Still here...

still peein' outside.

Won't go into it much (okay, I'm such a liar!) except to say THIS IS GETTING REALLY BORING. The contractors keep telling us "by Friday," but they forget to tell us which Friday of which year. There have been too many "unexpected" developments, like having to completely remove the bathroom floor because the original was soggy, and putting in a new one. We had a huge, gaping room with a straight-down basement view for too many days, and it gave us the feeling we were about to tip over sideways and fall in whenever we had to walk past it. So we stuck our laundry hamper and a rolling wire shelf in front of the doorway to create a barrier.

They had to take out the wall between the bathroom and utility porch to make the bathroom 4" bigger so it would fit the clawfoot tub going side-to-side instead of lengthwise, the way it originally was. So we had no walls for a few days, too. Not good, since it's been raining! You know what I think? I think we should just ditch the tub altogether and stick a corner shower in. We never take baths, anyway, only showers. They're 'way faster. But, my landlady wants the bathroom to be "period," so the clawfoot tub stays.

And the house is so cold, our hands hurt.

And I really, really hate coming home from work to find out "they" forgot to turn the water back on when they left, so we have no water use and have to use the 2.5-gallon jugs from the grocery store. Once, the water was off for 3 days solid because it took that long before they came back to do more work.

Needless to say (but I'll say it, anyway, since I'm feeling bitchy), I haven't been able to do a whole lot of artsy stuff. You need clean hands for all that, and, although we can certainly wash our hands, we have to keep an eye on how many jugs of water we use. So, no impromptu hand-washing.

My sons are being pretty tolerant about us going to their place to use the shower. They'll be almost as glad to have our bathroom finished as we will. It'll save on gas mileage, too. No more trekking all the way across town to bathe.

I wander around a lot, mumbling "I only wanted the bathtub faucet leak fixed!"

I started working again on these gloves for Daughter #2-- this is the third one I'm working on, not because she has three hands, but because I'm using much bigger needles and yarn than the original pattern specifies. I wanted them to be done a lot earlier in the year (so did she!), but I get discouraged easily, and the two times I finished one and it turned out too big, I had to wait for myself to get some enthusiasm going again to start all over. This is something I can do without having to keep washing my hands! And knitting doesn't require water.




These are a few beads from the batches I made as an experiment with my convection oven. Got the oven a while ago to be "dedicated" to polymer clay, but every, single thing I've ever cured in it burned to caramel. I wised up and got an oven thermometer, and found out the oven heats 100 degrees F above the number on the dial! It's a EuroPro, and it's supposed to be really good for polyclay, but I guess that's AFTER you figure out the idiosyncracies of the oven. I also have to let the oven run for a half-hour, to let it go through its temperature spikes and finally settle down. I marked the temp positions in permanent pen next to oven dial, and I still keep the thermometer in the oven while baking anything.

So, here's the result of spending an evening sitting on the floor next to my convection oven, which is sitting on a kitchen chair, constantly watching the thermometer inside and making adjustments, and knitting to pass the time. I think I'll finally be able to start making things again. As long as the water stays on and I can keep my hands scrupulously clean.