Passing Time Outside of the Studio

The painters arrive tomor­row to fin­ish the great house paint­ing project. They will be paint­ing my office, the DH’s office, and my stu­dio. I am work­ing out of a lit­tle rolling cart on the kitchen counter. Severe­ly lim­it­ed in terms of mate­ri­als and tools. The House of Myth­i­cal Crea­tures is on hold for the week. It’s …

Yellow Walls

The painters are done and I have reclaimed my space. The move out and back into the stu­dio was almost pain­less. Prob­a­bly because I had recent­ly reor­ga­nized all the crap and there had not been much time for cruft to accu­mu­late. My office is anoth­er sto­ry. edit­ed 25.june.2008 to cor­rect image links

Family Photographs — It’s All Grist for the Mill

I’ve been col­lect­ing up the old pho­to albums and sort­ing the pic­tures. There are a num­ber that I’d like to use in the col­lages. But of course I don’t want to glue up my only copy of great-grand­moth­er’s por­trait so… It’s time to get scan­ning. I’ll leave the has­sles of get­ting an elder­ly scan­ner to … 

Birdfeeder Design and a Good Use of Website Animation

I’m a fan of bird­feed­ers and clever prod­uct design. The Archi­tec­t’s Bird­feed­er, designed by Doug Patt Pratt, is good look­ing and an intrigu­ing engi­neer­ing solu­tion. The key fea­ture — it ships like flat-pack fur­ni­ture but bet­ter because it goes togeth­er with­out that nasty cheap lit­tle hex wrench thing. The ani­ma­tion of the assem­bly of the bird­feed­er on … 

Stenciling a Three Panel Screen, Part II

More on the screen for Jim’s office. Once the sten­cil had had chance to dry I took the fab­ric pan­els off the screen (yeay vel­cro.) I did­n’t do any prep work on the fab­ric  —  poly(?) can­vas. The paint will stick well enough and I don’t expect to try to wash the pan­els. By the time … 

Feeling Nesty — Part I

Today we declared a scav­enger hunt day. We have a list of things we’d like to have for the house but haven’t found just the right one yet.  We were wild­ly suc­cess­ful. Our last gaze­bo was destroyed by the snow last win­ter. We final­ly found a gazebo/screen house that was small enough for the spot between … 

New Tools, Continuing Upholstry and No More Room

I got tools from Rio Grande this after­noon. Clock­wise from the top. Ring man­drel — very pleased with the qual­i­ty and heft. Par­al­lel pli­ers — thank you Sarah L. for get­ting me addict­ed to those expen­sive lit­tle dears. Raw hide mal­let for bang­ing on met­al. Ring clamp for hold­ing onto things and not sand­ing my fin­gers, and a pair …