cut the cards

One of my aims is to get back to making collages in 2018. My favorite blogger, Hanna, has proposed to challege herself in 2018 by creating 365 Collages and a number of folks are considering supporting her by cheering her on and/or by doing a 365 Project themselves. It seems like a good project for me, too.  I can get a bit of daily art practice, and maybe a bit of writing practice too by posting my progress.

I'm usually not very good at these lengthy challenges, but I have a different strategy this time. Almost every day I work on the crossword and Sudoku puzzles in my daily newspaper. I intend to treat the collage practice as just another daily puzzle. I'm not sure how how it will work, but it will be interesting to find out.

I've been searching my closet, desk drawers, and boxes of clippings to find any papers or cardboard that might be suitable as a base for collage. I was thinking of doing square collages, as they are out of my comfort zone, but I found pieces of cardboard here and there already cut to my usual 4 1/4 x 6 inch postcard size, so I'm going to compromise and cut paper for both  5" squares and 4x6" rectangles. So far I've cut enough paper for about 3 months' worth of collage. The two piles are way back at the top of this photo.

Normally I use flexible cardboard from cereal boxes for collage, but usually those collages are being mailed. Since this project is mostly for myself and will be more like a practice, I'm using anything I can find that can withstand glue and/or paint. I have some really thick cardboard, old envelopes, parts of catalogs, rejected postcards, watercolor paper, and even some magazine pages cut to size. I'm finally using papers from old experimentss and papers that have been sitting unused in boxes for ten years or more. I'm hopeful that using some of these materials will declutter some of my collection of "stuff".

makeshift work space

A longer shot of my counter top in the sewing room. The hole for the sink has been cut out and the new sink is the white thing on the floor. Back in the corner are the Wilsonart boxes the laminate came in. They are almost as tall as I am.

I didn't intend to be working on this project over the winter. I have been researching how-tos and collecting laminate samples for more than a year and planned to start the project next spring. It was hard to find a pattern I liked. I finally settled on a geometric retro pattern called Betty, an off-white ground with patches of aqua and pale orange. When Wilsonart announced they would be discontinuing the pattern December 1 I was forced to take action an buy the laminate in November. I had to special order the long piece for this counter.  I was told I got the last large piece of laminate they had; that it was already out of production.

I knew I wouldn't be able to store the laminate for long. It's not very thick and tends to expand & contract with changes in temperature & humidity. I started building the countertops, so I could get the laminate glued down and not have to worry about it getting bent out of shape. Wilsonart recommends particleboard as the substrate for the counter. I don't like particleboard, but its expansion-contraction rate is more similar to laminate than plywood is, so that's what I used.

I'm sealing the particleboard around the sink area with oil-based fast-drying polyurethane in the hope it will prevent damage in case there is a water leak in the future. All the cabinets in my house were made of particleboard and and the area under my kitchen sink has already been subjected to water over the last 30 years. It's no longer flat and parts of the surface have disintegrated. The same goes for the area under the bathroom sink. I hope to have some polyurethane left over to seal those areas, and then I may try to cover them with leftover laminate. I tested the poly on some scrap particleboard and it does seem to repel water, at least in the short run. I apply it with a foam brush, wait a few hours and apply another coat. The underside is done and I'm working on the top side now. I may be unboxing the laminate in a few days.

weird Santa

One of the oddest depictions of Santa Claus I've seen.

It's appropriate, I reckon, since I'm probably having an odd Christmas compared to many folks. No children here and most of my family are a thousand miles away. It's just me and the dog.

The thermometer says 50 degrees F. but the wind is howling from the north at 25mph, so it feels closer to freezing, at least to me. It's a good day to hunker down indoors with a cup of hot coffee and some freshly baked cookies.

Instead of Christmas, I'm celebrating some accomplishments of the past year, and I'm looking forward to finishing some big projects during the new year. The last few days I've been deleting many old files from my computer desktop and organizing the ones I'm keeping. It can be hard to find something when you know it's in "Today's Stuff", but that folder contains a "This Week" folder, and that contains a "Files Accessed Today" folder, and at least a couple hundred files are only labeled "Screen Shot" or "some weird number downloaded from some website somewhere".

This is a detail of an 8 foot long kitchen countertop I hope to finish within the next month or so. I brought the unfinished counter in from the garage and it's now in my sewing room. Everything needs to remain above 50-60 degrees for a specified time during the laminating process and there was too much fluctuation outside. Also it's no fun working in an unheated garage. Needless to say, all progress on my latest quilt has stopped. All my sewing stuff is covered in sheets to prevent the accumulation of sawdust and other debris from working on the counter. There's barely room for me to move around anyway. I removed these clamps today and have begun sealing the area where the sink will go. More on this later.

patio table

I signed up for Steve Ramsey's online woodworking course called The Weekend Woodworker, and this little patio table is the first project. I'm totally amazed that I made this and that it literally took one weekend. I'm so looking forward to the next project.

color matching

3 solid fabrics on left are from Retailer #1. 3 solids on left are from Retailer #2.

I had forgotten how much I love fabric until I decided to start making quilts.
I also forgot how unreliable online shopping can be when it comes to color.

I know almost immediately I wanted to do something with this funky print fabric by Michael Miller called Cuban Beat that includes some of my favorite hues of blue and green. I have a few solids of Kona Cotton by Robert Kaufman that I've enjoyed working with, so I also knew that was what I wanted to use to coordinate with the print. Since the only real fabric store in town closed about a year ago I've been buying fabric online. Kona is readily available but each retailer seems to carry different colors and I was finding it hard to find the right matches for my print. After some comparing, I realized how unreliable my monitor was. Which retailer was displaying the colors better - Retailer #1 with the lighter shades or Retailer #2 with the darker shades? Checking a 3rd and 4th retailer only added to my confusion. I could match the color names, but no two color displays were equal on any color.

Kona Cotton Color Card

I was quite distressed until I found that Kona manufactures a swatch card that includes  tiny fabric swatches of all 340 currently available colors. I ended up purchasing this Kona Color Card for $30 with free shipping. It arrived folded neatly as a letter-sized card. Each indiviual piece of fabric is 7/8"x1-1/8" (2.2cm x 2.8cm) and when it's unfolded the card is 11" wide and 50" long (28x127cm).

A digitally printed collection on paper is also available for under $10.

I was willing to spend extra for the actual fabric samples because I'm planning to use more solids in future projects and I'm particular about matching colors. Someone who is less of a control freak could probably make do with the printed samples.

You may have to hunt on google or wait for a sale for a similar price. I purchased the card through Amazon, but ass of this writing I can't find the swatch card for the same price I paid.

mmm, coffee

I spotted this old Japanese matchbook cover on ebay a few days ago. A really nice illustration, but I've been thinking a lot about coffee ever since. I gave it up more than a year ago because I was drinking way too much of it, and all the sugar and milk I added to it were big negatives for my calorie intake & glucose level.

Last night the temperature dipped down close to freezing for the first time this fall. My hands & self were so cold this morning I decided to bust out the old coffee maker. The bit of coffee I had was a month past its "best by" date but still brewed up nice and strong. The two cans of evaporated milk at the back of the cupboard didn't fare so well; both were curdled badly. No milk for me today.

I found the coffee was quite good without milk. If only I could learn to forego the sugar. Fake sugar just doesn't work for me in coffee.

My dog has just been trying to put her nose in the coffee cup and has generated a six-inch string of slobber in her efforts to snarf the precious brew. Funny puppy, but Ewwww that slobber! She got a dog treat.

new toy

 
Yes, it's a Table Saw! I've been wanting one for several years for DIY projects around the house. I have a handheld circular saw, which is fine for some things, but it gets awfully tedious when you have to cut a number of pieces to the same size (kind of like quilting). I have to mark each board, then clamp a straight edge guide to the board, then secure the board with more clamps to a work table, then saw, then undo all the clamps and repeat. With a table saw I should be able to set the guides on the table and then slide each board through the blade and out the other side.


Before I could start learning how to use the saw I had to build a table to secure the saw at the same level as my work table. I wanted it to be mobile, so I could roll it into a corner of the garage when not in use, which meant adding casters. I built most of the table in a day, and spent another few days back and forth to the big box store to replace a board I messed up and to find hardware to actually secure the saw. The whole time I was sawing boards I kept thinking "this would be so much easier with a table saw." I spent another day attaching miscellaneous saw parts, and learning how to undo and redo different things. Today I'm finally going to plug in the saw and see if it actually works.