor rather than luminosity and again lining up the right slider with the histogram curve. Another choice is a Red/Green/Blue adjustment window in which you simply up the % of blue.

Final slight adjustments can be made using your Brightness/Contrast adjustment, but be careful not to overexpose your subject along with the background!

Trick: If your program allows you, add a white border of say 50 pixels before editing that way you can really see when you have adjusted the background to white or almost white. Crop when done to remove the extra border.

Hopefully this has helped!

Follow up on the bird feeder

On June 21, 2009 I wrote about a bird feeder that I painted. It was a premade one with acrylic windows and painted up quite cute. What I didn't know at that time, but has certainly been confirmed by now, is that it was assembled using a glue that does not withstand water. I'm thinking plain old white glue was used! Well, who buys a bird feeder to put inside?

Here you can read my past post about my first discovery that there is a problem with the construction. Recently I went out to fill the feeder and found that the bottom was soaking wet and remnants of bird seed was a wet mushy mess from the rain the night before. I grabbed a few paper towels in attempt to wipe out the mush to add fresh seed. Well, when I put pressure on the sides the entire thing pretty much fell apart! Only a few pieces remained attached to each other, which I figure were the pieces that I'd previously fixed and put together with wood glue. My theory to why it hadn't simply fell apart before is this: When the white glue got wet it returned to liquid form, but since no pressure was put on it the pieces simply held together - then the glued dried and it was like "new" again. I'm pretty sure this cycle would have eventually ended and the whole thing would have fallen apart while being hung. Oh my!

"Well, crud." I thought. I do like the feeder so I proceeded to completely disassemble the thing - windows, sashes and all! I cleaned them up with a little soap and water and let them dry for a long time in the basement. Ok, so I forgot about it down there and in the meantime I hung one of my Bird Bedding Baskets and put a store bought suet cake in it. The birds liked the suet and didn't seem to have any difficulty eating the entire thing. My basket looks well oiled now, but that's ok, the birds won't mind taking scrap yarn from it.

Yesterday I began re-assembling the poor broken feeder with WOOD GLUE! Yes, this is very important to use a glue that will not dissolve when it gets wet. While it was disassembled I figured I'd give it some new paint especially on the bottom where the birds cling on with their talons it was looking rather worn. I broke out the acrylic paint and had at it. I didn't repaint the top since for one it still looked good and plus that was a custom color paint that I made by mixing other paints. I used a deeper yellow and the green matched up pretty well. After it dried I cut out paper to fit over the windows and sprayed several coats of matte acrylic sealer both inside and out and all around paying special attention to the bottom and sides of the feeder as well as the bottom of the seed holder part since these get and stay wet with any rain.

So as much as I do love this little feeder and adore its bright colors, I have to give the product it's self a big red F! Something as simple as assembling it with exterior glue would have given it a much better grade. So if you've been looking at these at JoAnn's or Michael's, be warned that they are not exterior quality!

When I purchased a gazebo style bird feeder to make my "Toto in a Cage", I needed to remove one of the uprights and discovered that they actually used small furniture staples to put it together. So maybe the manufacturer has changed the construction of it. (pic of Toto in a Cage can be seen here... a new blog on how to make it will be eventually coming!).

Refinished Patio Tables

I salvaged (garbage picked) these 2 tables at different times from the curb. I took them apart and painted them with Rustoleum Hammered Spray paint. They turned out really good! The round one had some screw damage so I wound up putting new screw threads in the legs; this was not an easy task; it should have been but it wasn't. Both tables are made out of metal tubing. For $7 each table in paint they turned out great!

I think I finished the first table back in June, like that matters, but whatever. :)

Log Cabin Birdhouse and Bird Feeder

So I've always wanted to make a birdhouse or a bird feeder and now that I've finished the landscaping in the newly found backyard patio, what a better time. I looked for "thin" wood like what I've seen the pre-made birdhouses made of, but couldn't find it at a reasonable price. So I decided to use a couple of my 40% off coupons and just buy the pre-made ones. They are awfully cute after all. I dug up some really old acrylic paint and some newer acrylic paint and went to work mixing some to get different colors.

For the log cabin, I stained the log and the chimney is drawn on with a Sharpie. For the feeder, I made 6 inserts to cover the window before painting so I didn't have to be too careful with all that trim then painted them. Lastly I sprayed both with an matte acrylic sealer. The birdhouse looks a bit funny on its big pole. The pole is a PVC pipe that I painted with a floor pole plate thing attached to the bottom of the birdhouse then the connector piece on top of the pole fits into the floor thingy. I secured the pole in the ground by cementing a slightly larger piece of PVC inside of a 4x4 cement block. When dry, I fit the tall pole inside the mounting pole and inserted two bolts through predrilled holes. It seems to be working fine and it's not too wobbly in the wind.

The ivy wreath is in a perfect spot for birds waiting to get onto the feeder; yes, it's that busy some days. I've only seen a male and female Cardinal, Sparrows, and Wrens so far. The feed is the cheapest "morning song bird" mix from Walmart at about $5 for a 10 pound bag, which is a good thing too because they can easily eat an entire feeder full in a day!

I was disappointed when I discovered that the wood of the bird feeder had split from the weather. I took it inside and pretty much disassembled the entire top and the tray and re-glued them with Gorilla Glue for wood. They probably used some cheap glue or not enough and the slightest bit of moisture spread the wood apart. Yeah, I sealed it, but not super well, I figured a few light coats would due. I'm now re-thinking that thinking. I haven't taken the log cabin back down for inspection, but I'll bet it's splitting too.

About a year later, I came to the conclusion that the bird feeder was put together with white glue which dissolves when wet. Read more about it on this post.

At any rate, I'm enjoying watching the birds from time to time and I wonder if anyone will move into the birdhouse.

Painted the Garage

So I didn't take a picture of this side of the garage before scraping and painting it, but it was pretty bad. The paint was basically hanging on it little strips all over it. I could just take a picture of the other side of the garage since it looks exactly the same as this once did! Anyway, here is a picture of it after painting it. The sun is starting to set so it doesn't look all that great, but what a difference a coat of paint makes. I pretty darn sure I painted the garage about 12 years ago and used Behr paint. It could have used a new paint job though 2 years ago.

The paint I chose is Valspar Duramax which has the primer built in. It's definitely thick enough to cover up a lot of the scraped and un-sanded siding of the garage. It covered in coat! There was a little bit of streakiness up in the gables where I working in overhead tight corners, but I touched them up a bit once I got out the roller and I can't see it anymore. I'm very satisfied with the application of this product. I wonder how durable it it.

Swimming with Music

My new waterproof ipod headset came in the mail. Oh, it looks way too sweet and I can't wait to try it out! I'm exchanging out the other one, that I just posted about the other day, with this one that's much sleeker, supposedly has better sound, and is cheaper. Can't wait to try it out!