Stuff

First off, my new toy:

 My brother gave me an iPhone back when there was only the first one and he convinced me that it was the best idea to jailbreak it and all was well and good until there was a firmware upgrade that bricked it. Google is my friend and helped me unbrick it but then as if by magic it happened again and all the friends in the world couldn't unbrick it so I've had a stupid phone since then (kids in college equals expenses) but now that's done so I have a sweet new toy.

 This past weekend was going to be full, I tell you full of things I managed to complete but I'm always unrealistically optimistic about the number of things I can fit into the number of available hours so it didn't one hundred percent work out to say the least.

For instance, I didn't even begin removing the existing kitchen floor.

 I put pipes together and painted them. You can see the paper towel holder in the front, and part of the table leg (upside down) behind it.

 I stained the wood for my sweater bench which would have been more finished about a month ago if only my design hadn't been slightly deficient leaving it vaguely finished: enough to be used but not enough to be even slightly rough with it.

 Dowels for the cross-bars got stained too.

 I hauled out the one and only length of cloth I've ever woven (funny story: it was so successful that I sold my table loom and bought a floor loom which I owned for at least ten years and NEVER WARPED and so I sold it) which I thought might make a very nice cover for the cushion on my sweater bench and it would, if only it were wider and longer.

There's the sweater bench sans cushion. A little more sturdy than Version 1.0, but still needs a few minor touches to be acceptable. Luckily I have a still fairly new jig-saw which can help with the finishing touches to make the bench a bit sturdier.

 The primary cat helped with the assembly and positioning of the table leg. Now if only she'd cut a couple of circles of thinnish wood to shim the gap between the underneath of the countertop and the leg I'd be happy and I could remove those hideous formica-covered excuses for legs which are so poorly-conceived in so many ways that it's surprising how patient I've been with them.

Number one: uuuugly.

Number two: not fixed to the floor so they're rarely perfectly vertical.

Number three: you can't push the stools all the way under the counter.

Number four: they're where you want your knees to be when you sit at the counter.

Oh yeah and I made a long thing which is going to be a pair of shoelaces.

I made aiglets (by which auto-correct assumed I meant "piglets"; now that would be a fine trick) for the first pair of shoelaces but they're black and don't look very nice, so I'm waiting on some clear shrink tubing for this next pair.

I confess that I paid minimal attention to the explanations of twist and direction for card weaving because it wasn't applicable to the shoelaces I made at camp, and when I came to thread up for another pair, another pattern, it took me a few minutes to figure out why it wasn't working. The first few inches are a lovely (no, I'm not being facetious: I do think it's quite charming) medley of patterns until I figured out what I liked and then it went quite fast.

I'm a couple of feet shy of finishing the next pair of shoelaces.

It's more fun than beaded kumihimo because I can see it happening before my eyes as I weave, rather than underneath the foam disk as I braid. If only they could make crystal-clear foam braiding disks the kumihimo would be a lot more fun but they don't so there you are.

Pity the card weaving is a little hard on the thumbs the way I do it (ambidextrously for speed and efficiency).