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mapsedgeIf a single day can make up for a long, unpleasant week, I would say that Saturday, 7/28, did that. It was probably the hardest day of physical labor I've put in in a long while. I tried to type this that evening and nodded off in my chair.
My friend Star is moving and putting her present house on the market, and so has been making improvements to the place preparatory to listing it. My part of that was to improve the fence surrounding the back garden, replacing all of the pickets whose tops or bottoms were too worn. I purchased a hundred pickets, ripped them down to size (even counting for labor, still cheaper than buying the right size, even if I could have found them), and spent three mornings ripping off the old and banging on the new.
It was tough work, mostly because of the heat. At 70°, such work is no big deal; at 100°, it's a big deal. Thankfully, though, the area was (mostly) in the shade, and the space between the rows of houses made a lightly breezy space. Once I got into the rhythm of it, it was pretty mindless: rip off a dozen boards; clean the old rails of old fasteners; tack the new pickets in place; go back, drive all the nails; repeat. Mindless in this case is good, because in the heat my brain doesn't function as it should.
The one casualty - there's always at least one, that's why we keep score - is my right thumb. When setting a nail, I usually hold the nail between my first and second fingers, the point outermost, like a bad actor smoking a pretend cigarette. That way, if the hammer misses (and my wrists tired very quickly, so the hammer did miss from time to time) it strikes the soft flesh of the inside of my hand and doesn't hurt as much. One nail, one stinkin' nail, I didn't think and held it like normal people with my thumb and first finger: the side of my thumb took a nearly full-force blow, right on the joint.
I didn't break anything, but even now, four days later, my thumb aches constantly, and hurts a lot if I accidentally touch it against something; being the side of a thumb, that happens all the damn time. I'm favoring it as much as I can, but let us just say that the spacebar on my keyboard is a particular enemy just now.
The fence, should you be wondering, looks great.
We're still catching up at Seamlyne, with nearly $1000 in paid orders in the queue. We have stumbled upon an interesting new market. The kids' Irish dance school is creating a new school "uniform" for one of its classes, and I've been hired to produce the skirts for it. I knew when the kids got into Irish dance that I'd end up sewing for someone - that's just how it works - but I didn't expect it to be so fast or such a large commission. The challenge is the deadline: I have two weeks...KCRF and the Minnesota faire start Labor Day so there's lots of tights and shirt orders...OY. I'm up to it, but I'll have to delegate more than I usually do.
My friend Star is moving and putting her present house on the market, and so has been making improvements to the place preparatory to listing it. My part of that was to improve the fence surrounding the back garden, replacing all of the pickets whose tops or bottoms were too worn. I purchased a hundred pickets, ripped them down to size (even counting for labor, still cheaper than buying the right size, even if I could have found them), and spent three mornings ripping off the old and banging on the new.
It was tough work, mostly because of the heat. At 70°, such work is no big deal; at 100°, it's a big deal. Thankfully, though, the area was (mostly) in the shade, and the space between the rows of houses made a lightly breezy space. Once I got into the rhythm of it, it was pretty mindless: rip off a dozen boards; clean the old rails of old fasteners; tack the new pickets in place; go back, drive all the nails; repeat. Mindless in this case is good, because in the heat my brain doesn't function as it should.
The one casualty - there's always at least one, that's why we keep score - is my right thumb. When setting a nail, I usually hold the nail between my first and second fingers, the point outermost, like a bad actor smoking a pretend cigarette. That way, if the hammer misses (and my wrists tired very quickly, so the hammer did miss from time to time) it strikes the soft flesh of the inside of my hand and doesn't hurt as much. One nail, one stinkin' nail, I didn't think and held it like normal people with my thumb and first finger: the side of my thumb took a nearly full-force blow, right on the joint.
I didn't break anything, but even now, four days later, my thumb aches constantly, and hurts a lot if I accidentally touch it against something; being the side of a thumb, that happens all the damn time. I'm favoring it as much as I can, but let us just say that the spacebar on my keyboard is a particular enemy just now.
The fence, should you be wondering, looks great.
We're still catching up at Seamlyne, with nearly $1000 in paid orders in the queue. We have stumbled upon an interesting new market. The kids' Irish dance school is creating a new school "uniform" for one of its classes, and I've been hired to produce the skirts for it. I knew when the kids got into Irish dance that I'd end up sewing for someone - that's just how it works - but I didn't expect it to be so fast or such a large commission. The challenge is the deadline: I have two weeks...KCRF and the Minnesota faire start Labor Day so there's lots of tights and shirt orders...OY. I'm up to it, but I'll have to delegate more than I usually do.