Balcony Railing Installed

And so it goes . . . husband Jon rides up the south end of the building to install the black enameled balcony railing of galvanized steel, hand-crafted by our friend Steve Stichman. 

Wow Steve, what a beautiful railing you made.  I love it!

Jon rides the articulated lift with the new railing attached to the basket's birdie feet. 

Jon lifts the railing assembly off of the lift and puts it into position on the balcony.

Here is Jon fitting the railing to the balcony. 

Next, he'll drill holes in the railing to bolt it permanently to the spiral stairs hand rail.   

Jon says, "if you want to help, get rid of that camera and take this.  Hurry up."

Then, his phone rings. 

After a bit of shimming to level, Jon makes a tick mark at level and begins drilling the holes for the bolts.

I get out of his way, and turn to go back inside the studio.  Here is the view looking north.  You can see my layout/cutting table.  I've been sewing some projects.  Let me show you the table runner I made.

I made a table runner, and a wine tote.  Both items are for sale at my Etsy shop, "Mill Street Handbags"

http://www.etsy.com/shop/MillStreetHandbags

This table runner is my version of a canvas cloth/painted table runner that appeared as a DYI project in Country Living Magazine.

I didn't care for the magazine instructions to "paint" each number, and thought I could do a better job using black embroidery thread, my general purpose sewing machine to satin stitch the ruler marks, and then very accurately hooping the runner on my embroidery machine hoop to crisply define each number.

The table runner project took me a couple days from start to finish. 

Here are some detail photos showing the quality finish front and back.

The finished table runner is 63" by 13"

Detail of numbers

And . . .

I made a matching wine tote--also for sale at my Etsy shop, "Mill Street Handbags"

Looking inside the bag--is a wild black/white cotton print fabric.  There are two padded bottomless pockets inside, each big enough to hold a bottle of wine.  In the photo I stuff the pockets with 2 water bottles.  This tote would make a great birthday gift.