More Road Trip Photos - June 2016

Bridge abutment

I am sorry that the photos are allover the place rather than inline.  The blog is giving me a hard time about positioning the pictures when I spend a long time writing a post.  I could not get the pictures to go where I wanted so I just kept adding pictures that might not have been put on the blog.

I have been working on the soft sculpture lamb project, but at this point I don't have any new photos.  I have done a fair amount of work on the torso of the lamb. Knotting in one strand of wool at a time is a very time consuming process.  It will be a few days yet before the project is completed.

Drawbridge.

Tunnel under a mountain.

For today, I am posting a few more pictures from my recent road trip.  It is hard to say what will catch my eye.  One of the things that turned out to be the focus of this trip was infrastructure.  As I blogged last time, it is absolutely awe inspiring to get out and actually see the things that make our country work.  We take our good fortune for granted so often.  It is easy to forget that much of what we have today is due to the work and effort of so many people.  For example, we go to the grocery store and pick up an orange without a second thought about how it arrived there.  Oranges don't grow just anywhere.  Most of them are shipped to us.  Someone had to grow the oranges, pick the oranges, clean, and sort them.  By one means or another the oranges were shipped to us: truck, plane, or train.  People had to mine the ores and build the means of transportation:  the highways, rails, or airports that allowed the orange to be brought to us.  Someone had to receive the oranges, get them to their respective stores, and put them out for you to buy.  All of this is completely out of sight and out of mind.  If you could follow any product from start to finish, you would be amazed at how many people are involved in delivering that product to you.

Barge in a shallow inlet.

There are many things that are falling away.  The past is disappearing right before our eyes and most of the time we don't even notice it.  Last time I blogged, I mentioned that I had noticed that a lot older churches no longer had their steeples and that many of the newer churches are not building steeples onto their churches.  Steeples are disappearing from the landscape.  Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of steeples, but they are disappearing from view.  One day in the future, we may turn around to find that they are all gone.  In another blog a year or so ago, I had also blogged that the old white farm houses with tin roofs were also disappearing and had been replaced by new homes.  I had also blogged about hay ricks having disappeared from the landscape, being first replaced by hay bales and then by giant rolls of hay.   It just seems that things are disappearing so quickly.  Things that had been common for hundreds of years (church steeples) or even a thousand years (hay ricks) are starting to disappear or have disappeared in the course of a generation.

Marina

Well, probably no one misses hay ricks.  Forking hay by hand onto a tripod of saplings was a lot of work.  The giant bales of hay are picturesque  in the field as well.  It is just an example of the way things are changing.  Architecture is a bit different.  At one time, a building was built to be beautiful; a feast for the eye as well as functional.  Now, for the most part, architecture is all about cramming the most amount of function into the least amount of space for the lowest cost.  Much of our architecture resembles a large box.  While on one level cost efficiency is admirable, we, as a society, have lost something from the practice of removing the beautiful from our lives.

Psychic Reader office.

Infrastructure is functional for the most part, but at times, people have taken on the time and expense of also making it beautiful.  Bridges are one example of this.  Sometimes they are just a span, other times they are a span that is built to be beautiful as well as functional.

Infrastructure also decays.  Sooner or later it needs to be repaired or replaced.  But in between those times it changes.  The changes are interesting to me as well.  The changes show character and how time and weather (and also pollution) have affected the object.   It once was like this, and now it is like that.  Look around and see what is and what was before it is gone.  And for goodness sake, take a picture of it.  It will be gone sooner than you think.

Double deck bridge.

Rusting tanks.

While I am on my soap box here, I thought I would show another picture of something that is disappearing, or if not disappearing, at least out of sight for the most part.  However, in the case of psychic readers they have moved out of the country and into strip malls.  They generally use the title "Spiritual Advisor."  Years ago, there were many more fortune tellers plying their trade in buildings along the highway.  I remember seeing them along the roads out in the country.  Many of them had large signs along the road calling themselves Mother, Sister, or Reverend (insert name here).  I saw two of them along the way in Maryland.  I managed to get a photo of one as we drove by.  I used to see these all over.  Now, not so often. 

Commuter train.

Sometimes it is hard to get a photo of the interesting things I see along the road.  By the time I see it, I have to get the camera up and focused we have flashed past it already.  Along the highway, this could be at seventy miles per hour (112.654 kilometers per hour).  I don't have much time to get a photo before we are beyond it.  There are so many shots that I wish I could have taken.  I don't know if I will get a chance to get another picture of it because it may not be there if I happen to come that way again.

Check back for a new blog post on the lamb soft sculpture on Sunday.

Lamb Soft Sculpture - Part 11

Today I have some pictures of my lamb soft sculpture project.  Because of my travel schedule, it has been sitting on my workbench for some time.  Now that I am back, I have been making some good progress on it.  Progress is a relative thing, though.  It has taken me quite a bit of time on this because of the method I am using for adding the wool roving to the sculpture.

Before the internet clogs by all the crafters writing me to tell me that I am doing extra work that does not have to be done, I want to say that I know and I am doing it anyway.  I have my reasons for using the method, even if it is much more work.  Many times a project that is made by quick methods will not hold up in the long run.  When I make a project, I make it as if I expect for it to last a hundred years.  Taking some extra steps will help ensure that the project is one that has the potential to become an heirloom piece.

In this case, the wool roving is added by hand knotting each individual strand before it is felted with a needle tool.  It is a slow process.  In the middle of the lamb, where it is easier to work, I am knotting a strand in a blazing forty seconds.  When working between the legs of the lamb, it may be closer to a minute per strand because of the difficulty of working in such a small area.  Knotting each strand will help keep the wool roving in place.  If the roving were just needle felted on, it could be pulled out at some point.  Even if a strand is pulled out, the knots will help keep the wool attached to the lamb.

I will describe my method, although I doubt that many people will want to use it because it is so time consuming.  The process of hand knotting is painstaking, but a little organization helps it to go faster.   My first few knots took a little longer, but I quickly figured out  where to place my tools so that I could use them efficiently.  Putting them back in the same place each time saves searching for things at each step.

I open a package of wool roving.  The roving comes in one yard long lengths (0.9144 meter), which I then cut down into nine segments, each segment is four inches long.  (111.44 cm.).  At this point I try to be fairly accurate on this measurement.  I found from experimentation that 3and a half inches the strands were too short to knot easily.  Three and three quarter inches per strand was easier but still took more time than using a four inch strand.  Four inches was just about right.  Anything more was just wasting wool.  Since I have a worktable where I can leave my work undisturbed while I go on about my day, I go ahead and cut all the segments at once.  If you are in a situation where you are packing up your work and putting it away, I would cut one four inch segment at a time so that you don't have wool coming apart everywhere.  So now, I have nine thick four inch long segments.  It is time to begin.

I tried a number of needles for this project, but I found that my three inch doll making needle worked best.  Wide eyed needles such as a chenille needle broke under the strain of pulling the wool through the body.  I expect that there are a number of heavy upholstery needles that would have worked as well as the doll making needle, but I did not have them at hand.

To thread the needle I used a hook type needle threading tool.  It is sometimes called a ribbon threader.  The manufacturer of the one I was using was LoRan.  They are not always easy to find at craft stores.  I did find them on Amazon.  Anyway, I would pinch off a piece of wool roving from my four inch segment.  Explaining how much to pull off is a bit hard to explain.  If you pull off too thick of a piece it will be to thick to thread through the needle.  If you pull off to thin a piece the area will look too spare.  About half as much roving as will fit through the needle is about right.  You will figure out the right amount quickly when you see it.  Pull about a half inch of roving through the needle.

This process is very cumbersome to write.  It actually moves much more quickly than it would seem from the instructions.  In no time at all, you will find that making the stitch flows from one motion to the next.  Holding the needle in your right hand, with a half inch of roving threaded through the needle, take a half inch stitch into the soft sculpture.  (I am right handed, so these are written as right hand directions, so apologies to left handers.)  As the point of the needle begins to come come clear of the fabric, take the needle in your left hand and pull while using your right hand to grab the tail of the wool roving.  As the needle comes completely out, and the roving starts to come out of the eye of the needle, trap that section of the roving with your right middle finger.  Place the needle into your pin cushion.  Grasp one end of the wool roving in each hand and cross one end over the other to make a loop.  Pick up a crochet hook and insert it through the loop.  Grab the end of the roving with the hook and pull it through the loop to make a knot.  Make a second knot the same way.  Put down the crochet hook and pick up the needle felting tool with a single needle in it.  Jab the knots a few times to felt the knot.  Repeat for each strand. 

Although it is not as quick as working in a straight line, I am working around the soft sculpture, staggering each row.  The reason for this is that straight lines would be much more noticeable.  I want the sculpture to have a more organic look.  After every couple of rows around the lamb, I would use the needle felting tool and felt in some of the wool roving.  There would still be more roving sticking up.  The long bits of roving will be felted down to cover the knots.  The knots not only help keep the wool permanently attached to the sculpture, they also add depth to the wool, making the lamb's body look thicker and heavier.

The process takes quite a while.  I am estimating about twenty to twenty-five hours to complete the felting. I average about an inch around the sculpture per hour.  If this were a hand knotted wool felted rug, it would be expensive.  Unfortunately, I only have a few minutes at a time to work on it, so it is taking even longer.  I don't stay up all night to get a project done.  This may take a while with my schedule.

I will be posting pictures of the lamb as the sculpture comes along.  Since the process is slow, and with all the drama of watching paint dry, I will be posting some more photos of my recent trip and other things of interest  as I go along to keep things more interesting.  Check back on Thursday for the next blog post.

Road Trip Photos - June 2016

The most interesting man in the world.

I've been on the road again.  This time we drove to Pennsylvania.  Our first day we spent outside of Philadelphia and the next day we drove up into the Adirondacks.  It took us about six hours to get to Pennsylvania.  It was another three hours to the cabin where we were staying in the Adirondacks.  The weather was warm, but in the mountains it was comfortable.  Fortunately, we missed all the severe weather coming and going. 

Readers from other countries may wonder about the first picture.  The cardboard cut out is from a very successful advertising campaign.  Dos Equis beer ran an add that grabbed everyone's attention.  The commercials were interesting because they told a story about the life of a man deemed "the most interesting man in the world".  He consorted with the wealthy, rich, and famous.  His life story was all about adventure.  He joined the circus, went to bull fights, and probably did all the interesting things you ever heard about.   He was accompanied by two beautiful women.  And of course, the most interesting man in the world drank Dos Equis beer.  The advertising took on a life of its own and generated many funny jokes and internet memes.  So, when we stopped at a restaurant along the way, I just had to get a photo of this.  The restaurant also had a cutout of a Mariachi musician in traditional outfit with a cutout that you could stick your face through, but I was unable to talk my husband into letting me take his picture with it.  He has an aversion to looking silly in public.

Foggy on the bridge.

So while I am writing about this restaurant, I must say it was amazing.  Most of the time a restaurant is just booths and tables.  Once in a while you come upon one with interesting decorations.  This one was absolutely the most interesting restaurant I have seen in a long time.  The restaurant was called Los Muchachos (English translation:  The Boys)  The wooden chairs and tabletops were colorfully painted with different scenes.  Of all the chairs and tables I could see, I did not see a repeat of any scene.  The place was colorful.  And the food was really good too.  Abandoning our previous plan for a light lunch, we dug into the lunch buffet.  The food was really good.  If you ever get to Middleton, Delaware, look this place up.  It is a delightful place.

Church without a steeple.

So, back to the road trip. We took Route 301 to Philadelphia and then the Pennsylvania Turnpike up to the Adirondacks.  Mostly what we saw was trees and farm land.  Around Northern Virginia and Maryland there was a lot of traffic.  We crossed several rivers and drove past some amazing infrastructure.  The East Coast is a mixture of old and new.  Now, some of the new is getting old.  And in some places some of the best of the old is being preserved in historic districts.  I love old architecture.  During a previous time of prosperity some beautiful houses and buildings were built.  The homes built today can't really compare to it.  If the people that owned the houses could come back and see what we have built today, I think they would think that we live a drab existence.

One of the historic districts we drove through was in Odessa, Delaware.  I grabbed a few shots as we drove by.  We have been driving through that area for a number of years.  It is rather dismaying to see how much the area has grown and how bad traffic congestion is there.  (I am sure that the people that live and work there are happy to have jobs and homes, but I really miss the beauty of the area that has changed so much.

Historic district: Odessa

In one of the photos, an old steeple on the church has been taken down.  I have seen that on a number of churches in multiple places.  Steeples are expensive to repair.  Possibly the underlying supports are not as strong as they need to be and there is a fear that bad weather could cause a collapse.  Many churches still have a steeple of course, but I am seeing more and more churches being built without them.  Steeples are beautiful to see, soaring high up into the air. It is one more thing disappearing from our landscape.

I am always amazed at the infrastructure of our country: cities, bridges over wide rivers and the bay; trains and train tracks, industry, farmland and farm equipment to name a few categories.  It is all so awe inspiring.  This infrastructure is the backbone of our country.  When we are staying in our homes or apartments, it is easy to take it all for granted.  When you get out and see it in person, it really helps you understand what it takes to make a country function.  

This trip was driving North.  One of the things that struck me on the trip was that I was passing through different planting zones.  In my area of Virginia, hay has for the most part been harvested here and soy beans and corn are coming up.  In the mountains of Pennsylvania, they don't plant until after Memorial Day.  As we went further North the hay was still in the fields waiting to be cut.  I don't think I have ever seen so much hay in my life.  It was not just a field of hay.  It was hay fields as far as you could see to the horizon.  I don't know whether that is the norm or the abundance of hay is due to a drought in the western part of the country.  Lack of rain may be causing a poor growing season out there and the price of feed is going up.

First glimpse of Philadelphia.

In Levittown we had fun playing a game with nieces and nephews, siblings, and their spouses.  We spent the rest of our time at a beautiful cabin with my husband's family. It was great to spend some time with them.  We don't get up there very often.  It is a long drive.  I would like to see them more often.

Anyway, I'm home now.  There had been a severe storm while we were gone and the electricity had been out for a day and a half.  It was back on by the time we arrived home.  We had to throw out all the things in the refrigerator.  There was not a whole lot in there, mostly condiments.  When we travel, I try to pair down what we keep in the refrigerator just for this reason. 

Our general view on the highway.

Sunday I will be blogging about my lamb soft sculpture project again.  I had made a little progress on that project before we left.  I will be back to working on it again today, so there will be some new pictures.

 

Embroidered Denim Jacket

Today I am blogging about one of my off the books projects.  Now and then I work have more than one project going at one time.  Some projects take so long, that blogging about them regularly would be about as interesting as watching paint dry.  So I only blog on those projects when I reach a significant milestone.  The embroidered denim project is one such project. 

I posted on this jacket after I completed the embroidery of the bottom and cuffs of the jacket with pansies.  The next time I blogged on it I had completed the first panel on each side of the front of the jacket.  Those two panels were embroidered with Morning Glories.  I have now completed the second panel on each side of the front of the jacket.  I am not sure exactly what flowers that these panels represent.  They are a more stylized flowers.  I guess the colors look something like Marigolds, although Marigolds are not climbing plants.  Consider it artistic license. 

This project has been ongoing for a long time.  I started this project because I had a denim jacket that I rarely wore because it was so plain.  I though that a little embroidery would spice it up. I did the bottom and cuffs and called it quits for quite a while.  Hand sewing through so many layers of denim was very hard on the hands.  The jacket still looked plain to me after that segment was completed, so I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and do some more embroidery.  The panels are not as heavy as the other areas because I only had to sew through one layer of denim.

I cannot tell you how many hours have been put into this jacket.  I sew about two hours on the jacket on Monday through Thursday, with an additional two hours on Thursday afternoon, when I meet up with some quilters and crafters.  So for the four panels on the front of the jacket I figure roughly ten hours a week since the beginning of March.  That would be one hundred and forty hours.  I have forgotten how long it took to complete the bottom and cuffs, but roughly the same amount of time. 

Consider what this jacket would have cost if I was being paid minimum wage for it.  ($7.25 an hour where I live, so about $2,016.00 so far and it is not finished yet.)  That is why people say that they do not get their money back for handwork items.  People might be willing to may $150.00 to $300.00 for it at most.  You just have to make something like this because you enjoy doing it. 

Anyway, the next section is completed, so enjoy the photos.  I will be blogging about the lamb on the next blog post.

Lamb Soft Sculpture - Part 10

Last blog post I showed the lamb soft sculpture with the ears and tail added.  Today's post will show some painting I did on the lamb.  Some of the pictures that I looked at when getting inspiration form my folk art lamb showed lambs and sheep with very little wool on their faces and forelimbs.  Some sheep had faces that were white and others were various shades of brown or gray.  I wanted to add a little color to my lamb.  It would have been completely in character to have the face and forelimbs of my lamb to be white and covered with roving.  However, adding a little color added interest.  So I decided to do a little fabric painting on my lamb.

I used regular acrylic craft paints mixed with textile medium.  The mixture was further diluted with water before being painted onto the lamb.  I also painted a little extra fabric medium onto the lamb before applying the paint.  I saw this technique on a craft show that used to be on television years ago.  You can buy textile paints that already have the medium incorporated.  I prefer to mix my own so that I don't have multiple sets of acrylic paint to store.  Also, mixing my own allows me to change the ratio of paint to textile medium if I choose. 

After the paint dried, I sewed a face onto my lamb using brown button thread.  His nose is a little crooked, but that is okay.  Sheep wiggle their nose, it is not always in one place.  In any case, it was one of those situations where trying to correct the problem was going to create more of a problem than leaving it as it was. 

I think the lamb's expression is adorable.  Who wouldn't want to love this little lamb.  I think of her expression portraying calm and contentment.  I think that this lamb is going to be one of my favorite (pet) projects.  Pardon the pun.

My next blog post will be on one of my off the books projects.  Every so often I like to catch my readers up on another project I am trying to complete.  After that I will be posting on the lamb project again.

Lamb Soft Sculpture - Part 9

I just wanted to show a photo of the next step in creating my folk art lamb.  I have her ears and tail stuffed and sewn on.  It does not seem to be much of a change from the last photo, but a good bit of time between the last blog post and this one was spent on reinforcing all the seams with hand sewing.  The animal body is very firm and sewing through the fiber fill took a long time to complete that step.

The ears were a bit of a challenge.  Sheep and lambs move their ears all over, so whatever way they pointed would have been okay.  However, I wanted my lamb's ears to stand up and show that she was interested and engaged in whatever was in front of her.  (I am calling this lamb a her, but I suppose it could be either.  I don't know if all male sheep have horns, but this one does not, so by default it seemed like a female  I have seen some photos of male sheep without horns, but I am not sure if the horns have been removed or whether it is because they are a certain breed.)  Anyway, I wanted the ears to stay up but not be stuffed so thickly that they looked unnatural.  That required a little strategy on design and some needle sculpting to get the ears to hold the position I wanted. 

On the pattern, the ear design shows a long tube at the base of the ear.  Once the pattern piece was sewn and turned, it was a was very narrow.  I had to stuff it using just the tiniest pieces of fluff from the polyester fiberfill.  It was so narrow that I had trouble inserting a thin bamboo skewer to push the fiber fill into the ear.  The tube was long because it would be folded over on itself to provide a base for sewing the ear to the head.  It proved to be a little too long and I ended up cutting off a portion.  After shortening the tube, folding it over and sewing it to the head, it left a small, more or less square piece material visible behind the ear.  You can see it in the first photo.  I was not worried about that because it will be covered over by the wool roving in the next step.

My original pattern.  Modifications were made after this one.

At the moment, the ears look a little large.  This is one of those cases that I have to keep telling myself that the project at this stage does not look like the finished project.  I know that the wool roving that will be added will add some depth to the animal.  The ears need to be long enough to stand up above the wool roving.  Creating a folk art lamb is somewhat like painting in that it is built up in layers.  You have to anticipate how things will change between one step and the next.

The tail was not much of a problem, although I did lengthen it from the original pattern.  It was just a matter of finding the proper placement.  A few minutes and a little experimentation found what I think is the right spot.  It was hand sewn into place with some hand quilting thread.  A heavier thread, such as a button thread or upholstery thread would be preferable when making a stuffed animal.  However, I did not have any in an appropriate color, so I went with doubled quilting thread.  The tail was sewn on with two sets of thread to give some extra strength in an area that may have a lot of pulling.  I did the same with the ears and legs.  The tail looks a little small at the moment.  It will be thicker after the wool roving is in place.

Well, I have already spent more time than anticipated on today's blog.  Check back on Sunday for the next post on the lamb.  

Lamb Soft Sculpture - Part 8

Now that I'm back from the mountains I have started putting in some significant time on the Folk Art Lamb.  It has been a challenging project.  I have been time challenged for sure, but this project has presented a number of difficulties.  Let's just say there have been some more revisions to the pattern.  I cannot leave well enough along sometimes.  But overall, I think the project now looks very lamb like.  It looks a little leggy, but then newborn lambs have not gained all their weight yet so they do tend to have that gawky long leg look.  It won't look quite as leggy when it is finished. 

I first started out with the idea for the lamb thinking that I would connect the legs using the button method.  I had already remade the legs once because the forelegs were so thin that I was having trouble turning and stuffing them.  When I sized the legs up, the upper leg was too large.  The fabric filled out so much that it made the upper leg very fat.  I did have the legs on attached with button joints, but it looked hilariously out of proportion.  I ended up taking the legs off and sewing the legs onto the body in order to control the amount of polyester fiberfill that went into the leg.  And to think I had decided to go with the button method to save time.  That is what I get for thinking. 

When I attached the head to the body, I fount that the neck was too long.  It looked more like a pony than a lamb.  I had to take that apart and reduce the length of the neck.  When I put it back together and started investigating the placement of the legs, I found that the body needed to be reduced in length as well.  I was amazed at the amount of stuffing that I removed from the lamb.  After a couple of days, I had the head and torso right.   After all the revisions, I felt the need to give the entire lamb a second set of seams.  The first set was done on a sewing machine, but the second set had to be done by hand.  It took about a day and a half to get that completed.  At least I am confident that nothing will be coming apart.

Although it was frustrating, I enjoyed the challenge of creating my own pattern for the lamb.  When I have created something from the concept to the finished piece, I really feel as if I have created something that is my own.  If I were to use a pattern created by someone else it would not feel like it was my creation.  As long as this project has taken, there were times that I really wished I had used a pattern.  But things are moving along now, so I feel that I am on the right track.

These are my first photos of the lamb standing.  It does not have its ears and tail yet, but that will be next.  I was just very excited to finally see it all together. It stands on its own.  The legs are tightly stuffed with polyester fiberfill to make them strong enough to hold the weight of the body.    There are no hard internal supports in the leg to help keep them rigid.  It would have been easy enough to have added internal supports, but I wanted this to be made in such a way that it did not have anything hard or sharp that could harm somebody. 

Although I do not plan on this being used as a toy, I want it made in such a way that if a child did get hold of it that it would be something that could be handled safely.  Sometimes things are made to be art objects and they are only meant to be looked at not handled so materials are used that may not be safe.  And sometimes things are made as toys.  Sometimes things are meant to be art, but end up being handled as a toy.  I try to keep that in mind when I make something.  I try to make something that is art that is also safe to handle.  It is sometimes more difficult to do that, and it may take longer, but I breath easier that way.  You never know how or where an object is going to end up when it is no longer in your possession.  

The lamb is very plain at this point.  It is only a muslin body.  That is about to change.  Check back on Sunday for a look at the next step in the process of making this lamb.

Cabin Renovations - Road Trip Photos May 2016

Along with the upgrades to the cabin I decided to post a few more of my road trip pictures.  These photos were all taken on this trip. We take a victory photo when we finish a large area of the project.  My photo is on another camera, so I don't have that one readily available.  Probably just as well.  I am sure I looked a sight after crawling all over the floor.

Last post I showed some of the beautiful scenery taken on the drive up to the cabin.  I never tire of the natural beauty.  Today I just wanted to show a few photos of the latest cabin upgrades.  We were working on the bedroom.  It is only 10x10 so we managed to get that more or less completed this trip.  We were up for a week.  It took pretty much the whole week to get things done.

Our first project was to put the color coat of paint on the cinder block walls.  Last trip we had painted on the primer coat so we were able to start painting right away.  The room looks so much brighter with the light color.  After the walls, we put on the first coat of light green paint on the window trim.  That was pretty much the first day. 

The next day we put up the wood slat ceiling.  The furring strips had been put up on the previous trip, but we had to go back over that and add a few more shims here and there to get the ceiling as level as possible.  We also had to put some drywall tape and mud on areas of the ceiling where we had to make some repairs and put up some new drywall.  Then we started to put up the ceiling.  I guess our experience of putting up the wood slat ceiling in the kitchen, dining room area, and living room have paid off.  We were much more efficient in getting this ceiling up.  The area of the room was small, so it was something of a challenge to keep the joints from the slats from lining up in a noticeable way.  The slats had been painted with a matte polyurethane while we were home, so they were ready to go when we got up there.  After the ceiling went up we painted the second coat on the windows.  That was pretty much a full day.

After the walls, windows, and ceiling were done we tackled putting in the laminate flooring.  Before the flooring could go down, the floor had to be leveled.  The old planks were quite warped.   Laminate can crack if there is a variation of more than an eighth of an inch in the level of the floor.  One method would be to use skimcoat, but the floor was a bit too warped for that.  The depth of the change in the floor would have meant a very long drying time.  The floor was built up to level by stapling down layers of tar paper.  This is an old cabin.  Sometimes you have to be creative in these fixes.  That was another days work. 

It was a little difficult to lay the flooring in such a small space.  We would put down a row of the vapor barrier, bring in a box of boards and lay a few rows.  The boxes were quite heavy.  They were heavier than a normal box of laminate flooring.  This flooring was laminate flooring that we had salvaged after a plumbing problem wrecked half our basement last year.  Because that flooring ran through two bedrooms, the den and a hallway, we salvaged enough to lay the flooring at the cabin.  Anyway, the new flooring for our home was sized differently than the old flooring and we used the boxes from the new flooring to pack up the old flooring for transport to the cabin. We could pack up more of the old flooring into each box.  They were so heavy that it took two of us to move them.  A normal box of flooring can generally be moved by one person.

If we had not had that flooring, we would have purchased laminate flooring that looked a little different, perhaps more rustic.  But, we had this, and free is good when you are doing renovations.  Our laminate from the basement was made for below grade applications, so I expect it will do well in the cabin, even though it is not a continuously conditioned space.  If not, sooner or later we will be adding new flooring.

I thought I would throw in a little interesting factoid I learned about laminate flooring.  In the U.S., when someone lays a floor, it is pretty much considered a done deal:  down for the duration.  Most of the newer laminate flooring is manufactured to be taken apart and moved up to three times.  In Europe, apartment size has been standardized for some time.  When people move from one place to another they pack up their laminate floor and take it with them.  It is this feature of the flooring that allowed us to take it up in one place and lay it in another.

After all that work, we needed a day of rest.  We down the mountain, visited my mother, and hit the grocery store and hardware store.  While at the home store we purchased four hundred and fifty pounds of rock that I layed on the road later in the week.  I also brought up another hundred pounds of gravel from the stream.  The weather has been so rainy that the road was developing some deep ruts.

The cabin is really starting to look beautiful.  The flooring sweeps through the kitchen, dining area, living room, and bedroom.   The wood slat ceiling looks the same.  The long run of the floor and ceiling through the dining area and living room gives the room the illusion of length.  I have heard that this is called the bowling alley effect.  In long narrow spaces it can work against design, but in this small cabin it definitely makes the place look larger.

With all the work we have done on the place, you would think it was almost finished.  Not yet.  There is still more work to be done.  More about that on our next trip to the cabin. 

Next blog post I will be back to blogging on the folk art lamb.  Check back on Thursday for a new post.

 

Road Trip Photos - May 2016

Rockfall next to the road.

High water on the river.

Spring is here and rapidly moving towards summer.  That means I am back out on the road again.  I was surprised when I came home and downloaded my pictures from the camera to find that I had snapped almost a hundred photos.  It was all the more surprising because there are so many trees I felt that I was missing a lot of good shots.  I was thinking, "Darn, I'm not going to have any photos worth showing when I get home.  Some of the pictures I take are blurry because we are moving or because in the mountains the roads are bumpy.  A lot of shots I miss just because I cannot get a good angle on them while riding in a car.  I try to only ask a few (ok several) times for my husband to stop the car for a shot.  I am sure that it is annoying to my husband, the driver, and it would take forever to get there if I stopped everywhere to take a picture.  He is a good sport about it though. 

Early morning sunlight.  Photo by my husband.

Old home and barn by the road.

It had been raining a lot in Virginia in May.  The rivers are as swollen from the rain as if it were early spring when the snow melts.   When we were up there last month, the river and creeks were kind of low and everything was dry.  My car windows were so covered with dust that I could not see out the rear window.  However, this month it was exactly the opposite.  We were dealing with muddy roads and potholes filled with water.  Getting up the hill was a challenge.  There are so many people going up our road now that there were some deep ruts.  I ended up purchasing about four hundred and fifty pounds of rock from Lowes and also hauling about a hundred pounds of gravel from the stream.  My efforts are starting to pay off.  A lot of the road is holding up well in spite of the rain.  There is still a lot of road that needs some rock.  We are thinking about bringing up a dump truck load of rock.  I am not enthused about that because none of the neighbors help maintain the road.  I will be shoveling that load pretty much by myself.  It would be cheaper to buy a load than to buy small lots of rock, but at least I can work on it as I feel like it.  I always feel that buying rock to bring up there is like bringing coal to Newcastle since there is so much rock up there.

Hay in the field.  Lots of hay.

Speaking of rock, there has been a significant amount of rockfall up there along the road.  The road runs past and through huge boulders.  Part of the rock ledge was blasted to make a way for the road.  That rock has stood there for years, but it is becoming brittle and developing cracks due to freezing and thawing during the winter.  We have noticed significant rockfall in the area.  Rock is doing what rock does naturally.  It just seems that a lot of rock is falling where it had been more stable before.  I have been observing the same rocks for about fifty years up there and I am seeing much more rock down than has been in the past.  It just goes to show:  if you wait long enough even rocks will change. 

Old cabins converted to shops.

Building in a small town.

Traveling back and forth to the mountains is an experience on the allergy front too.  When we go up in April, spring is in full bloom here, but as we move inland and upward in elevation the flora changes.  As we move inland and upwards in elevation the plants are not blooming nearly as much.  At the elevation of the cabin, the trees are still bare and there are only a few early wildflowers such as Trillium blooming and the grass is green.  After staying there for a week with only a little vegetation blooming we come back down to full spring.  The difference in the pollen levels really causes a big allergy attack.  When we go up in May, all the trees have finished releasing their pollen here and their seeds have set here.  Up there, the leaves on the trees are at the end of that bright yellow-green color of spring and the Iris are blooming.  When we come back down a week later, wild rose and honeysuckle are blooming everywhere along the roadside and the fields are filled with hay that is in the flowering state.  By the time you get back down to where we live soybeans and corn are coming up.  It takes us two or three days to get back to normal from all the changes in the levels of pollen.

On the way to the cabin.

Weather can be a big change too.  The first three days there it was cold and rainy and temperatures never got out of the mid-fifties. (Temperatures in Fahrenheit, (about 12.77 C.)  The rest of the time the temperatures were in the mid-seventies F. (about 23 C.).  We were wearing long sleeve shirts during the evening and sleeping under slight blankets at night.  It was a shock to the system to come home to upper eighties F.(31 C.) with close to 90% humidity.  I am not sure I have finished adjusting to the hot weather yet.  Yesterday was a little better.

Anyway, while we were at the cabin, we tackled renovating the downstairs bedroom.  More on that next blog post.  After that, I will be back to blogging about my folk art lamb project.