Tristan's Tantalizing Thoughts

• 16:18 Braving the rain up 29 to pick up K, then early dinner sort of for my birthday. Later, napping at Handcrafters. #
• 08:18 I'm pretty sure I'm the coolest damn 49 year old you know. #

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Just a quickie:

The web site update is now up and running. check out the updates for things to look at, and enjoy the new layout!

Have a great holiday weekend everyone - I'll be back updating next week.

bibliogrrl has a bit of claymation horror and chicken fried bacon.

Yeah...I friended her.

Hell...a claymation horror short and chicken fried bacon...I may love her.

I has the problem.

Well it’s not really a problem, and then again it is.

My barony camps here at N31


That sad red mark? That’s the bridge that had to die, I don’t know who built it but I am sure they never meant for it to last for the 10ish years it’s been there. In any case the Coopers have decided it’s time for Mr Bridge to die, however in their kindness they are going to let us build a new bridge! Therein lies the joy and the pain and well the problem.

See I am excited about the bridge project! A lot! like really! The coopers set a bar that can easily be achieved. That’s where the problem begins. I want to build a bridge and have it be a Windmasters Hill bridge. Which meant I want to be stronger than anything else around, It would be beautiful, unnecessarily complicated, proper to period, and will last a hundred lifetimes.

It’s not a big bridge, its 22 feet from footer to footer. To be “period” it would pretty much need to be an arch, but trying to find examples of wooden bridges from period is . . . not as easy as one might think its. Stone? I have stone bridges coming out of my ears, the problem is I am a woodworker, not a mason. A well I just finished a book where the stone bridge collapses and kills people so I am not at home with my masonry skills just yet ;o)

I could get by with this:

But . . . I can do this in my sleep, it is function. But there is no beauty, there is none of the key points that I want that say “Windmasters” to me. I am looking at arches in churches and at decorations in the wood and I know there can be something beautiful there. I want to leave something special not just a way to shuffle over a creek so you don’t have to walk around.

When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor.

Happy Birthday to my Sweetie!

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Preparation moves along for this weekend.

Those of you who are coming to help in the demolition festivities don't forget to bring your work gloves and sturdy shoes. We'll provide hard hats, safety glasses and hearing protection.

Tools we could use or use more of:
sledge hammers
cold chisels
wheel barrows
pry bars and wrecking bars
reciprocating saws
cordless drills/drivers
shovels
rakes
other implements of destruction

Please put your name on your tools so they get back to you.

Here comes the same old song about Mexico...

Steroids are gone, pain has returned.....with a vengeance.  Think I'll go throw up now

 

I'd like to remind myself that taking the hemming of the navy petticoat to the last Tuesday night practice outdoors will limit my productivity as the sun sets earlier than 9pm, especially when overcast. Perhaps the yellow knitting would have been a better project idea. You'd think I would have learned this from the hemming of Roland's daggy hood, yellow by daylight, purple by candlelight was brutal. Eh, at least I got it started.

My black cotton/linen petticoat that was my first bit of cartridge pleating ever has now been successfully converted from a back closing petticoat to a front closing petticoat. Note, back closing petticoats are a pain. Apparently I sewed on those hooks and eyes for life as I was only able to remove the hooks and those eyes are stuck on. It is nice to have a garment that I made back in 1997 still be functional and made well enough for me not to be ashamed of it 11 years later.

Despite inspiration from Pennsic and conversations, etc., I am committed to slowly working through my little unfinished projects before starting on something new. I should gather a mend pile as well. I know there are a few items in need of buttons, and mendy bits that I noticed before war and in the great laundry task after-war.
So I need to:

• finish re-hemming the navy petticoat
• finish tacking in the lining on a blue square-necked doublet
• make a few more cloth buttons for the brown wool doublet
• sew button holes and buttons on brown wool doublet
• do the hand sewing on a couple of plain coifs and forehead clothes
• finish hemp boned pair of bodies, lacing holes on second side and edges

that looks like an ambitious enough list so far...
I should take pictures of my finally finished shift and the converted petticoat closure for posterity.

After we used Metro Bath and discovered that others used them with favorable results, I figured I'd ask first this time.

We're in need of recommendations for a kitchen cabinet remodeling. Yes, I know, we don't use our kitchen except for parties, but our cabinets are in dire need of an upgrade (resurfacing or replacing) and we'd like to add a few drawers to some of the lower cabinets, etc. So, any recommendations for companies/contractors in the DC Metro/Silver Spring area? We've got one rough estimate from Home Depot, but I don't remember being thrilled with the options at the time.

Our floors and appliances are fine, we have no complaints about our countertops (they are good enough for us) but we need new cabinet doors and surfaces, hardware, etc.

So, any recommendations out there?

I have to burn an American flag. This really bothers me.

The flag which flew over our garage is a cheaper one, one of the few I could find after 9/11, and came hanging on an unfinished dowel; never thought about the dowel being unsealed until it snapped off in one of the high wind days this summer and I noticed that the flag is starting to mold in the fly from the dowel holding moisture inside the sleeve. So, I should retire it honorably and buy a new one.

The only proper way to retire a flag is to burn it.
Eventually, I have to build a large fire and burn it.
I have to think about how to do this respectfully, because it is a thing too important.

 




...about whether Olympic Teabagging will catch on or not? 









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Glommed from evilgrins and weirdfolks .

Your result for The Let's Parler French Test...

96% LikelyToSurvive!

My French professors would be so glad.  Personally, I'm amazed.  I suck at French.

 

I hope it was meant as a joke.

Can a news channel put something like that on the screen and really stand behind it? Really?

Wow...some little play on words there. Eww! Ahh!

I smell vinegar and water.

Click images for full size.





Can't keep spending money we don't have. And as more and more of the government's paper is held by foreign banks and governments, don't you worry about what happens when the loans come due? I do.

Bet other countries aren't going to line up to forgive our foreign debt like we've been doing for other foreign countries over the entirety of my awareness of politics. Seems like barely a year will go by without hearing a story about Country A being in dire straits and the U. S. forgiving their debt to us.

Apologies for the lack of good blogging - I've been working on re-vamping and updating my web site.  I am sick to death of the old template, so I'm giving it a more modern look (and eliminating the big white gap on the right side of the screen that makes me want to kill myself out of embarrassment every time I look at it).

Updates soon.  I don't have the petticoats article written yet, but there will be a little bit of new content, mostly in the Le Monde section, which is getting a serious makeover.  A few pictures, an extra article or two, and *poof* new site!

...to protect the legume way of life. And to make the world safe for groundnuts everywhere.

More about peanuts than you want to know this morning.

Glommed from benchilada and randompictures 

Last night I finally finished all the outlining on my scarletwork coif. I’m very pleased with how it has come out and if anyone is interested I have pictures up in my photo album. I’m planning to fill in the leaves and possibly the vines with fill stitches so I still have a ways to go before it’s finished. I’m now really wishing that I had tracked the actual time that I spent embroidering. I started the project in 2007 (as you can see from the earlier pictures) but I haven’t worked on it straight through. I’ll get into it for a while and then set it back down for a while so I really don’t know how long I’ve spent actually working on it. I can estimate it but I’d really like to know the real numbers. Oh well, I’ll make an estimate and track from here on out but I’m definitely going to start tracking my time on all my projects (sewing, embroidery, articles, etc.) from now on. Maybe that will help me focus. ;)

On a completely unrelated topic though I wanted to share some pictures of the super cool hawk who spent the afternoon in our backyard last Sunday.