Two for one special
Two posts in one night--either I'm getting chatty, or I'm getting bored.
The studio is ready for paint! Yay! I didn't do the greatest job sanding the rest of the ceiling, but quite honestly, I'm probably going to be the only one to see it. NO ONE is going to care that you can see the mud texture showing through until we try to sell this place. K helped me a little this weekend with sanding the door and cleaning up all the dust. I actually got creative with wiping down the walls--just got my swiffer and used the wet cloths. It took about ten minutes--fabulous! K swept the floor for me. He wasn't able to get everything up, but enough so that I won't have dust floating around and ruining my paint job.
The rest of my weekend has been spent working on a mock up of the crochet collar I'm going to teach for the GBACG August workshop. I'm a little frustrated at this point. There is no modern equivalent for the thread (#18 crochet thread?), so I'm pretty much just taking a gander at the general thickness I should use. I'm assuming that #18 would be close to #20. Of course, I didn't have any #20 on hand--at least, none that wasn't already attached to an in-progress project--but I did have #12 pearl cotton, which I thought might work. Now, I've never crocheted with pearl cotton before, but figured it was worth a try so that I could have a go at the pattern and start working on a modern re-write of it. I've now decided that pearl cotton is entirely unsuitable for crochet; I can't tell you how many times that slick thread has slipped on the hook while I was drawing the thread through, leaving me a chain that is so small I'll never be able to get the hook back through it. Other loops are huge, giving the piece a really uneven look. Plus, I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of thread before the collar is even finished. At least the four hours I've put into this haven't been entirely wasted: I at least managed to get the entire pattern rewritten.
The next problem I ran into was with my hook size. I realized more than half way through that I was using a US 4 instead of a British 4. Doh! That means I'm using a hook that is 2.0 mm instead of 1.4. Fairly big difference. So, I decided this afternoon that I need to get my hands on a #9 hook and #20 thread. Went to Michael's: they have the large balls of #20 thread, but no small ones and the the only #9 hook they have is in a set and it is a brand that doesn't have sizing that is consistent with other brands. Grrr. I leave Michael's empty handed and head to Joann's. They have the hooks, but a brand that wasn't on the comparison list and I don't remember the mm I need, just #9 by this time, and I don't have my phone to call K--plus, they don't have ANY crochet thread, so I decide to skip the whole endeavor. On the way home, however, I pass by a Hancock, and decide to give it one more shot. Um, no. They only carry sizes 5, 6, and 7 crochet hooks. I do manage to find ONE ball of #20 crochet thread at a better price than at Michael's, and buy it if only to make it so that this entire trip wasn't completely useless.
So, after a weekend of working on this, I have a pattern that will, I hope, be intelligible to a novice crocheter, a mock up of what NOT to do, and a ball of thread. Yay. :( I'm hoping I'll have better luck finding what I need at Beverly's later this week. Now that I know the hook mm, I can easily get that at Joann's, but I'd really like to find the smaller balls of #20 thread to help keep the kit fee down.
So, the plans for the rest of this week...get the painting done and get the Firefly bodice done. Doesn't seem too ambitious, does it? Oh, but throw in K taking Monday off (means probably no work done), lunch one afternoon with a friend, a four hour orientation for work, and some yard work that desperately needs to get done, and now my week is looking a bit chaotic. Now can you see how summers seem to just slip away from me?
The studio is ready for paint! Yay! I didn't do the greatest job sanding the rest of the ceiling, but quite honestly, I'm probably going to be the only one to see it. NO ONE is going to care that you can see the mud texture showing through until we try to sell this place. K helped me a little this weekend with sanding the door and cleaning up all the dust. I actually got creative with wiping down the walls--just got my swiffer and used the wet cloths. It took about ten minutes--fabulous! K swept the floor for me. He wasn't able to get everything up, but enough so that I won't have dust floating around and ruining my paint job.
The rest of my weekend has been spent working on a mock up of the crochet collar I'm going to teach for the GBACG August workshop. I'm a little frustrated at this point. There is no modern equivalent for the thread (#18 crochet thread?), so I'm pretty much just taking a gander at the general thickness I should use. I'm assuming that #18 would be close to #20. Of course, I didn't have any #20 on hand--at least, none that wasn't already attached to an in-progress project--but I did have #12 pearl cotton, which I thought might work. Now, I've never crocheted with pearl cotton before, but figured it was worth a try so that I could have a go at the pattern and start working on a modern re-write of it. I've now decided that pearl cotton is entirely unsuitable for crochet; I can't tell you how many times that slick thread has slipped on the hook while I was drawing the thread through, leaving me a chain that is so small I'll never be able to get the hook back through it. Other loops are huge, giving the piece a really uneven look. Plus, I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of thread before the collar is even finished. At least the four hours I've put into this haven't been entirely wasted: I at least managed to get the entire pattern rewritten.
The next problem I ran into was with my hook size. I realized more than half way through that I was using a US 4 instead of a British 4. Doh! That means I'm using a hook that is 2.0 mm instead of 1.4. Fairly big difference. So, I decided this afternoon that I need to get my hands on a #9 hook and #20 thread. Went to Michael's: they have the large balls of #20 thread, but no small ones and the the only #9 hook they have is in a set and it is a brand that doesn't have sizing that is consistent with other brands. Grrr. I leave Michael's empty handed and head to Joann's. They have the hooks, but a brand that wasn't on the comparison list and I don't remember the mm I need, just #9 by this time, and I don't have my phone to call K--plus, they don't have ANY crochet thread, so I decide to skip the whole endeavor. On the way home, however, I pass by a Hancock, and decide to give it one more shot. Um, no. They only carry sizes 5, 6, and 7 crochet hooks. I do manage to find ONE ball of #20 crochet thread at a better price than at Michael's, and buy it if only to make it so that this entire trip wasn't completely useless.
So, after a weekend of working on this, I have a pattern that will, I hope, be intelligible to a novice crocheter, a mock up of what NOT to do, and a ball of thread. Yay. :( I'm hoping I'll have better luck finding what I need at Beverly's later this week. Now that I know the hook mm, I can easily get that at Joann's, but I'd really like to find the smaller balls of #20 thread to help keep the kit fee down.
So, the plans for the rest of this week...get the painting done and get the Firefly bodice done. Doesn't seem too ambitious, does it? Oh, but throw in K taking Monday off (means probably no work done), lunch one afternoon with a friend, a four hour orientation for work, and some yard work that desperately needs to get done, and now my week is looking a bit chaotic. Now can you see how summers seem to just slip away from me?