I miss my President so much

This is my president. I miss him so much. I miss his grace, poise, humility, humor, and intelligence. He gave a lecture today in South Africa on the occasion of what would have been Nelson Mandela's 100th Birthday. For the full video go here. 

Weekend Workshop

I took a fantastic workshop this weekend, Gilding and Toolmaking with Brien Beidler. And I'm exhausted! Last week I started working full time at work because there was a grant that will pay me through January for that. Bad timing though with this workshop. I'll be full time for two weeks straight. But really there is nothing to complain about. I learned so much and am very happy with my take-aways. Tools and a pretty nicely gilded spine.

Brien is an excellent teacher. The class was unique and he did a great job with all of it. 

Step one: drill holes into the handles so they can be soaked in water. 

 Then the "fun" part. Filing the brass stock into shape. It had to be tapered just so. We were instruced to remove 1/5" of each side from the base. 

Mine is the one on the left - on the right is Brien's. I've got a way's to go! 

This was probably the most exhausting part of the workshop. So much physical work filing four brass bars into the perfect taper. ooof. 

Finally the last step is to polish the top for the design. 

My first tool went well. I made this art deco inspired shape. 

Tested it too. I think it looks pretty good! 

The second tool, well, let's just say I put about five different designs on the tip of that thing and filed them off until I finally settled on the circle. When the brass stock was finished we whacked them into the wet handles. They went in smoothly and the wood will shrink around the stock to hold everything in place.  

 I was even able to replace the handle on a tool I already had. The handle had burned out and the tool was held in place with cotton wadding.

 

Brien brought a lot of examples for us to gain inspiration from.


Day two:
Well, I woke up early so that I could make one more stock tool. I made a little dot. I'm very happy about the dot. Then I dashed off to get to the workshop at 10am.

Today was gilding day. Wow, I learned so much.


The principle of gilding is not difficult. Put egg glair down. Put down an extremely thin sheet of gold. Use a hot gilding tool to press a design into the leather. Wipe off extra gold, and voila! Beautiful.

In practice, this is an entirely different matter.

Working with the gold leaf is really something. It is gravity defying. It is so beautiful to see a 4x4 square of the foil floating on a gold knife, but the slightest breeze will cause hell with it. Cutting it to size and transfering it to the spine of a book is quite a challenge.

Brien prepared wood blocks with leather on a rounded spine for us to practice on. The entire spine is polished then covered with the leaf. I was so excited I forgot to take pictures of the process.

In the end it looked pretty good but there were two spots where the gold didn't stick. Easy to repaire just put a little glair on add gold scraps and try again.

I was successful! 

 All of our class examples. They look so nice!

 The nicest part of the class was one person who remarked about how they used to be so judgemental about the gilding on spines of old books. But now she knows better. I agree with her completely! It is so hard to get a design to be even on this surface.

something for me

I finally did something I've been wanting to do since I moved in - replace the top of my stove. 

Doesn't look too bad, right? Look closer, especially the left side. All of those black spots are where the enamel has chipped away. This is the stove that came with the house and it cooks great. But it looks awful. 

I don't know what the previous "user" (tenant) did with it, but both sides were rusted and cracked, not badly but still. Over the years of my using the stove and putting really heavy stock pots on it, the cracks have gotten worse. I've had horrible visions of my giant stock pots full of water and goodies caving into the whole appliance. That wouldn't be good. 

I'm glad I've had enough life experience to ask the internet if it was possible to just purchase a replacement top rather than having to replace the entire appliance. Sure enough, Sears sells the top that fits my stove. 

It was not supposed to arrive until next Friday, but when I got home today there was a giant box in front of my door! Happy Day! 

I was excited to pop it on and cook my first meal, but I soon realized it wasn't going to be that easy. There were things to unscrew and to pry off like the prop-up-thingys incase you need to clean inside or relight the pilots:

and the oven vent.


I decided to cook one last meal on the old top instead. And deal with this project when I was no longer starving. First I wanted an omelet, but that quickly morphed into a frittata. Bacon, onions and carrot greens (yes really! I looked it up last night) They just taste crunchy.

Done!

Eating first was a good idea. There was a lot of cleaning that had to happen. It took me about an hour to deal with all of it. The trivets had to be scoured so that they wouldn't immediately leave dirty marks on the stove and all the knobs needed a good cleaning. I got a little bit too ambitious with the oven knob and so now I can't tell what temperature it is anymore. Guess what I have to purchase tomorrow?  

I'm also not quite finished. I still have to unscrew the prop-up-thingys but I need an allen wrench. I have a giant box of them I purchased at a flea market years ago. Too bad the box is at work for a project there and as I left today, I thought to myself, I won't need those this weekend. 

something for my niece

After my busy outdoor activities on Friday I collapsed with allergies. Oof! I had the ultimate gummy-brain. I managed to run some errands on Saturday before crashing. Sunday was a complete wash. I ended up binge-watching most of the second season of the original 21 Jump Street. That was fun. While watching I tried to find a knitting project. I stumbled on this little project: the Amish Puzzle Ball. So easy and so cute! Originally I wanted to make it red and purple to match Liam's hat but I didn't have enough yarn. It turned into the perfect opportunity to use up some of my stash. 

The project is so simple. Crochet twelve half circles, fold in half and crochet a seam to make cones. Crochet the outside with increases, then attach the cones and stuff with batting as you close them up. Connect as a ring. Assemble all into a ball. It's very soft and I hope she likes it. Who knows? it might be something Liam wants to play around with too. 

 At any rate it was inspected and approved. So it will be mailed tomorrow.

Today was primary day in Pennsylvania. The only person I was excited to vote for was John Fetterman, running for Lt. Governor. And I just checked - he is the Democratic candidate!
Yes. Really. This guy is going to be the next Lt. Gov. of the state of Pennsylvania. Never judge a book by it's cover. This man has a Master's Degree in Public Policy from Harvard. I have such high hopes for him. I actually saw him, live and in person in Philadelphia in December, driving his own SUV down Chestnut St. I was on my bicycle headed to the post office. It took me a moment to realize, Yes! it really was him! His window was rolled down and he must have sensed me staring (let's face it, totally star struck) at him, because he turned to look at me and I completely embarrassed myself. I pointed at him, waved like a mad crazy person and shouted, "I love you! I really do!" He was very nice and said I made his day, but you know, he really made mine.

A thunderstorm rolled through Philly this evening and my allergies are easing up  - finally!

It also left us a beautiful rainbow that Miss Mary and I enjoyed from her stoop while making sure everyone who passed us on the sidewalk saw it too. 

Weekend projects

 Friday morning I finally decided to tackle the mess that is the abandoned house behind me. It looks so much better when things are growing over it, but those things growing are also a problem. Ever since the tree was cut down, the invasive plants have taken over and have made quite a mess of that house. It's been ten years of junk accumulating back there. I don't even know how most of it got there.

 The iron sofa frame has been there all along, but the red and white KFC container is new from last month. Was someone back there? Did a squirrel drag it over there? It's a mystery. I do know that a few tenants ago in the house next door, used the empty lot as their own personal dumping grounds. Just tossing their garbage over the wall.
Then there was the tenant who tossed his lit cigarette into the mess and caught the whole place on fire. Luckily I had just seen him smoking and then looked up to see the smoke coming up above the edge of the wall.

 Or? maybe not? Maybe it would have been good to let the place burn to the ground. It's not really salvageable for anyone to purchase. 

 After about two hours of cutting paper mulberries, piling up some of the junk to be tossed in shifts and filling three large construction bags of trash (shoes, pots, clothes, food junk, kitchen utensils,  baby diapers) I had to stop.

 I wanted to pull up the disgusting carpet but there were too many black spiders crawling around on top of it.

 I was happy with the progress I had made. Now I just have to go back in next week and start hauling out some of the junk in the pile.



After that mess it was time for a fun project. Miss Mary and I had gone to purchase our spring plants and some flowers with left over money from the gift certificate we received from Green's Grow the previous week. We also bought 4x4s to make nicer planters.


With help from the West Philly Tool Library, I check out a chop saw and a set of very special drill bits that will drill a wide circle into wood so you can recess the head of a nail or bolt. Very practical.

The drill is a different story. Something happened to mine last summer. I haven't seen it since then. This is very sad because that drill was a good friend, helped me with a lot of projects. I think it was stolen, but I have no proof. There were so many people wandering in and out of my house last year. I have a second drill at school to use for drilling holes in boards. I brought that home. When I pulled it out to use it, it just didn't have enough power. Not only that, but I can't find my box of multi drill bits. This convinces me even more that the drill was "lifted" along with the bits. Sigh. oh well.

Mr. El left early in the morning, so I asked Miss Mary if she knew where he kept his and if I could borrow it. She brought me this the heavy-duty scary looking drill. But no complaints! It got the job done.

 Once they were finished, we hauled them out to the street, put them in, and planted the flowers.

 I don't know what it is about flowers. It just brightens everything and made us so happy.

Bees at last!

Yes! 

Finally - my bees have arrived. What a saga. 

Between my not putting a stamp on the envelope with my order, to all of the bees dying of heat when the first batch was brought up, I thought I'd never have bees again.

But this Saturday, all went smoothly. 

I picked up my two packages in Blue Bell (a 45 minute drive with no traffic from Philadelphia). On the way home I kept feeling that something was crawling around in my blouse. Thinking I was just imagining creepy-crawlies I kept driving. But then I put my elbow on the window sill of the car and a bee flew out! Thank goodness I didn't get stung.

Installing them into the hives went well and last night I let the queens out - again, no problems. Nobody stung me. yay! I still have to put honey supers on, but I'm going to wait a bit. Give the queen some time to adjust and let everyone know they are okay. 

I had another nice garden surprise; apparently, I have a wisteria vine in the garden.  

I had suspected as much for a few years as I spied a few remnants of blooms that hadn't quite met their maturity. But this year there was no mistake when I came home one day to find the above. 

Unfortunately they are intertwined with Mr. El's bundle of chain link fence he has been threatening to install for the last four years. sigh.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to figure out how to get the vine out of the chain link coil to save it. I'd really like more of these!

Book for Exhibit

Just under the wire, I finished my book for an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library. There is a show there of a very prominent Book Artist, Keith Smith. I have several of his books and use them often for instruction and inspiration. The Delaware Valley Chapter of the Guild of Bookworkers members made works based on Smith's non-adhesive bindings and they will be shown in conjunction with the exhibition. Cool! 

I've been doing a lot of research on bees in eager anticipation of mine (which I still don't have and am not sure I will get this weekend after all) and I stumbled across this book on google books: Langstroth's Hive and the Honey-Bee  Google books is a great resource to find rare and out of print books. If they are in the public domain they are often digitized in their entirety. You can download a pdf. From there it's not difficult to turn the pdf into jpegs and set everything imposition in InDesign. Print it out and Voilá! Book on Demand. I didn't use the entire text because it's nearly 600 pages, so I just chose about 60 of the pages I was interested in, the hive design, flowers the bees were interested in, and recipes. 

In his book 1, 2, & 3 Section bindings, Smith has instructions for a hexagon sewing. I took that and modified it to turn it into honey comb. 

Designing the pattern was a major challenge. I have several sewing cards where I tried doing all kinds of crazy things. I finally got what I thought would work and so I decided to make a little mock up. 

That's a lot of holes. 

Sorry for the blurry - but you get the idea. Things went fairly well until I got to the other side. The paper was just too perforated and I started tearing holes through them. 

I figured I had the hang of the binding anyway and could start working on the materials for the real book. 

The orange is a nice departure from all of my blue books. I picked up two pieces of Cave Paper at the College Book Arts conference and that came in handy. That's the inner cover. 

I couldn't find the right paper for the outside. I would have loved to use a sheet of the Walnut Cave Paper, but I don't have any of that. Luckily I remembered all of the gorgeous paper I bought in Korea! The beautiful Hanji papers were exactly what I wanted. 

I had forgotten how beautiful they all are. I'm glad I've saved them and not squandered them of silly projects. This is the one they were meant for. 

I chose the brown papers, and dipped two different shades in melted bees wax. The pages become slightly translucent so that orange Cave Paper shows through nicely.

It took over 9 hours to sew the seven signatures. 

Final touch,

a little gold bee for the front cover. 

I am really satisfied with this binding. So much so, I'm looking at the other two sheets of wax-dipped paper and thinking - I could make two more. Why not? 

I'm extra proud of myself because my mock crab-apple bloomed on Saturday. Boy howdy are my allergies kicking up. 

The tree is incredible this year. I've seen so many people stop and take pictures of it, reach up to touch the petals, and even a few people picking some branches. I don't mind. I always want to do that when I pass the cherry trees that are so spectacular. And if I could, I'd have a big vase of the blooms on my kitchen table.