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which_chickWith the luxury of a four whole contiguous days off of work, you'd think there would be home improvements galore to report. However, I spent the time doing social things with people and thus didn't really improve so much as all that.
While I wasn't engaged in gathering up dried weeds to put in a jar (see previous post), or socializing or organizing pictures that I've taken that I want to try horribly at replicating in watercolor*, I have Home Improved.
The squares for the bathroom afghan are moving along. There are now 31 squares for the bathroom afghan (16 white and 15 blue). I am halfway through the yarn I bought (without any idea of how many yarn I would need) and so I will need more yarn if I want a two-layer thing. I might do a one-layer thing and see how I feel about it. I may be bored of squares at that juncture. It could totally happen.
I painted the front door and the closet-of-stuff door and the trim I bought for around the windows.
I finished the drywall repairs around the cat box window.
I removed and washed the dining area lamp shades. (This was likely last done when I quit smoking in 2003. Nary a moment too soon, over here.) I am planning to buy it matching light bulbs of the LED variety this week.
I installed a new door sweep for the front door. The old one was very frayed and not really doing the job.
I got rid of three pairs of dead jeans and one pair of unwearable (cut funny, double-crotch on me) jeans by ripping them into braided-rug strips and adding them to the kitchen braided rug but they rumpled and it was dirty so I took it apart and washed it and now it's hanging to dry before I put it back together again, this time in a NON RUMPLING MANNER YOU BETCHA.
Brother the Younger was sent off with the Green and Yellow Lady to get her fixed up at the Painting Conservation Place in Carlisle. I am hoping his beagle dog does not destroy it in the car en route...
The deer hide from bow season (a friend of mine shot it) that's been in my fridge for the last *mumble* weeks (it was in a large plastic bag, not loose or anything) has been rinsed of blood and scraped clean of flesh. It wasn't the cleanest skinning job I've ever seen, has some knife marks around the shoulders and hips, but this won't matter a whole lot for rawhide braiding purposes. It's in water at the moment (in a plastic bag, in a five gallon bucket, in my bathtub) but I should mix up some lye water for it this evening before I go to bed. There were a shitbucket of ticks on the hide, like a gazillion. SO MANY. It'll be a couple of days before I can take the hair off, which is a filthy damn job but not much work. I used scissors to neaten the hide (took off the leg and belly skin, which is thinner and floppy) already so it'll go very quickly. This isn't so much a home improvement as a WAY MORE FRIDGE SPACE improvement but it's an improvement and I'm counting it.
I took the seat piece from the stubben saddle that belonged to the dead mare and I used it to cover my fireplace stool by way of hole punch and strips of rawhide lacing (Here, I could impress you with my tales of how I cut strips from the ugly edges of the parchment** rolls on my indoor clothesline but since you already know that there's currently a furry deer hide in a plastic garbage bag in a plastic five-gallon bucket in my bathtub, you probably don't have any more room for impressing vis a vis deer products at this juncture) underneath. It is not a perfect job but it is a job I can live with. I will try to get a picture here eventually.
*I have been considering faffing about uselessly with watercolors since the amazing postcards of Left-Coast. I effing suck at art, but I have watercolor paper and watercolors and I am going to suck with enthusiasm.
** parchment is basically rawhide that has been de-grained and stretched flat while wet and allowed to dry in that state. It's stretched on a frame. If you take it off the frame and re-wet it, it reverts to a rawhide-like state. The parchment is for a book project. Someday. Right now it's in rolls and doesn't take up much space. Buckskin is rawhide that has been treated with an emulsifier (brains or, in this era of prion diseases, egg yolks) and then worked and stretched continuously as it dries and then smoked to denature the proteins in the hide so that they stay fluffy even after wetting. I have personally made fresh deer hide into buckskin and into parchment but I haven't done rawhide yet. As I have a hide-braiding reference book and a deer hide in my bathtub, might be worthwhile to watch this space. I don't hunt deer, but I know a lot of people who do, many of whom will happily give me non-edible deer parts for projects.
While I wasn't engaged in gathering up dried weeds to put in a jar (see previous post), or socializing or organizing pictures that I've taken that I want to try horribly at replicating in watercolor*, I have Home Improved.
The squares for the bathroom afghan are moving along. There are now 31 squares for the bathroom afghan (16 white and 15 blue). I am halfway through the yarn I bought (without any idea of how many yarn I would need) and so I will need more yarn if I want a two-layer thing. I might do a one-layer thing and see how I feel about it. I may be bored of squares at that juncture. It could totally happen.
I painted the front door and the closet-of-stuff door and the trim I bought for around the windows.
I finished the drywall repairs around the cat box window.
I removed and washed the dining area lamp shades. (This was likely last done when I quit smoking in 2003. Nary a moment too soon, over here.) I am planning to buy it matching light bulbs of the LED variety this week.
I installed a new door sweep for the front door. The old one was very frayed and not really doing the job.
I got rid of three pairs of dead jeans and one pair of unwearable (cut funny, double-crotch on me) jeans by ripping them into braided-rug strips and adding them to the kitchen braided rug but they rumpled and it was dirty so I took it apart and washed it and now it's hanging to dry before I put it back together again, this time in a NON RUMPLING MANNER YOU BETCHA.
Brother the Younger was sent off with the Green and Yellow Lady to get her fixed up at the Painting Conservation Place in Carlisle. I am hoping his beagle dog does not destroy it in the car en route...
The deer hide from bow season (a friend of mine shot it) that's been in my fridge for the last *mumble* weeks (it was in a large plastic bag, not loose or anything) has been rinsed of blood and scraped clean of flesh. It wasn't the cleanest skinning job I've ever seen, has some knife marks around the shoulders and hips, but this won't matter a whole lot for rawhide braiding purposes. It's in water at the moment (in a plastic bag, in a five gallon bucket, in my bathtub) but I should mix up some lye water for it this evening before I go to bed. There were a shitbucket of ticks on the hide, like a gazillion. SO MANY. It'll be a couple of days before I can take the hair off, which is a filthy damn job but not much work. I used scissors to neaten the hide (took off the leg and belly skin, which is thinner and floppy) already so it'll go very quickly. This isn't so much a home improvement as a WAY MORE FRIDGE SPACE improvement but it's an improvement and I'm counting it.
I took the seat piece from the stubben saddle that belonged to the dead mare and I used it to cover my fireplace stool by way of hole punch and strips of rawhide lacing (Here, I could impress you with my tales of how I cut strips from the ugly edges of the parchment** rolls on my indoor clothesline but since you already know that there's currently a furry deer hide in a plastic garbage bag in a plastic five-gallon bucket in my bathtub, you probably don't have any more room for impressing vis a vis deer products at this juncture) underneath. It is not a perfect job but it is a job I can live with. I will try to get a picture here eventually.
*I have been considering faffing about uselessly with watercolors since the amazing postcards of Left-Coast. I effing suck at art, but I have watercolor paper and watercolors and I am going to suck with enthusiasm.
** parchment is basically rawhide that has been de-grained and stretched flat while wet and allowed to dry in that state. It's stretched on a frame. If you take it off the frame and re-wet it, it reverts to a rawhide-like state. The parchment is for a book project. Someday. Right now it's in rolls and doesn't take up much space. Buckskin is rawhide that has been treated with an emulsifier (brains or, in this era of prion diseases, egg yolks) and then worked and stretched continuously as it dries and then smoked to denature the proteins in the hide so that they stay fluffy even after wetting. I have personally made fresh deer hide into buckskin and into parchment but I haven't done rawhide yet. As I have a hide-braiding reference book and a deer hide in my bathtub, might be worthwhile to watch this space. I don't hunt deer, but I know a lot of people who do, many of whom will happily give me non-edible deer parts for projects.
