Catching up

I've been doing a lot of things around the house. Here are a few of them:

Screen door bracket:  The little piece of metal that connects the screen door to the mechanism that closes it broke.  It is just a small, shaped piece of thin metal with holes drilled in it, and two sides bent in. I was fairly certain that I could make a replacement. I hunted in our hardware hoard, and found a similarly-sized bracket, salvaged from a piece of particle board furniture. It just needed a few holes drilled into it.

Many people don't know that you can drill holes in metal with a non-electric drill. The drill bit does need to be of a material and temper that can cut into the metal, and it is important to get the bit well-tightened into the drill's chuck, to keep it from getting stuck in the metal. It helps to use a little oil to reduce friction, and to put a piece of wood behind it to drill into. I did still have a little trouble with the metal dimpling out on the back side as the drill was about to break through.

We're still going to have to buy a replacement bracket, because the one I made is far too strong; the door's most likely mode of failure is now that the holes for the screws holding the bracket will strip out. The manufacturer (famous window company that starts with "A") has thoughtfully provided for this by putting extra screw holes into the door and bracket, but that only will save us once.

Sewing machine cover:  My sewing machine has a clunky metal case, and I do not enjoy moving the machine in and out of it. Also, I often leave my sewing machine out for long periods. I used a laminated plastic bag from our last bulk buy of rice, and sewed a quick dust cover for my sewing machine. The machine was able to sew the plastic just fine, though I used more care than usual, just in case.

Transplanting grass:  For some reason, the grass here loves to grow in the flower beds, but hates to grow in the lawn. Plus I had a bit of bare ground from shifting the landscaping timbers around a little. I moved some large chunks that were very nearly rollable sod, as well as one smaller clump, to that bare spot. After planting, I gave them a good dose of water. So far, they are surviving.

Free greens:  My husband brought home some lamb's quarter weeds from his garden plot, and I fried up the leaves. They are edible only in moderation, because they contain some oxalic acid. We also have wood sorrel and purslane growing in the yard (unsprayed), along with dandelions, of course.

Laundry basket to boot tray

We had an old, broken, plastic, rectangular laundry basket that I was cutting into pieces so it would go into the trash bin more easily. Then I noticed that the bottom of it was not broken, and was shaped an awful lot like the kind of boot tray that I have been wanting to buy for quite a while.

So I sawed off the sides of the basket with a hand saw, and then used a knife to even out the sawn edges, cutting away from myself because the plastic was not cutting evenly and smoothly. And that was it.

This is not a perfect solution, because as a boot tray it holds precisely two and a half pairs of adult footwear, and we still have at least half a dozen pairs of assorted shoes kicking around on the landlord's carpet remnant inside our front door. But it is progress.

A stump table

A few weeks ago, there was a work day at church, and my husband was helping. He called and asked if I wanted some pine logs. I said I'd take a couple.

He brought home several sections, from three to four feet long, and eight to ten inches in diameter. I got out the drawknife and put in some time right away to get the bark peeled off; the easiest times to debark a log are when it's fresh, and when it is so old that the bark is practically falling off on its own. In between those times, it is very difficult, and no fun at all. One of the logs was partly in that in-between state because of insect damage. I struggled through peeling that one, and put it in quarantine.

A drawknife is the best tool for peeling logs, because the double handle gives you good control over both ends of the blade, but it could be done with just a sturdy knife or a hatchet, with some care.

When I finished peeling the other logs, they were bare, but quite wet because they were so green. I left them to dry, turning them occasionally, and trimmed off the little bits of branches.

Some days later, I got around to cutting one of the logs in half, to make two stump tables. I used a hand saw, and it was a lot of work exercise, but I did cut all the way through it.

One half found a home in my bedroom, to provide a place to put a cup of tea when I am sitting in my cushy re-upholstered chair in there. I put a piece of paper under it, in case it leaks a little sap.  I haven't decided where to put the other one yet.

Weaving

I've been working off and on, over the last couple of months, in building a simple table loom and trying it out.

The reference book I'm using is an older one, The Joy of Hand Weaving, by Osma Gallinger Tod, second edition. It is structured as a series of lessons, to take someone from being an absolute beginner at weaving, on into a fair number of intermediate and advanced techniques. There's enough in this book to keep the reader busy for years.

The plans for the loom I built are from this book, aside from a few small modifications of my own. I built the loom two inches wider, to allow me to weave fabric up to twelve inches wide. I put the stopping mechanisms for the rollers on the left side instead of the right. And for the reed/beater, instead of using thin cedar strips from cigar boxes to space the warp threads, I used bamboo skewers. You can still get wooden cigar boxes--there is a cigar box reseller here in the Twin Cities--but it seemed like it would be very difficult to nail the strips without splitting them. I found a hint online about using string to space the skewers, which are set within grooves.

All the wood and other parts are from materials we had lying around, except for the skewers, which cost $1.49 plus sales tax. I cheated and used power tools for a couple of steps, but it could have all been done with hand tools.

Once I had the loom and accessories made, I entered the process of achieving mastery by making every single mistake that could be made...to paraphrase physicist Neils Bohr. So far, I've discovered at least a dozen.

To wind the warp, I flipped over the coffee table that is in the picture, and wound around the legs in an X pattern. That worked well until I tried to take it off; the sticks I was using to keep everything straight (lease sticks) slid out and left me with a mess, but I eventually untangled enough to warp the loom with a yard or so of warp.

Then I experimented with using a wide variety of yarns and threads. The teal yarn in the photo was difficult to weave, because it has large nubs every few inches that kept getting caught on the warp threads. Another yarn was very thin, and took a lot of rows to make one inch of weaving. Still, I think it was good to start off with the more difficult yarns, as an attentive beginner.

My first weaving I hung up as a wall hanging. I've started on a small rug, which I will have to weave in strips, then join, but I haven't gotten very far with it yet.

One thing that surprised me about weaving was how tiring it was at first to be reaching so far forward so frequently, until I grew some more muscle to help hold my arms up.

Inflation adjustments

I have a rule of thumb that I use for converting prices from past decades to current dollars, to account for inflation:

1900s price to present-day:  multiply by 100.  Something that cost a penny in 1905 would cost about a dollar now.

1960s price to present-day:  multiply by 10.  Something that cost ten cents in 1965 would cost about a dollar now.

1990s price to present-day:  multiply by 2.  Something that cost fifty cents in 1995 would cost about a dollar now.

Inflation is, of course, a way for governments to increase their spendable funds without overtly raising taxes. Savers get the short end of the stick, which is why I make investing in tools and skills and Heaven a high priority. These price increases happened in spite of tremendous advances in technology and commerce over the years.

My rule of thumb came in very handy when I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. My jaw dropped repeatedly over the things that this supposedly poor family was spending money on, and in what quantities. Although I guess it makes sense; John Bunyan was writing about Vanity Fair in the seventeenth century.

Big bed in a small room

Because of the distribution of children in our family, we made the master bedroom a shared children's room, and put our bed in one of the smaller bedrooms. It's a king-size bed, so it takes up most of the floor space.

The bed left just enough room at its foot for a narrow walkway to the closet and to the far side of the room; the path always felt cramped.

But! I just had an idea! A king-sized bed is not exactly a square, even though it looks like one. It is a few inches longer than it is wide...so, if I turned the bed sideways--just the bed, not us--then I could free up a little more space at the foot, which would make it easier to get around the bed.

I tried it, and I found that turning the bed gave me three more inches. Which doesn't sound like a big difference, but now I can walk straight through there, instead of having to turn sideways a bit and sidle through.

I lost three inches at the sides of the bed, but it doesn't matter as much, because there was more room there to begin with.

I'm not sure this change is going to sit well with my husband, though--his feet were hanging off the end of the bed even before I moved it.  I'll have to see how long it takes him to notice.