I have been away from desk for a minute, even falling off with my weekly Poetry Ptuesday series for the first time since its inception back in January, my apologies. Life just took over a bit.

I also missed a very important debut! During my absence, a lovely lady arrived to pick up some slack around here. I first mentioned in this post about my plants that I’d finally successfully recruited a guest blogger, Christina. [Side note, she is also one of the people who received cuttings from my spider plant, which I documented in yet another post about my plants].

Anyway, at last us two busy modern women rocked out creating a role here for her. She navigated the confusing terrains of the backend like a champ, and brought us the saga of her silent meditation retreat. Follow along to find out what happens!

As for me, the last week or so I’ve been away at a pretty absurd DIY project, which is something that has happened before. I’m still struggling along to finish and hopefully end up with something functional, if hideously unattractive. So, to bring you all up to date, hear my tale of woe:

Once upon a time I found a bench I really liked. I didn’t buy it because I thought it was too expensive. During another trip to the same store, I discovered the floor sample was on sale. I couldn’t resist.

Here is my dad sitting in my then-new bench 2 years ago. Isn’t she a beaut?

When the bench came into my home, my younger dog was just 9 months old. She immediately took a liking to jumping on and off the bench. The bench seats developed rips shortly thereafter.

I don’t have a close up of the bench during this time but here’s a view including it from my roof deck

I took that picture last month to shame myself into taking action.

…and, away we go! (If you look on the shelf, I bought a wire cutter for this. I had no idea what I was doing)
While tearing off the ripped up seats, I discovered crisscrossed support underneath so here I tried to replicate that lazily
the end of that step
we move on to doing things this way
and on and on (all the while making a mess on the floor)
I thought I was done this way, hilarious
do stuff this way now!
Am I doing a good job? No. Am I doing a lot of it? Yes.

Lighting conditions have changed so you know that I plugged away for a time.

Also, here began The (True & Terrible) Troubles.

I wanted to fill in the gaps, and had the bright idea that I’d just run one line of rope across the front (pictured above), one line across the back, and start weaving one long section of rope back and forth. That didn’t work as the weaving simply pulled down the rope along the back too much. Re-do.

I tried giving it more slack as I went along. Nope. this still didn’t look right. Re-do.
My guy gave me the suggestion of running rope back and forth between 5-10 times and using that to create a woven band but even that pulls “down” the section at the back too much, and the “band” is taking shape but bunching unattractively

Due to being out of town this past weekend, the last picture above brought us up to the state of the bench when last I left it. While away I came up with a 4th solution for my predicament. I came home this morning and got started, which required my 4th time undoing the same section. My 4th solution turned out to be more time consuming and produced a less aesthetically pleasing result than I imagined it would, so I took a break to write up this post. And now, I leave you all to return to The Struggles.

 

Stay tuned for (hopefully) updates. Happy Monday, and work hard, not smart y’all.

 

DIYs: My Patio Bench that I Love/Hate Pt 1
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