Well the snow here has pretty much all melted away now -- except for what used to be gigantic snow mountains, which are now dwindling snow hills. . .
And the weatherman is predicting 50 degree weather! 50 degrees! I can't tell you how excited I am about this. Ok, maybe I can, because I think that the rest of Nebraska is feeling the same way.
And warm weather means sloppy streets . . .which was actually more of the case last week. This week the roads are pretty dry. But more to the point is the fact that I can soon take out my bike (which as been sitting in my living room all winter) and start taking it to work. (That is if I can get all my ducks in a row. . .)
But sloppy streets, means wet muddy tires, which don't work well with carpet. And rented carpet at that. Therefore I had this wonderful, and admittedly not very novel idea about placing a rug under my bike. The thing is I didn't have a rug that was long enough. The time pressed student in me thought, well I'll just get a cheap braided rug at Target. News flash. Rugs are not cheap. And certainly not long runner rugs. So that left me with my second option -- bring out my crafty side and make my own.
So this weekend, with finally a homework free day off, I decided to build myself a rug. The finished project looks pretty decent, specially since there was more "eyeing it" than there was actual rulers and measuring tape involved. It's pretty much your basic rug, I didn't do anything too fancy -- outside of using bias tape for edging.
First step: Gather up some old blue jeans from the stash in my basement. Most of these were given to me by someone. Only one of them were a pair of my old favorites (which actually makes them much easier to cut up. I'm sentimental that way . . .)
Second step: Cut up the legs in long rectangular shapes while watching t.v. on Friday night.
Third step: Finally get around to sewing it all together on Sunday afternoon. Measure my space.
Fourth step: Pin, sew, adjust, cut. Making relatively straight lines. I'd have to get up and measure to know exactly how big the finished product is, but the general idea was to make it 90 inches x 30 inches. I think I used 4 pairs of jeans.
Fifth step: Find an old sheet for the backing.
At first I was just going to be lazy and skip a backing and just sew the binding the edges, figuring that the raw seams would help grip the carpet and hold the rug in place. That was until I realized how annoying it would be to have to constantly trim or vacumm up stray threads and fuzzes from the blue jeans. I decided to use one of my old bed sheets that I'd been saving to make bags from. I've always loved this bright flowered print. It didn't bother me a bit to cut it up! It was pretty worn in the middle, but the bottom edge was perfect for my runner rug.
Sixth step: Baste the sheet to the blue jeans. Right sides out.
Seventh step: Sew binding onto rug. The binding itself was a whole 'nother step, but using my handy dandy new bias tape maker I was able to make a decent size length -- again I never bothered to measure. I just cut up an old pair of cotton men's lounge pants. Thank goodness for all these men pants. Long legs means longer yardage and less seams! This time I made my strips 2 inches wide. This seemed to work well. Much better than my last attempt (see the post before) but it wasn't perfect either, it still kind of bunched up at the seams. But you can't tell that from my finished project. It sewed on much easier too, since it was a tad wider.
Eighth step: Trim threads. Place on floor and arrange bike.
Now if it only wasn't 10:30 at night and pitch black, I could take the bike for a test run. Can't wait for Saturday! Did I mention it's going to be 50 degrees! Till then my bike is sitting pretty.
Now for my next project:
I made this for my sister when she was studying abroad in the Netherlands and biking was her main means of transportation.
My itty bitty elephant, from Rachel for maybe my birthday one year? I don't remember how long I've had it or when she made it. . .maybe while in high school?
Rachel made the little figurines. My Dad made the barn. They gave this to my for Christmas a couple of years ago. 
Just because I like the juxpostion of Spring next to the Christmas photo. And well I guess I did put the bulbs in the ground . . . but really can't take credit for them growing and spreading. This is the 2nd year for them.
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