[The top part of the eastern wall of my room, above the newish window, is now (mostly) covered by two pieces of plywood, cut to more-or-less follow the shape of the ceiling, and painted pale turquoise. There’s about an inch vertical gap between them, right above the middle of the window.]
The space issue in my room had finally gotten to the point where I really needed to do something about it, right when I had an iota or two of spare energy. so I did something about it.
It was kind of a process.
I am honestly pretty impressed by how close I got the shape of that plywood — yes, that’s pretty damn GOOD for me, I am NOT good at this stuff. It covers the insulation! & mostly stops the drafts! Kind of!
I knew I wasn’t going to have any luck filling that narrow space without making it worse, so instead of that I wound up cutting a wider piece & putting that over the gap. Successfully!
The next two pieces were much easier to cut, but much harder to install, since I had no plans to move either the bed or the black shelves out of the way. But I managed it, after several attempts.
[The same wall, now with painted plywood on either side of the window. A couple of boxes and a basket are visible on the left side.]
& then I took no pictures at all. because I have gotten out of the habit of chronicling projects the way I used to, but there was a lot of measuring, cutting plywood & 2x4s, painting the cut plywood & 2x4s, & then a long afternoon of installing the lot of them.
Then I got to put things on the shelves, which is absolutely, entirely the best part.
[There’s a long shelf, spanning the width of the room, just above the window; on the left side, above the head of the bed, is another shelf that runs from that side of the window to the edge of the wall. The other side, where the matching shelf would be, has a set of black shelves taking up that space. Every inch of both shelves is covered in semi-organized stuff, but the top of the headboard is empty save for a towel at the right edge, where the sun will hit it in the mornings.]
… what a RELIEF. It’s so much easier to keep the floor cleared off, now, & my shelves are all much less cluttered. There’s even more room under the bed, though I’m contemplating ways to make that space easier to use, too. & I can GET to stuff, which is kind of new. I’m really enjoying it.
& of course SOMEONE had to be the first to explore.
[Seen from immediately below, Major Tom, a big grey tabby, is sitting on the headboard, hunkered down a bit so his head doesn’t hit the shelf above him. His ears and whiskers are perked forward; he is curious and alert.]
… well. He explored the parts he could get to, anyway, which didn’t involve the new shelves at all, but at least there was space on the headboard for him.
[He’s hunkered down on the headboard, facing towards the lamp, eyes squinched about halfway closed.]
& then? He took a nap.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ An empty, mostly clean stainless steel sink basin. There’s a drain strainer at the bottom, and a tiny bit of white plumbing pipe is visible below. ]
Okay, it took a while.
… okay, it took years.
But! I finally went back to the local plumbing supply place, bought the things I needed with some assistance from the lady behind the counter …
… & then, on a day when I had the spoons to do the thing AND Morgyn had the spoons to get the dish tubs out of the sink, I actually got it done.
We have a sink. That DRAINS.
[ Below the sink, horizontal white piping leads down from each sink basin and meets in the middle, from which more pipe angles downward and to the left. Soapy water is gushing from the bottom into a clear, square bin. There is no water anywhere it isn’t supposed to be. ]
Morgyn spent probably ten minutes pouring water into each sink basin, in turn, & then we’d watch it pour into the bin, & cackle.
SO GOOD
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ The side of the room occupied by my bed. Instead of a hunk of plywood screwed directly to the wall, there’s now a window. The window itself is solid white, much of the arched ceiling’s insulation is still uncovered, and my room is a mess, but it’s a mess with light on it now. ]
Something like two & a half years ago, while in the process of building the loft I was going to be living in, I made the mistake of leaning a bit of my weight against one of the windows I’d planned to put in as it lay on the floor. The glass, of course, cracked.
Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, when I FINALLY managed to take it to a glass place to get it fixed.
& then, not a week after I’d brought it back, PUT IT IN THE WINDOW FRAME.
(it doesn’t QUITE fit. I’ll need to do some stuff before it, you know, OPENS. I had to mildly threaten it with a hammer. BUT it’s in the frame & hasn’t fallen out, so for now, it’ll do.)
I now have TWO windows with flat spaces under them to hold plants!
[ Beneath the window is a low set of drawers. On top of that are a whole bunch of smallish aloe plants, planted in a variety of soda & bean cans. A bit of Mount Blanca, overexposed and yellowish, can be seen through the window. ]
I haven’t moved the big hanging aloe over yet, but I need to do that. & I’m gonna stop in at the local gas station cafe/convenience store & see if they’ll let me have a baby or two off of their big-ass spider plant. More light means more plants!
… also more energy. It took me about a week to get used to it but this is my third ‘I got SO MUCH STUFF DONE’ day in a row. I’m extremely solar powered, is what.
Plus the VIEW.
[ A view out a window: the walls around it are black, the tops of a few aloe plants are barely visible below, and part of the headboard blocks part of the window; but out the window is a sea of low, brown plant life, leading up to Mount Blanca, a many-peaked, snowcapped mountain. Above that is that deep blue Colorado sky. ]
All I gotta do when I’m sitting at my desk is turn left, & I get to see THAT.
It’s SO good.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ Three rusty pallet nails, each wrapped in copper wire just under the head. A loop of copper wire sticks up above the head, as well. In the background are more nails, and a curve of hammered copper wire. ]
I keep getting Ideas, is what.
It’s honestly kind of fun.
I’ve been meaning to start using old pallet nails in stuff for YEARS now, or at least since about three minutes after I started pulling pallets apart. But now I have enough brain to actually _do_ that, & it turned out to be WAY easier than it might have been.
NGL I had fun putting this together, between the nails, the BIG nail, the hunk of really thick aluminum wire, & that vertical metal bit in the middle, which I picked up from right in front of the front door, after walking past it for half a year & thinking it was probably leather.
[ It’s a wider version of the first picture — a long length of copper makes a roughly horizontal S, with a shorter one in approximately a J. A small spiral of aluminum wire sits between the two copper pieces; a big nail stretches across the top of the piece, with smaller, rusty nails lined up below it; and a narrow, slightly wavy hunk of metal runs straight down the center. ]
The nails make a nice fringe sort of thing, & I couldn’t help but to pick some _very_ good blues to go with the rest.
[ A third length of copper wire, with a spiral on one end and a loop on the other, has been added to the rest; another copper spiral, this with a long cobalt blue glass bead threaded into it, hangs from it. Eight rusty nails now hang from the longer nail, and a variety of cobalt blue glass beads, along with some large clear ones, have been added in strategic spots. ]
I just … started making curves, for this one.
[ A n unevenly trapezoidal frame holds four lengths of copper wire — each starts at the upper left corner, and they radiate out from there to cover nearly the entire bottom edge of the trapezoid. Three end in spirals; the fourth ends in a simple loop. ]
Looking at that, you may wonder how I’d planned to connect the four end bits at the upper left. The answer is ‘buggered if I know, I’ll figure it out tomorrow’. It actually took me a week, but I got there, using the tried & true ‘keep wrapping wire around it til it gives up’ method.
[ A blurry close view of that spot in the finished piece — a length of wire has been wrapped around the base of each copper piece in turn, then back around each in the opposite direction. The same wire then runs back down, between each pair of copper pieces, then around the frame. ]
I only had to go back & forth three times, I feel like that was a pretty good job.
[ The finished piece — various purple and off-white beads have been draped across the frame and the copper. A dangly bit hangs from the one loop, off to the left. ]
Neither of these is in the shop yet; I’m hoping for next week.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A rectangular piece of embroidery; the background is deep forest green, with two simple crossed trumpets in yellow. In blazon: Vert, two straight trumpets in saltire, bells in chief, Or. ]
So I’ve barely been able to really be _in_ the SCA in … a long while. It’s been five years since I lived close enough to a local group to be able to so much as go to fighter practice, & even before then, in Dragonsspine & Hartshorndale, I was too busy just surviving to be able to really be _involved_. I got to plenty of events, but always as a merchant. Not that merchants aren’t ever part of the community that makes up the SCA — most of us _are_ — but there’s still a gap there, especially when you’re the only one running the booth & can’t make it to classes. Or go watch the fencing. Or go to court to watch a friend get an award, especially when they put court up against the local version of Midnight Madness. & I’ve been missing all of that, a LOT.
So when it was announced that a friend would be getting her Pelican at Pennsic, & that a bunch of embroidery would need to be done, I JUMPED on that. I think I was the first one who asked, actually, which gave me my pick of what to embroider, so of COURSE I picked the heralds’ badge.
(& then it took me forEVer to actually get it done, because of Things & also I volunteered to sew a tunic for her as well, but I got it all done in time, if barely)
The SCA, despite the presence of merchants, runs on something much closer to a gift economy than on it does on anything like capitalism. I didn’t get paid for my work, either in money or in anything else. Eventually the energy I put into the embroidery (& the tunic) will make its way back around to me — & yes, that sounds pretty woo, but I mean it in a pretty literal sense here — & in the meantime, while I haven’t benefited financially, I’ve definitely gained some esteem in the eyes of those who know that I did the work (although that miiiight be a bit less than it would have been had I gotten everything done sooner!).
I really do prefer a gift economy — I’d love to be able to set up my booth & just leave it there, secure in the knowledge that people wouldn’t take more than was reasonable, & that I could, in turn, access the necessities of living as I needed them, & the small luxuries as I wanted them, within reason. But … here we are.
(I’m not looking for arguments about the perceived benefits and/or necessity of capitalism; take that somewhere else. I _will_ say that plenty of human societies have run just fine on gift economies, & if we’ve done it before, I don’t see why we can’t do it again)
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ Sitting on my usual work surface, an old mouse pad, is a rusty piece of formerly-flat sheet steel, perhaps an inch and a quarter wide and maybe six long, with one long edge folded over. It’s been weathered, worn, and run over such that it’s now creased in a number of places, with one end turned until it’s ninety degrees from the rest. Under it are a number of pieces of thick copper wire, cut into various shapes. ]
I’ve had that hunk of metal kicking around for YEARS now, & every once in a while I’d pull it out, stare at it for a couple minutes, & then put it back, because I did NOT know what to do with it. Making my usual attachment points all the way around the ends felt cumbersome, the one single hole was NOT enough on its own for an entire piece, & past that, I just didn’t know how to handle it.
Round about March, while planning an entire month of faery home decor pieces (alas for that plan!) I pulled it out once again, stared at it for a long moment, then started groping for wire and the closest set of pliers, because I KNEW WHAT I NEEDED TO DO.
(miiiight have sounded a bit like a mad scientist in that moment. or, you know, the dude who yells portentously about knowing what he needs to do.)
This is a totally new way of doing things for me & I am VERY happy about that, because I got to PLAY & that’s AWESOME.
Of course, hammering & texturing the bits that would show was kinda tricky.
[ My rectangular jewelry anvil is sitting on the mouse pad, and I’m holding a curved piece of copper wire so that part of it sits just at the edge of the anvil; the way it’s curved means it can’t sit any further in, but the part that needed to be hammered and textured is done. ]
I’ve done very little three-dimensional wire stuff that needed hammered, & things definitely needed to happen in ways that they don’t when the wire is flat, but I got it figured it, & it was a good first exercise in How to Do the Thing.
Next up, wrapping the wire around (& through) the rusty bit in the manner I’d planned for it to, & then, importantly, getting it to stay there!
[ The very end of the rusty piece has an attachment point on it — I did wind up needing them — but the focus of this picture is on the spot where one end of the wire goes through the single hole in the rusty bit, then was folded over and hammered so it’s firmly in place. ]
This took some fiddling. The wire fit fine when I first bent it into shape, of course, but hammering will always change that shape some — quick! Can someone tell me why that is? — & so I had to have at with the pliers some, but it turned out okay, & once it was where I wanted it, I hammered the bend at the other side of the rusty bit so it would STAY there.
[ A view down the length of the rusty bit: the far end is blurry, but the close end features copper wire that comes up and over what will be the top edge of the rusty bit, then back down the other side. ]
Hard part done, now I just had to finish the rest! It would be easy! I’d already planned it out!
AHAHAHA nope. That wasn’t going to work at all! It would be far too sparse! Leaving negative space is all well & good, but that was too much!
So (once I got home, having forgotten to bring spare wire at all, in fact), I whipped out my wire, cut a couple extra bits, hammered em real quick, & voila! ready!
[ All the copper wire bits are hammered and in place! Two descending arcs hang below the rusty bit; one is part of what wraps around it, and is on the small side; the other, larger one, will hang between the first one and one of the fastening points on the left side. A long wavy bit sits below the other fastening point on the left, and a spiral sits below the very end of the wire that wraps around the rusty bit, which hangs down on the right side and ends in a loop. ]
AHAHAHA no. Still gotta do the beads. I’d picked out a couple I thought might work, as pictured below:
[ Six of the little jars, seen from above, hold a variety of beads in small plastic jars: one row has small blue-purple ones next to larger round amethyst, with even larger, faceted purple beads next to them; the last look almost black in this light. The other row has clear-white leaf beads at the top, with oval silver-colored beads with black accents below them, and at the bottom, larger silver-colored beads that pretty much look like you took a bunch of grapes, then made it round and painted it with metallic silver spray paint. ]
Oh, the wavy bits went just fine, only the smallest of the beads were going to work anyways.
[ The longest of the wavy pieces now has beads wired to it in mirrored arcs, each of which has a single oval silvery bead with two of the smallest purple beads on each side. ]
I got those done, then put them in place, or at least stuck them where (I thought) they were going.
[ The three shorter wavy pieces sit just below the longer arc; the fourth, longest one, sits at one of the left side fastening points. ]
But then it was time for danglies, & you really need more size variation for danglies, so I dug out the faceted beads — I don’t do a lot with faceted stones, but these are, well, _purple_ — & took a look. At which point I found that they were _far_ too different a purple to go with my little spacer beads.
[ The faceted bead is very much a reddish purple; the smaller spacer beads are a blue-purple, what some people call indigo. ]
This would likely work fine for a lot of folks but I have a hard time putting together things that cross the line between cool & warm colors, so that was out. I still had the amethyst, though …
[ Six amethyst beads, two of the oval silvery ones, and one of the big silvery ones with the bumpies sit in sort of a linear clump. ]
Better, but … the bumpy silvery one was just _too_ much brighter & bigger. Well, I’d been wanting to use the leaves anyway …
[ The same clump of beads, with a translucent white leaf bead in place of the silvery bead. ]
… yeah, that’s the ticket.
After all that I only wound up making three danglies (although I’m still considering another dangly to go next to the long one — at least, where the long one eventually wound up).
[ The longer dangly is sitting right above the larger of the two arcs, below a smaller third arc that I’d forgotten to mention; this one hangs down from where the hammered copper goes through the rusty bit, down to form the arc, and back up over the rusty bit. The two smaller ones hang from the other other arc on the right. ]
… & that’s when I stopped taking pictures. Because it turns out that there really wasn’t QUITE enough space for that longer dangly to fit without hitting the big arc. I spent a while messing with the shape of the arc — it’s taller & narrower than it was, though not so much that most people would notice — but it was stubborn, & the hammer wasn’t going to get me anywhere, so I swapped the long one to the right, hung one of the smaller ones from that spot, & made a loop at the top end of the right-side arc to hang the other small one. YARGH, this gets hard to describe in words.
Next up, I found that the long wavy piece, when hung on the left, was too close to the left side of the big arc, & the two sort of blurred together. That was an easy fix; swap the wavy bit with the spiral on the other side.
Then it was just wrapping the various danglies onto the various arcs with spacer beads in various numbers in between, plus last-minute tweaking of shapes, then hanging the whole thing up & GLARING at it for a while, & then, THEN, I was done.
… y’all. It was a LOT. But now it looks like this.
[ The finished piece! As described throughout the post, pretty much, but: A roughly rectangular piece of rusty metal, adorned with hammered copper wire in hanging arcs, which are decorated with purple, white, and silvery beads. ]
Haven’t posted this one yet either, but I just put together a(nother) new picture taking setup, so with a lot of luck it’ll go up soon!
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A driftwood stick, maybe seven inches long with two bends in it, sits on an old mouse pad, along with a couple pieces of thick copper wire in various shapes and a set of stacked plastic jars with blue beads in them. ]
My workbench can be the same worktable I use to pack orders. That’s not great, since I have to pack one set of things away to make room for the other, but it’s better than nothing.
My workbench can also be one of the round tables with benches around them on the porch outside of where some of us go to therapy. I often wind up having to wait there for someone else to be done with therapy, so I bring along projects. (Or I forget them & spend an hour doing color by number stuff on my phone, but, welp.)
Since the bench turned out to not be all that comfortable, I started bringing along my comfy camping chair & the wooden shelf thing I slapped together a bunch of years back & now use as my travel workbench. Nobody’s objected to me setting up there, despite the slowly increasing number of things I’ve been bringing along, & oh, also, the banging. I guess as long as I’m not there for hours & hours, they’re good.
[ The same mouse pad, this time sitting in shaded but clearly natural light. The same stick is there, plus the various copper bits, which have been hammered flat. There’s also a bent-up length of thinner copper wire sitting in the foreground. ]
This one wound up kinda fun, because I realized once I’d finished up hammering things (& I _did_ hammer both pieces I was working on before I started anything else, this time) that I’d forgotten to pack the coil of thinner wire I usually bring along. I dug around in the bag, & found some bits, but all of it was thicker than what I’ve been working with lately.
Which is fine! I can still make it do what I need. Except, alas, for making it fit through some of the beads. Including the leaf beads, which have fairly small holes.
Welp.
I did what I could. Fortunately most of the beads did fit just fine, & I got a couple bits done.
[ A wavy length of hammered copper wire. One end has a small loop for hanging; the other end has been flattened, with the flat bit rounded off so it’s smooth. Thinner wire winds around it in mirrored waves, with small pink and blue beads threaded onto it. ]
It’s definitely chunkier than I’m used to, but it works.
I used some even thicker stuff — though still lighter than what I use for hammered bits, which is usually 12 gauge — for doing the loop connections onto the stick. That was honestly a bit of effort; the thicker stuff doesn’t like to go around things too smoothly, so when I need it to fit tight I have to wrap it around & then tighten it a LOT more than with the thinner stuff. That always risks twisting the wire enough that it snaps, but I got lucky this time.
[ One end of the stick, with wire that’s just thinner than the hammered copper below wrapped around it, then around a loop. ]
What I do here is similar to the way I finish off the danglies — I do a loop on sort of a stalk, & that’s one end, then the wire goes & does what I need — goes around the stick in this case, or through whatever beads I want on the dangly — & then it wraps back around the stalk, so everything’s neatly finished & I have a loop to fasten it to the next bit. I should probably write up a howto one of these years, I guess.
But! Anyways. That was reasonably effective, I got all the fastening points done, & ran out of things I could do RIGHT before it was time to head home.
Where a workbench can be the same comfy chair & wooden shelf, sitting out front of the house in what was left of the sun, close enough for Remy to keep an eye on me but far enough he can’t try to help. By jumping on me.
[ The same wooden shelf as before, this time on bare dirt, with a pile of firewood visible just beyond. The shadows are long; it’s near sunset. All the usual accoutrements are sitting on it, along with a tall clear cup full of orange colored smoothie. ]
I got most of the requisite danglies done before the sun went down & it got too cold, but I still had some energy left & I wanted this piece DONE, so I hauled everything back inside & upstairs to my desk. Which, as workbenches go, is much like using the order-packing table: doable, but I gotta move a lot of stuff out of the way, then move it all back when I’m done. More SPACE, I need more SPACE.
[ The same assortment of stuff, this time sitting on my desk, right in front of my keyboard, with the pile of danglies, blue leaves along with the smaller pink and blue beads, sitting in the center. ]
Danglies!
[ A closer view of the pile of danglies — each has a loop at the top, from which the wire drops through six blue and pink beads, goes through the leaf bead, and winds back up around the smaller beads two at a time before winding around the stalk of the loop to finish off. ]
& that’s when I finally got focused enough I forgot about the camera & finished the entire rest of the thing. There wasn’t a lot more to do at that point, just wrapping thin wire around thick wire & fastening everything together.
[ The finished piece! There’s a fastening point at each end of the stick, and hammered copper wire runs from one to the other in an arc with a loop at one end and a loose spiral at the other. Seven danglies hang from it, at mostly-even intervals, with more pink and blue beads in between. Two more fastening point sit at each end of the almost-horizontal part of the stick; each has two loops, one facing up & one down. The two upward loops connect to the ends of a narrow arc of hammered copper wire, which has more pink and blue beads, plus an s-hook at the top. One of the downward-facing loops holds a hammered copper spiral; the other has the wavy copper wire bit hanging from it. ]
I didn’t notice, at the time, that one of the leaves had already broken; I need to replace that one, then get pictures, but this one should be listed for sale soon. I hope!
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A length of aluminum wire with small loops at each end; it’s been crossed over itself, curving up and then tightly back down on the left, more gently on the right. Above it sits a hammered copper wire s-hook; inside the area within the wire is a spiral; and an inverted arch of wire arcs from one loop to the other. ]
It turns out that ‘lay it out now, hammer it later’ works out pretty well for actually getting these done — since starting is the hard part, after all. But since I can only do a bit once I start, until I’m somewhere I can hammer things, starting is an easier bump to get over.
… not that I’ve started any since I laid out those four, but, welp. Little steps. I had to clean a thousand things first. No, really, this place is a PIT.
but ANYWAY I’ve gotten FOUR faery home decor pieces done & since I’ve only put TWO of them up, only TWO have been sold, which means the NEXT TWO are STILL AVAILABLE or at least will be once I’ve gotten pics & done the thing.
I just. There’s a lot going on, okay, & too much of it is sleeping, especially for how tired I still am all the damn time.
ANYWAY here’s about this one, which I dutifully made from warm autumn tones because if I don’t do those sometimes I’ll have a huge collection of warm-toned beads I’m not terribly fond of. SOME OF YOU LIKE THEM SO IT’S JUST FINE.
[ A closer view; two dangly bits, each with a green glass leaf at the bottom with yellow glass and wood beads above it, sit just below where the aluminum wire crosses over itself. ]
I had to mess around a bunch to make this work, but I knew from the beginning how many dangles I’d have to work with, because I didn’t have more than a couple of each color of the glass leaves. I just had to do a whole bunch of these:
[ A closer view of one of the dangles; the thin copper wire drops down to the green glass leaf, passing through two yellow glass beads with a wooden bead in between them, then goes through the hole in the leaf and back up. It twists around itself, then around the three smaller beads at an angle, then wraps around itself again to finish off the loop at the top. ]
& then figure out what was going where.
[ Four small, clear plastic jars with beads in them; one holds glass leaves in various autumn colors, another holds glass pony beads in a similar palette; a third holds short cylindrical wood beads, and the fourth holds opaque brown pony beads. ]
I didn’t wind up using the brown beads, which is kind of a shame, since there’s still a lot of them; but I’m more than happy enough with how things turned out. Especially considering that once I sorted things properly, there was PRECISELY the right number of those glass pony beads to go with the glass leaves.
& then I DID NOT DROP ANY OF THEM. I’d call the Pope, but I don’t think he’s done enough stuff with beads to realize that’s a genuine-ass miracle.
… anyway
[ Dangles! The ones with green glass leaves have yellow pony beads; the three with yellow leaves have green pony beads; and the two with red leaves have purple pony beads. Two green ones, with a yellow dangly in between, sit below where the aluminum wire crosses itself; three more yellow ones, interspersed with two red, sit below the copper arc. ]
& then I had everything laid out! & having not dropped any of the beads, I decided to see if I could use PRECISELY the number of red beads I had to finish the whole thing off! There’s eight of them, it can’t be hard!
[ Eight small red glass pony beads sit in one of the little jars. ]
… which is when I stopped taking pictures, because of COURSE it didn’t work out like that. See, that damn spiral would NOT fit in the place I’d planned for it, no matter what I did, & I tried a BUNCH of things. So I had to rearrange everything, & then I had to sulk, & then I had to count eight red beads a bunch of times, & rearrange everything AGAIN, & then mess around with the wire some …
[ The finished piece. The spiral now hangs in between the two green dangles, all of them held in place by thin copper wire wrapped around the aluminum, with single red pony beads between them and one to either side. The yellow dangly has switched places with the spiral, hanging inside the bigger loop, just below the s-hook; more copper wire holds both in place, with wooden beads, two on each side, held to the aluminum wire between them. The other five dangles hang from the lower copper arc, which has been wrapped in much thinner aluminum wire; to each side, where the arc gets closer to being vertical, are two more red pony beads, adding up to eight total. ]
… anyway, it did work out, & this one also sold immediately, so the important part is it came out nice & someone loves it enough to send me a money about it. I’m good with that.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A length of weathered and slightly rusty steel wire, in the shape of a very rough arch; one end has been curled into a spiral, while the other, slightly longer end is bent around into a rough loop. A spiral of hammered copper wire sits just below that end; an s-hook of the same material sits above the arc. Two gently curved lengths of hammered copper wire sit between the arms of the arc, the lower one extending beyond it on the left side. ]
I haven’t done one of these posts in SO LONG. But I actually remembered to take pictures! My brain must be kinda working? or something?
Anyway I don’t tend to do much hammering at home these days, there’s nearly always someone else around & it’s LOUD, but there’s a nice shady spot with tables just outside our one doctor’s office, so when I’ve given Jasper a ride there & I’m gonna be waiting a while, I bring my jewelry bag & work on stuff. I’d gotten the copper for four faery home decor pieces cut & bent, the beads all picked out, & everything for each one stuffed into a separate ziploc, so I stuck two in with the jewelry stuff & brought em along.
… & then once I’d hammered the copper for the first one, I got all caught up working on it & didn’t get to the second one til the week after, welp.
The pic up top is all the pieces laid out, once I’d gotten the hammering done. & just below are the beads I picked out, & the gold-colored wire I decided to use.
[ Sitting on a work surface that looks like someone sewed blue fabric to a mouse pad are a spool of gold-colored wire, a pair of round-nosed jewelry pliers, a little plastic jar with faintly yellow-tinged round beads which are clearly meant to evoke pearls, and another little jar with blue glass beads and larger conical faceted beads that are sort of clear with blue overtones. ]
I knew I was going to use the cone beads for danglies — I’d known that as soon as I saw them — so it was just a question of how to put them together. The upper cross piece by necessity was going to need shorter danglies, since it’s close to the one below it, & those went together fast.
[ Three danglies, each with one of the cone beads at the bottom, point down, with three of the blue glass beads strung onto wire above them. They’re sitting just below the shorter copper cross piece; two have already been hooked in place by wire wrapped around the cross piece, and the third is waiting its turn. ]
Then longer ones for the bottom cross piece, but much the same theme.
[ A single dangly; it’s similar to the shorter ones, but instead of three small blue beads, there are two, then one of the not-pearls, then two more of the blue beads. ]
Five of those, & then I needed to figure out how I wanted to handle the extra-special one to go on the sticky-out end of the lower cross piece.
[ Three of the longer danglies sit next to the extra-special conical bead, which has a fancy metal bead cap on its wider end. ]
The problem was that the not-pearls & the blue beads are the same width, even though the not-pearls are round & the blue ones are flattened circles, so the not-pearls stand out a bit, but not enough. I dug through my jewelry bag to see if I had anything larger that would work there instead, but there wasn’t anything suitable, so I tabled that & moved on to the next bit.
Which is where I made a mistake. See, the next bit was winding wire around the steel piece, & I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use the blue beads or the not-pearls there, so I quickly wrapped one of each in place to see which one my brain liked better.
[ A close view of each of the little jars; the one with the blue beads doesn’t have any conical ones in it, now. There’s also the spiralled end of the steel wire, which has thinner gold-colored wire wrapped around it, holding a blue bead in place with one wrap and a not-pearl with the next. ]
My brain, predictably, say ‘yes that looks amazing just like that, perfect’ & thus I was required to do the whole thing with alternating blue and not-pearl beads.
… I’m not unhappy about that. tbh I think it looks pretty damn good.
& that’s where I stopped taking pictures, because I couldn’t finish up the rest until I got home & found a good bead for the last piece, at which point I forgot all about the existence of cameras, as I usually do.
But you can see below how it turned out. It turned out GOOD.
[ The finished piece: it’s arranged as it was in the first picture, but now the upper cross piece has the three short dangles hanging from it, the lower one has the five longer ones, the extra-special dangly has a clear round glass bead in place of the not-pearls in the longer ones, and the entire hunk of steel wire is wrapped round with gold-colored wire holding alternating blue and not-pearl beads in place. ]
In fact you kind of have to look here, because it’s not listed on my site; someone bought it five minutes after I posted it.
… yeah, I’m pretty proud of that.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A table, roughly but sturdily built from 2×4 lumber and plywood, sits outside, in front of a number of cardboard boxes and a set of wooden shelves that have fallen over. A gallon jug of water and two boxes of tissues sit on it. There’s a shelf underneath, about a foot up from the ground; it runs the full width of the table, and most of the depth. ]
I’ve been trying to figure out ways to rearrange the house so there’s more space, or at least so the space that exists can be used more efficiently. I keep running into problems, though, mostly because the two folding tables I have to work with are just too wide to fit anywhere. I’ve been stuck in couches spinning in infinity mode for several months now, & it’s been really frustrating.
Until a couple-three days ago, when I realized that I could MAKE MY OWN TABLE THAT WAS THE PRECISE RIGHT SIZE TO FIT.
… please, hold your applause, I know, it’s a true breakthrough.
Anyway it took me about four hours, from measuring the intended space to hauling it (with help from CJ) over to sit across from the front door. I’m pretty pleased with it; rough as it is, it sits flat & square, it’s more than sturdy enough to hold me & Morgyn both (the only reason we couldn’t dance the Horse’s Bransle is there isn’t enough room), it fits PRECISELY in the space I’d measured it for (slightly to my surprise, mind you), & it works REALLY WELL.
It also means that my comfy chair is UPSTAIRS, which means I sit there pretty often to read, which means Loiosh is the happiest cat in the UNIVERSE because the chair puts me at the right angle for cuddles.
Now, to make a zillionty soap!
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A necklace display, shaped as many of them are with a rounded neck and unrealistically narrow shoulders and waist, and cut out of what’s obviously cheap OSB plywood, sits propped up on a wooden book stand. A purple and white necklace is displayed on it. ]
I admit I spent longer than I really needed to before finally deciding that YES I could just make my own necklace display thing for taking product pictures, instead of buying one. In my defense, it was gonna involve cutting a lot of complex curves, & even with a nice jigsaw & a narrow blade I’m just not GOOD at that. On top of which, the pattern I found was too big to fit on one sheet of paper, which meant that whole process was gonna be a Thing, too.
… look, sometimes it just takes a lot to get started, okay?
In any case, I wound up taking the pics for the first two necklaces I posted earlier this month on the same book stand I’ve been using for pictures of the rest of the jewelry, & it … was very clear that it was NOT designed for that, & it was NOT going to do a good job of it, either. I got some not-too-terrible pictures, but I also got the smitch of executive function I needed to actually, you know, DO THE THING.
Which wasn’t TOO hard. I hadda mess around in Inkscape for a minute to trace the pattern into a lovely vector format & then break it into four sections, then print each one & tape em together, & then I hadda take really quite a few minutes to have at with the jigsaw & get the thing cut out of a handy spare hunk of OSB plywood in a semi-reasonable fashion. & then I stared at it for FAR too long trying to figure out how to build something to hold it up without 1) buying anything, which I was trying to avoid in the first place; 2) having to tear apart any more pallets than I’ve already torn apart, which was already too many; 3) having to do Highly Complex Geometrical Math Calculations; or 3) screaming before realizing that the book stand that’s been doing double duty as a jewelry display item would also do a perfectly good job of, you know, holding up a mediumish slab of plywood.
(I do have most of a plan-like object for making a proper stand now, which is good, cos eventually I’m going to want to use the display board to actually display necklaces in a place where people might like to buy some, & they don’t work well for that if they’re laying flat. But that also means that I’m gonna need to cut more complex round shapes with the jigsaw, cos chances are preeeetty good I’ll want to display more than one necklace at a time, so I’m not thinking about that yet, because of the screaming.)
In the meantime, it works JUST fine, & I’ve taken new pictures of those first couple necklaces, & they all look pretty good. It’ll do.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ Loiosh, an orange tabby, is laying on a jewelry design board. His head is resting on one paw and his ears are tilted slightly to the side. One forepaw is draped possessively over a necklace made from brown, grey, and turquoise-colored beads. ]
Apparently my HORRIBLE BOY has decided that I’m not allowed to make jewelry. I don’t know what his reasoning is; possibly he just thinks I need a break, which is fair, I DO, but as I’ve explained to him a BUNCH of times, I really enjoy making jewelry, so perhaps he could try interrupting me while I’m doing something a lot less fun? Which, of course, he doesn’t consider a good argument at ALL, because he’s a JERK.
Anyway he spent probably twenty minutes after he jumped up onto the workbench shoving his head into my hands for LOVE, & turning around repeatedly, & hunkering down in various spots, before he actually laid down properly, so I did manage to get that entire necklace strung. But that’s all I was allowed to do — other than take a bunch of pictures, because of COURSE.
[ A closer view of Loiosh in the same spot, focusing on his nose and on the paw that’s denying me the ability to work on things. ]
After a couple minutes, & some annoyed wiggling, he settled down & fell asleep, apparently satisfied that I’d given up. TBH he wasn’t wrong.
[ Loiosh has turned his head to the side so it’s resting on one foreleg, & tucked the other under himself. His ears are relaxed, and his eyes are entirely closed. ]
I did a couple things outside, started the fire, brought Remy in, chatted with Jasper; a half hour, maybe forty minutes went by, & then Loiosh stood up …
… turned himself around and laid back down.
*siiiiiiiiiiiigh*
[ He’s sprawled over even more of the design board now, one hindleg tucked up against his belly, the other stretched out over the edge of the board. His head is resting on a forepaw, which is, in turn, resting on a pair of jewelry pliers. ]
He’s a BIG JERK.
Adorable, though.
[ A closer view of his sweet lil face. ]
I gave up & went upstairs to work on something I was ALLOWED to do.
Bout forty-five minutes later CJ, who’s been itching to make a necklace & decided he was done waiting, sent me this picture:
[ Loiosh is still flopped in the same spot, but he’s picked up his head, and one eye is open. The other is still firmly shut. His ears are perked forward, alert, but he’s definitely glaring at the camera. ]
… what?
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A tall set of shelves with three drawers set into the bottom. The inside has been painted pale lavender, the shelves and drawer fronts are slightly darker, and the outsides have been painted dark purple with repeated simple geometric shapes painted on in lavender. The shelves are mostly occupied by a variety of baskets. ]
Yes, there’s still uncovered insulation in my room (I’m working on THAT this week) BUT having my sweet purple shelves in here? HELL YEAH, they make it look SO MUCH better. Plus storage; what’s not to love?
This was a plain set of pressboard shelves finished in We’re Not Even Trying To Pretend This Is Wood veneer, until I got my hands on it. It is, of course, the same colors I use on display boxes in the booth, the same ones I used on Tyrava a couple years later.
The decor is extra-geeky! I dug around online for images of Corded Ware pottery & saved a bunch of pics until I had enough patterns to go all the way around the edges. What, me, only use one pattern? AHAHAHAHA no, I am extra at all times it is possible to be extra.
… okay, I think this is gonna be one of the few short takes posts with more than one picture, because the patterns aren’t very visible in the wide shot.
[ A close view of the top drawer and the bottom shelf. The border between the drawer and the shelf, and the vertical side border next to it, both have repeating geometric patterns painted on in pale lavender paint. One is parallel zigzags between two parallel straight lines, another is a straight line between two rows of dots, a third is a straight line with short lines of varying length sticking out on either side, and another is diamond shapes between parallel lines, with dots in the middle of each. ]
It needs some touching up — this thing has been moved SEVERAL more times than most furniture these days is built to stand up to — but that’s easy enough. & I just LOVE how it looks, & how it adds color & interest to the room.
(the extra storage space ain’t bad either tbh)
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ It is, indeed, a screen door, visibly built from pallet wood; the bottom half is solid wood, while the top half is screened. It’s been installed in the doorframe in the cargo container. ]
SO glad I got this done for Morgyn & CJ. Between this & the wall I built to go where the big doors open (about which more later), they have DELIGHTFUL amounts of airflow, & a fair amount of light, while also keeping the cats inside.
Sigdis is Just Fine with this. Oh, I’m sure she’d slip outside if she had the chance, & have a lovely time wandering, but she is also perfectly happy to not do so. Sigdis is not a complicated cat, & there are definitely days I envy that.
Marisol is the ANGRIEST. Note that she was ALSO the angriest about having to be on a leash any time the doors were open. She wants to be OUT. SIDE. Which I feel would be a reasonable ask if she did not, upon gaining access to the outside, IMMEDIATELY attempt to see how far she could get before Morgyn LOST THEIR SHIT ABOUT IT.
… & that, my friends, is why there are TWO layers of screening on this screen door.
[ A pretty close view of some screening. One layer is your usual aluminum window screen, though it’s way more wrinkly than usual. The other, further away, is quarter inch hardware cloth. ]
Quarter inch GALVANIZED STEEL hardware cloth. You need STURDY wire cutters to get through this stuff; my jewelry wire cutters won’t go through it, & more importantly, neither will cat claws.
Marisol has, of course, spent a notable amount of time hanging from the screen, with no visible effects whatsoever. Except to her temper.
Of course, in my all-fired hurry to get the thing DONE, it’s not painted. Heck, it’s not even SANDED. That’ll happen over the winter. Probably. I hope.
In the meantime, it’s got spots like this.
[ A close view of a couple of pallet boards. A single screw head is visible. So is a nice splintery gouge along the edge of one of the boards. ]
Don’t grab the door there until I get that sanded out, okay?
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ a pair of earrings, copper wire with a small green bead at the bottom & a larger silver-and-black bead just above it; above that, two strands of copper wire twist around each other up to the earwires. ]
Bout a month back I dug out a buncha stuff to make earrings for my mom for her birthday. Got em done, stuck em in the mail, still had the parts out & also the world was being horrible, so I made earrings about it. & then KEPT making earrings about it until the bag of earwires was empty.
[ A small, translucent plastic cup holds a tangle of earrings, perhaps five pairs; there are more of the silver-and black beads, plus some that look like brass, a bunch of small glass beads, and a couple of obviously fake pearls. ]
It was all about spite, you see. Some days all you got to keep you going is spite, & by ‘you’ I mean ‘me’. The world is trying to kill me & everyone I love, so I make earrings about it.
A LOT of earrings, look, it’s like this.
[ A metal mesh container, bigger than the plastic one in the last pic, holds a much larger tangle of wire and beads; most of the beads are glass, in a variety of shapes and colors, and none of them appear to match each other. ]
(I also made a CRAPTON of lil dooleyjobbers to go in with orders, used up a whole lotta single unique beads that way, & they’ll last me a WHILE)
ANYWAY the earrings are all up in a dibs post that went up probably 45 minutes ago on my patreon & ko-fi; sign up at $5/month or more & you, too, can get first dibs (AND a deal) on stuff I make.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ Frank, a big black pickup, seen from behind and to the side; there’s a whole tall stack of styrofoam insulation taking up most of the bed and sticking several feet off the tailgate. ]
What with one thing & another (& with MANY thanks to y’all for continuing to support us, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) I managed to order almost everything we need for this summer’s construction plans in one shot, & a week or so later, me & Morgyn drove down to Canon City again to pick it all up.
Getting it all loaded didn’t go near so smoothly as last time, mostly because the hardware store employees in question didn’t have a lot of confidence in our ability to make everything fit. (As it happened we COULD have fit everything in & on the van; it wouldn’t have been a good idea, but it would have been POSSIBLE. HA.)
But eventually we got it all more-or-less stuck more-or-less where we wanted it, used every strap & bungee cord we had, & drove home.
… to be fair, the van looked like this, & that’s AFTER I’d unloaded a bunch of it. Remy for scale:
[ Remy, a big black puppy with a white streak on his chest and white toes, sits proudly in the back of the van, tongue hanging out. He’s guarding a stack of plywood taller than he is, with three sheets of styrofoam insulation in top of that; lumber sits on top of the plywood, and in the gap between the stack and the right side of the van, and there’s a small pile on the ground. That’s a LOT of sticks, is what. ]
One of the people who helped us out (I suspect she had grandchildren) advised us about eight times not to stop too fast. I explained to her that I was pretty sure we weren’t doing ANYTHING fast, because: no. & then we drove home REAL SLOW.
Unloading all that took time — we haven’t even touched the plywood yet, I want a couple pallets in place to stack it on before we start, but at least I got all the lumber out over a couple days. By which I mean ‘out’, no more than that.
[ A big pile of lumber in various sizes, lengths, and treatments. It’s sitting on the ground anyhow, like a pile of pick up sticks. Or like it was flung out of the van one stick at a time, with no regard to where it landed other than ‘out’, which is in fact what happened. ]
But! It’s getting sorted! Little by little! One step at a time!
[ There are three small neat piles of lumber on the ground. One holds two boards, one holds six, and the third and largest, a stack of two by fours on a long pallet, holds eleven. Look, it’s a work in progress. ]
VERY small steps.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A meadow, currently covered in brown grass and scattered with trees, is seen through the frame of a metal shade pavilion. There’s a fence in front of it all, but that’s just because part of it’s a baseball field. ]
It’s not QUITE warm enough for Woods Day yet — give it another week — & Jasper needed to get Remy out to practice dealing with DOGS & PEOPLE & SQUIRRELS (oh MY), so instead we went to the park.
Of course I brought Loiosh! I don’t wanna DIE.
My setup wasn’t QUITE the same as usual, but it more-or-less worked:
[ Instead of my usual wooden worktop and folding chair, my stuff is spread across a picnic table with a bench. My canvas jewelry tool bag sits next to a water bottle and a pile of jewelry tools, driftwood and copper wire. Loiosh, an orange tabby wearing a green harness with a blue bowtie, stands beneath the bench. ]
I’d brought enough stuff to work on two faery home decor pieces — or so I thought, but, welp — & I figured I’d focus on the ‘bang on copper’ parts, because, well, ears.
Ears in two senses, tbh. For one, this way nobody has to listen to CLANG CLANG CLANG echoing through our far-too-tiny house. For another? Me, sitting in a public park, making bang noises with a bunch of stuff gathered around me on a bench. AND there’s a cat on a leash. Eventually, I figure, SOMEONE will get curious & come over to see what I’m doing. & if I get known as ‘that guy who makes jewelry & stuff at the park, & also has a leashcat’? That’s really not a bad thing.
Anyway, here’s where I started.
[ An old, beat-up mouse pad sits on the picnic table; on top of it is a flat, rectangular jewelry anvil. There’s also a pair of simple jewelry pliers, a light hammer with one flat and one rounded end, a pair of wire snips, two pieces of driftwood, and a skein of copper wire. ]
As usual, I started by framing the whole thing out. I like this as a layout:
[ The smaller piece of driftwood sits on the mouse pad. Above it is a small, ornate s-hook of thick copper wire; below, left to right, is a spiral with the tail leading up to the stick, a broad inverted u with both ends just about meeting the stick, and a third inverted u, this one running from the right side of the first u up to the right end of the stick. ]
After that I just hadda hammer stuff. A bunch.
I haven’t been doing near enough hammering lately, so I kept needing to take breaks. Most of them I’d get up & stretch a bunch, since I also haven’t been doing near enough of that. Sometimes I hadda untangle Loiosh. Sometimes I just hung out & watched the birds.
Eventually, sufficient hammering:
[ All the copper pieces described above have been hammered flat, then textured with the rounded end of the hammer. They’re piled on the jewelry anvil, with the hammer posed next to them in what I really hope is a photogenic sort of way. ]
Having accomplished that, I started on the second & larger driftwood bit, only to discover that I only had six(6) inches of that thick wire left. So I made a spiral out of it & started putting everything away; it’ll happen next time, once I’ve pried more wire out of the tangle it’s currently in. That’s about when Jasper & Remy wandered back up, so that worked out pretty well.
Did I wind up with an audience as I’d hoped?
[ The shaded area has a bunch of picnic tables; beyond it is a parking lot, with my van more-or-less in the middle. There’s a jackdaw under one of the tables. or possibly a starling, I’m never sure which is which. Anyway small black crow relative, eyeing me up from a safe distance. ]
… kind of.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A piece of brown seaglass, simply wrapped with copper wire with a loop at the top, sits underneath a length of much thicker copper wire that has a loop at one end and a small, loose spiral at the other. ]
Sometimes I really don’t know what I’m doing, by which I mean I’ll pick up some wire & a tool & my hands will do a thing & then I sit there going “WTF even am I gonna … what. what.”
This was one of those times. The seaglass is fine! The loopy wire bit is fine! If I hung the seaglass from the bottom of the wire — here meaning the spiral — it’d be fine!
… that wasn’t what my hands wanted to do. & I couldn’t see a way to hang the seaglass from the middle without both the spiral & the seaglass hanging straight down & whacking into each other.
But my hands were like “no it’ll be fine” so I gave it a shot anyways.
… I did start with the easy bit, though, I admit that.
[ Everything is in more-or-less the same place, but both the loop at the top of the seaglass and the one at the end of the wire have jump rings in them now. ]
Sometimes you gotta kinda work your way into it, is what.
I figured I’d just wrap some of the wire, then stick the seaglass on with one loop at a couple different spots & see how bad the balance was.
[ Thinner copper wire has been wrapped around the thicker stuff, starting down at the spiral end and running about halfway up. ]
I wrapped it partway, added an extra loop to hold the seaglass on, & held it up to see how it hung. It hung so the two feet of extra copper wire was down, so I snipped that short & tried again.
It hung just fine.
I tried it further up.
It hung just fine there, too.
… huh.
So I just picked a spot, wrapped the thin wire through the jump ring three or four times, ran it all the way up to the other end & finished it off.
It hangs just fine.
[ My hand, holding up the piece. The copper bit hangs at an angle, the spiral off to the left, about even with the jump ring holding the seaglass to it. It hangs just fine. ]
… & then I tried another one this afternoon, figuring HEY now I know how to do this, & hadda fart around with it for like 45 minutes, idek. Came out okay though.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A flat steel jewelry anvil holds four pieces of seaglass, each wrapped in copper or gold-colored wire in extremely simple patterns. One piece is brown, another is green, and the other two are white. ]
Sometime last summer I made jewelry stuff for all of the ‘and a rock’ subscribers to my patreon & ko-fi, & I used seaglass for all of them. MUCH later I did a blog post with pics of what everyone got, as sort of a teaser & also I needed to post SOMETHING that week. Anyway a couple people asked if there was likely to be seaglass in the shop again, like, ever, & well, it’s been a while, so I dug out a buncha seaglass & started wrapping.
There’s a LOT more wrapped than I’m showing here; this is just what I grabbed when I had time & brain to finish up a couple pieces. I took a look at the green one, first, figured I’d do something pretty simple & then hang a bead or two from the second loop.
[ A piece of clearish green seaglass has been wrapped in gold-colored wire, a very simple once-around wrap with loops at the top and bottom. It’s sitting on the jewelry anvil, under a length of much thicker copper wire that’s been bent into an arch. The shorter arm of the arch has been bent around into a simple loop; the longer into the beginnings of a spiral. The arch is really too narrow for the seaglass piece to sit in. ]
I mean I coulda widened the thing out, but it had a really nice shape & I didn’t wanna mess it up. The simpler white piece was narrower anyway, that’d probably fit right.
[ One of the white seaglass pieces fits perfectly inside the arch, with the loop at the top sitting just below the top of the arch. This seaglass piece is wrapped in copper wire, with only one loop. The copper arch is textured, now, a plethora of tiny dents beaten into it with the round end of a jewelry hammer. ]
Needed something at the top to hang the whole thing by, but that’s easy.
[ There’s a much shorter piece of thick wire, bent into an inverted U with serifs sticking out to each side. It’s sitting just above the top of the copper arch. ]
Round & round with the really thin wire, mostly for decoration, but good for holding things together, too.
[ Narrow wire spirals around the length of the copper arch. At the top of the arch is the shorter piece of wire, held tightly in place by the thinner copper wire; it has a copper jump ring through it, to hold the necklace cord. ]
Et voila! Now I just gotta put the seaglass on there & it’s done, right? right?
AHAHAHAHA no, it hung funny.
I didn’t get any pictures of this part because I was CRANKY & it took AGES to get it to where the seaglass wasn’t whacking into the left side of the copper. It’s nearly entirely different now, but I guess it looks okay, so fine, whatever. ARGH.
[ The longer arm of the arch, which once hung down almost to the bottom of the seaglass, has been curled up into much more of a spiral. The right side, much shorter, has been bent into a tighter arc. But the seaglass is nicely framed between and under the two ends now. ]
… yeah fine I actually really like how it turned out.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
[ A grouping of several brown glass bottles of various sizes sits on a folding table, along with a fancy recipe book, a couple of glass measuring cups in various sizes, a plastic bin with cupcake-shaped hunks of beeswax inside, and a yellow foam sword. ]
I don’t have a lot of space! Everything is sort of shoved under & around & on top of everything else! BUT! I’m set up enough that I can make stuff!
Check it out, I made salve!
[ A double row of glass bottles, each filled with pale yellow salve. They sit on a wooden table; behind them is a stack of white folded shipping boxes. ]
… course that folding table in the first picture isn’t near level enough to pour things, so I made salve on the shipping station table, & there it sits, waiting for labels, which are on hold til I’ve fixed the printer … y’all know how it goes.
BUT I can stir things on the folding table, & fill bottles, & set out a bunch of essential oils so I can make more massage oil, & that’s a LOT more than I’ve been able to do since last April.
Also: my microwave stand! Which I have MISSED, it’s so perfect for how I do things.
[ A wooden stand, somewhat over a yard tall, with shallow drawers at the top. Below those are a deeper drawer filled with bottles and a shelf holding gallon jugs of water, apple cider vinegar, and olive oil. On the floor below the shelf are more small bottles. On top of the stand is a microwave and a three-gallon water cooler. ]
It holds most of my essential oils & a whole bunch of the other ingredients I use most, plus bottle & jar lids & a crapton of other stuff. I found it on the side of the road, probably ten years ago. I love it so.
Also herbs!
[ A set of black shelves holds a variety of containers filled with herbs: glass jars, plastic jugs, a basket filled with ziploc bags, bigger bags made from silver foil. On the top shelf are a number of glass jars filled with infused oils. A simple camping chair with a blanket on it sits in front of the shelves. ]
Not all my herbs — I’m missing a bunch, there must be another box in the storage thing somewhere — but enough to be going on with. It’ll do.
& good thing, too, I need to make more of just about everything.
originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!
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