New Curtains--office geek style

A while back, I read this post about hanging curtains in your bus "ghetto style" using springs which I thought was a sweet idea and I said to myself--nice. I'm all about rocking ghetto style curtains.

When we were camping at Miracle Hot Springs last month, we needed curtains so we took a bunch of towels (ahem, speaking of ghetto) and hung them up with binder clips which worked fantastically and I've now dubbed this--hanging bus curtains office geek style.

Our bus does not have a headliner which leaves available for our use a couple of really nice ridges all the way around (except on the rear hatch where we've got to use the hatch hinges).

I believe in our mess of a garage we do have the necessary rods for hanging the curtains correctly, but I'm really digging this new method for a few reasons. 1) In theory, the curtains will take longer to get dirty. 2) The curtains won't ever get in the way of the windows while driving (not that this is a huge issue, but it did happen on occassion in our Vanagon). 3) The curtains were beyond easy to make as I didn't have to sew cuffs for the rods to go through or hem them at the bottom. For that matter, I didn't have to be very careful about the size as they won't be hanging all of the time. It was a sweet deal--just surged the edges, made a bag for storage and we were good to go.

The major disadvantage is that fewer people will see these curtains. Okay, come on, they're cute, right? I'm crazy about that fabric.

TOMORROW WE'RE HEADED TO CALIFORNIA!! We're caravaning with some of our ACVW pals and our final destination (please cross your fingers for us) is the Kelley Park show in San Jose on Sunday!! Also, deserving of multiple exclamation points is our plan to visit Mark Merrill's garage on Friday night!!! I've been dreaming about his library for several weeks now.

Adios for now and I'm sure (assuming all goes well) I'll have more VW pictures to share on Tuesday than you'll ever want to see in your life.

Dimes Nickels and Quarters...

It has been brought to my attention that I didn’t do a sufficient job of explaining where Penny got her name. Okay, seriously, it isn’t that hard. What color is Penny? Copper. Copper…Penny…Copper…Penny. PENNYS ARE COPPER COLORED!

Additionally, we became friends with a doe on a backpacking trip last year that Craig named Penny. For some reason the name carried over as being a cute name for a car.

Well, I haven’t made ANY progress on the curtains; as we went snowboarding in Sun Valley last weekend and then we bought a cat (see my blog for additional details). Speaking of our trip to Sun Valley—Penny was a super star. She maxed out at 76 MPH. This was the fastest we’ve ever driven her. So what if it we were going downhill with a tailwind—it still counts!

The curtain fabric will at least be unfolded and measured before Monday! (Somehow saying that on the internet for the world to hear makes it seem like more of a possibility!)

Purists vs. Functionalists

Most VW enthusiasts know that there are two schools of thought when fixing/repairing your VW. Craig and I fortunately subscribe to the same school of thought; therefore avoiding the arguments that would inevitably ensue if we had opposite VW beliefs. We are functionalists, which means that when we make repairs, replacements or updates to our VWs we don’t care whether the new carpet matches the original carpet. Actually functionalists often prefer that the new carpet doesn’t match the old carpet. We want it to be the most fun, functional, and fresh carpet around which also means that we will never be able to sell one of our VWs with a $20,000 price tag advertising it as “fully refurbished with original parts”. No, ours would only sell as “fun and funky—totally customized beyond recognition”.
My point in sharing with you our views on VW customization is that I’m about to fill you in on our current Vanagon project.

THE FOLLOWING MAY NOT BE ACCEPTABLE FOR VW PURIST EYES.
THE WRITERS OF THIS BLOG HOLD NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR REACTION TO OUR NEW CURTAINS.

Oh, damn, I gave it away. Yes, last night we went out and bought new fabric for replacement curtains.
We finally decided on a dark green microfiber that has a various colored stripes stitched through it at random. It is #1 really cute and #2 entirely opaque—which means I don’t have to line the curtains—making my job of sewing the curtains SO much easier. Yea! I don’t have pictures of the fabric yet, but they will be coming next week. My goal is to get these babies done before mid March so we can go camping!