A cool DIY wire coffee table project

I've been on the lookout for DIY coffee table ideas for a while — we have a great glass top, but the curly cast iron base that came with it wasn't made for use by a piratical first mate who likes to rest his feet on everything within five feet of the futon. Right now we have two chairs stuck underneath the glass top as a makeshift coffee table, which ... is functional. That's about all I can say about that.

Anyway, since it's not falling apart or unstable, we're not in a giant rush to spend money on a new coffee table base, but it's pretty high on the list of DIY improvements I want to make to the house, since I prefer my DIY projects to be attractive as well as usable. ;) My criteria for the new, improved DIY coffee table base include that it should:

• hold the glass top securely enough that none-so-gentle cats and feet atop it won't make the table wobble;
• be attractive;
• have storage space beneath it; and preferably
• be fairly easy to move, since the room in which the coffee table resides doubles as the Wii-playing room.

Today I found a tutorial from Lowe's that looks like it meets pretty much all these criteria — behold! The wire deck coffee table tutorial!

Okay, I'm not sure it'd be that easy to move around, but it doesn't look particularly harder to move around than anything else. And one of the awesome things about this project is that it requires only three things, and no tools: wire deck, cable ties, and acrylic sheet (which you can have cut to measure at the home improvement store). I guess wire deck is what it looks like, which is some kind of shelving component. And even cooler (at least for me)? Technically, I could probably scrounge all the materials for this out of what we have on hand right now — we have wire shelving, cable ties, and that glass table top I keep blathering about.

I am so tempted to try this. But it would require disassembling some of my existing shelves and I doubt they'd make a coffee table of the height we want anyway, so I'd probably want to get some new wire deck to do it with. According to their Web site, my local Lowe's doesn't seem to have the right size of wire deck to make the bottom part (snort — that's a little perverse), but assuming I can find it somewhere locally at comparable prices, it looks like getting the wire deck would cost well under $50, including tax. That sounds like a fairly good deal on a pretty cool DIY coffee table base. So. Tempted.

Yeah, the temptation might be a passing fancy ... but then again, maybe the idea will ferment in my head with some other ones and produce an even better DIY coffee table base idea. Only time will tell. ;)

Craft or Bust Week 51 Check-In and Roundup (Dec 19-25)

Hope all the applicable crafty Christmases out there were lovely. ;D

Roundup of Week 50: What We Crafted From Dec 19-25

Last time, on Craft or Bust:

• Linda made some jewelry, added another store to her "jewelry conquest" (sounds scary ;)), and made spices and bath salts and such at (I assume) Sweetwater Farm.
• Jessica knit three out of four sock monkey limbs ;), made dinner on Wednesday, made two batches of bake sale cookies and a batch of party cheesy bread (at least it wasn't a cheesy party ... or maybe it was, and that's a good thing!) — except that it got eaten by the dog (dude!).

Check-in for Week 50: What Have You Done Lately? (December 12-18)

My week went like this:

Sunday, I knit some of the unending size 12 socks and made miso soup with CSA vegetables. Monday, more sock. Tuesday — guess! — more sock. Finished the first one of the pair. Wednesday, I knit an obscene amount of the second sock. Thursday, I baked some beer bread (which I don't think I got any photos of, at all ... ack) using a bottle of pumpkin beer left over from Octoberish, finished the second sock!, and knit on an old abandoned capelet UFO just to do something other than knit socks. Friday, I knit an entire cloche, to cleanse more of the sockiness from my system. ;) I also made an embroidered soap sack for the first mate, and did the first part of making sparkly pomegranate cranberries. Sunday was Christmas, on which I managed not to do any crafting, although I almost knit some of my Wisp. Oh, well. It was a good day anyway.

Sunday, my computer also stopped turning on. Oops. I took it to the shop and they had to send it away for repairs ... but I managed to get it back on Christmas Eve. Yayyy! ;)

So what did you do? Share your own crafty accomplishments from the past week in the comments here. Don't forget to use the standard check-in format on the rules page, and you can also add your photos to the Craft or Bust Flickr pool!

And as always, if you're new to Craft or Bust, check out the CoB rules page and sign up if you like — it's easy!

Cool crafty links to start the week off right

Some neat crafty links to spur you on and inspire you as the week begins. (Okay, so I'm a day late, but we haven't gotten to Wednesday yet, so it's still the beginning of the week.)

Pro Weaving, Odd Stuff

The Odd Weavings blog is written by Kerstin på Spinnhuset, a professional weaver in Sweden, and houses some really interesting tidbits, like some photos of old wooden loom reeds and woven bread. Kerstin calls herself the laziest weaver ever, so it's a nice blog to visit for those of us who hanker to be superweavers but who make mistakes or have lazy spells ... because she shows how she compensates for her own less-than-perfect moments — with appealing results. The blog isn't updated that often, but there have been two posts this month, so maybe if we go over and leave her some good comments, she'll realize there are people watching and caring. ;)

Nature-Inspired Knitting Patterns

KnitChicGrace's Etsy shop has knitting patterns with the coolest nature-inspired lace and cable patterns. I want, like, all of them.

Knitting Trick: Garter Stitch in the Round ... Without Purls

Fleegle's blog features a trick designed for Shetland shawl knitters, but probably useful to knitters of other things knit in the round (cowls? mittens? sweaters?). The Fleegle corner trick involves using two balls of yarn to knit a garter stitch border in the round. Scroll down in the blog post for the actual directions. They take a little thinking, or maybe a little doing would help, since I'm just sitting here reading them rather than trying to do my own garter stitch in the round ... but it's worth taking a look at.