Road Trip Photos - Cabin Work November 2016

Last photo of the old shed

We have been on the road again in November.  We have been visiting with family and friends in other parts of the state.  It is a beautiful time to travel here in Virginia.  The weather has been very mild, but dry.  We could use some rain.  Earlier in the year we were having fairly regular rain storms come through, but there has not been any significant rain for a while now.  Overall, the total rainfall was about an inch above normal, but that was mostly due to rain earlier in the year.

The new view.

The amount of rainfall affects the autumn colors of the trees.  When there is a lot of rain, the tree colors tend towards deep golds, dusty russets, deep crimsons, and brownish orange.  Some trees may turn bright orange if they are in direct sunlight.  The colors are blaze orange and bright yellows and reds when the weather has been dry.    Although it has been dry recently, the colors were of the more muted variety this year.  The colors were not there brightest, but our drive through the country was still beautiful.

An old house and barn.

At this time of year, we prefer to drive back roads and by-ways.  It takes us longer to get to our destinations, but we are rewarded by the beautiful scenery.  Taking the interstate is faster, but you miss so much along the way.  Sometimes it is important to remember that life is about the journey, not just the destination.   If you have the time, it is well worth taking the little winding highways where there are long areas of "no passing" zones.  You just have to learn to relax and not worry about being stuck behind a car that is going 25 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone.  That reminds me of the lyrics of a song, "Out here is fine, if you've got the time."  That is the attitude you have to take if you want to travel the by-ways, because not everyone out here is in a hurry.

Fire spotting towers are still used in some places.

As we reached the cabin, friends pulled up to their cabin within minutes.  We greeted each other and began the work of opening up our cabins.  Generally the first hour or so upon arrival is spent turning on the water and electricity, vacuuming, and unpacking.  After that, everyone is on mountain time.  It is time to relax.  The neighbors and I sat around catching up on things.   Then we decided to share some food  and have dinner together.  It was an enjoyable evening.

A view from the by-way.

The next day, it was time to get to work.  There is always something that needs doing.  There was a dead tree on the property that had to be taken down.  We cut it down one day and chopped the tree to length and stacked the logs.  Later in the week, after we had hauled wood up from the shed to the log rack on the porch, we re-stacked the remaining wood in the shed, then split and stacked most of the tree we had cut down.  My husband set up the logs and split them with a maul.  I hauled the wood to the shed and stacked it.   This was not the hardest work we did during our trip.

Road art at a Barbecue Pit.

It was time for the old shed on the property to come down.  The wood was so rotted, it would break off in your hand.  The shed was still standing but had such a lean to it that it was a good two feet lower than its height from years ago.  It used to be tall enough that my husband (over six feet tall) could barely see the roof.  Now it was down to chest level.  It was time for it to come down.  I don't believe it would have lasted another winter.  It was better to take it down while we had the time, rather than have to clean it up in the middle of one of our renovation projects.  Besides, the longer the shed is down, the more likely it is that snakes and critters would take up residence there.

My husband thought he would need to use the Saws - All to cut through nails to bring the shed down.  The wood was in such bad shape, that all we needed was a pry bar to pull it apart.  We removed the metal pieces on the roof.  They had been weighted down by rocks to keep them in place.  I think they were scrap from a different shed that had been torn down.  I am not even sure that the pieces had been nailed down.  If so, the nails were rusted away.  The only thing holding the metal in place was the rocks.  We pulled them down with a rake and the metal pieces came right off.

After the roof was off, my husband pried off the boards, I nailed down the rust nails and stacked the wood.  Taking down the shed took all afternoon.  We were very tired and dirty when we were finished.  That was plenty of work for one day.

When you take down an old building, you always wonder what curiosity you might find inside.  This building had been used as a shed long before I ever arrived there, but I had always suspected that at one time it had been a chicken coop. We did not really have great expectations of finding much of anything and were seriously hoping that it had not formerly been used as an outhouse.  What we mostly found was nails.  Boxes of nails that had been there so long that the entire box of nails had rusted into one solid lump.  I guess other boxes of nails had early on been chewed apart by rodents and the nails had fallen all over the floor.  There were nails everywhere.  Nails that were three and four inches long, roofing nails, and huge staples.  The back of the staples was a one-half inch wide (12.7 millimeters) and the prongs were one inch long (27.7 millimeters).  There was only one "find" of real interest and it did reinforce my idea that it was originally a chicken coop.  Under the tarpaper, was a little hinged wooden flap.  We suspect that the flap was used so that someone could reach into the next and pull out the eggs.  Nailed to the flap, was a license plate.  The readable side of the license plate had been nailed to the wood.  Because it had been protected, the license plate was in really good condition.  It was a Virginia license plate from 1942.  So I guess we did find a treasure of sorts.  When my husband and I are doing a project we generally sign our names and the date somewhere so that it will document when the work was done.  Perhaps the license plate was this person's means of documenting when the shed was built.

The dragon's head.

The next day, we loaded up the van with as much of the lumber as we could fit into it and drove it to the dump.  Our neighbors said they would have burned the wood on site, but we had concerns that the would have been treated with some type of wood preservative and we had no idea what it might be.  Also, at one time DDT was commonly used for insect infestation.  Rather than risk inhaling unknown chemicals, we hauled the entire shed to the dump.  A trip to the dump and back takes about an hour and twenty minutes.  It took us to trips to get the entire shed to the dump.

The stream behind the cabin.

The next day, while my husband was working on cleaning up the other shed, I worked on picking up those rusty nails that had been lying all over the shed.  Although we had raked and cleaned up the shed, there were still plenty of nails buried in the dirt.  The floor had rotted out, and years of rain had washed in mud and small stones.  There were several inches of loose dirt filled with rusty nails.  We did not have one of those magnetized roller tools.  I was digging through the dirt moving it around inch by inch and examining it for rusty nails.  Since the nails and much of the dirt were the same color it was very difficult to see them.  I was at it for hours.  I picked up almost four more pounds of nails, one at a time.  That night, I dreamed about picking up those nails.  I could see them in my sleep. 

Painted windmill.

We saved a piece of salvaged driftwood that had lived on top of the shed for many years.  It looked just like a dragon's head.  It now resides on top of the shed for the hot water heater.  The rocks that were on the roof were piled up in a cairn around the metal pipe that marked the property boundary.  Now that the shed is down we have a nice view of the road that leads up to the spring box.    

At times, my friends have wondered how do I consider this to be a vacation.  I try to explain that while we work hard there, the work is interspersed with plenty of porch sitting time and visiting with friends.  Beyond that, there is something worthwhile about working hard work and getting filthy dirty and then coming in to get cleaned up and relax at the end of the day.  But more than that, we do the work because we love the place.  If the work is what keeps the place going, then that is what we are going to do.  This place is so special that it is worth every minute of the work.

One other day of our vacation, I spent cooking a Thanksgiving dinner.  I smoked a turkey on the grill and made stuffing, green bean casserole, and an apple crisp for dessert.  The next day we drove over the mountains to visit my mother and have a Thanksgiving dinner with her.  It was a few days earlier than the actual date of Thanksgiving, but we were nearby and the important thing is that we spent time with family.

1. On our way home, we took another scenic drive down Route 6.  There is still plenty of old Virginia farm buildings out there.  There is also a section near Wintergreen where you can feel the creep of modern civilization moving in.   There is a section of art galleries and restaurants.  New, modern, slick, and upscale.  It looks so foreign to me in this beautiful setting.  I guess some people like it.  In any case, nothing is forever.  I try to take as many pictures as I can of the old buildings before they disappear.  There are so many beautiful scenes that I miss because I cannot get a good shot while we are moving down the road.  I wish I cold get more pictures.  There are so many beautiful scenes out there.

There is always more to the story, but I will hold here and save the rest for later.  My next post we be on my progress on the Doll Experiment project.  Now that I am home, I will be trying to get back into the studio and get some work done there.,


 

Update - Snowflake Quilt

Today I have just a quick update on my snowflake quilt.  I have completed embroidering all the large snowflakes.  I have made the quilt sandwich and created the quilt using a technique called "birthing".  This means you put the layers together by putting the batting on the bottom, then the quilt top and bottom down wrong side out.  Then you sew all the layers together around the perimeter leaving an opening.  You reach through the opening and put the quilt through it so that the top and bottom layers are on the outside and the batting is in the middle.

Once I turned the quilt right side out, I started binding the layers together by the tying method.  But of course, I did not want to just have strings with knots tied in them all over the quilt.  I decided to do something different.  I "tied' the layers together by embroidering small snowflakes and tying the knot on the back of the layers.  The snowflakes are just small lines rather than fully shaped snowflakes.  They will be all around the perimeter of the quilt and in between each large snowflake.  At this point I have completed about a third of the quilt.

This is the first time I have used this method for making a quilt.  What I am finding is that the quilt does not lay as flat as if a traditional quilt binding is used.   The tying method also leaves the quilt a little looser than I would like it to be.  I may do some additional quilting on the project.

Halloween Quilt

Although we are a third of the way through November I have not yet put away my Halloween decorations.  I just have not had time.  I may get them put away by Thanksgiving.  Since I have it out, I thought I would put up a picture of another of the quilts I have made.  I saw this quilt in a magazine and thought it would be a great project for learning to do applique and free motion quilting.  This quilt was made several years ago before starting to take photos and document my crafting projects so I do not know the name of the designer or the magazine.  I may have the magazine.  If I can find it I will update the post to credit the designer.

Anyway, I cut out the pumpkins and  adhered them to the base layer with some fusible adhesive.  Then I hand sewed them to the background fabric using a blanket stitch.   After that I used free motion quilting to quilt the layers of the quilt. 

It was a fun project and one I look forward to seeing every Halloween.

Doll Experiment - Part 5

Shaping the eye area.

Today I am blogging about the papier mache' doll project again.  It feels as if time flies so quickly when I am working on a project.  Sometimes I am really surprised that so much time has passed and it seems as if I have made very little progress.  Working in papier mache' can be very time consuming.  Yet, progress has been made on the project, so I guess I cannot complain.  To recap, my goals on this project were to attempt to make a doll from papier mache' using an existing doll as a mold, see if I could make the doll stand on its own, and change the pose of the doll.  So far, I have removed the mold from the doll, added eyes, and started the work on changing the pose. More layers of papier mache' were added to the doll once the portions of the doll were taped together once the original doll was removed.

I added some more layers of papier mache' around the eyes to begin developing the eye lids.  I also did a little painting on the eyes.  The painting is not completed yet.  I just wanted to get the eyes in so I had a feel for the where the eye lids needed be.  Papier mache' can be very messy and the eyes were getting smeared with the paste mixture, so it was not worth completing the painting until that area was finished. 

Separating the joints.

Now I am beginning to modify the arms.  Rather than have the doll's arms straight out to the sides, I plan to change the doll's pose so that she is holding up something and looking at it.  I had cut the doll's arm lengthwise after removing the arm from the torso in order to remove it from the original doll.  Then the doll's arms were taped back together.  After that, I sawed the left arm apart at the elbow and wrist areas.  I also cut off the fingers and thumb to change the shape of the hand so that it could hold something.  To make those cuts I used a small saw.  Actually, this was the saw that came with my Pumpkin Masters pumpkin carving kit.  It worked well for making this straight cut.  I was being lazy and did not want to get a hack saw from the other workshop area.

However, for the next step I needed to get out a power tool.  To make the pieces of the arm flex so that it appeared that the arm was bent, I needed to cut an arc out of the upper arm and fore arm.  I started by using the small saw I had used previously, but I found it did not work well for cutting the arc.  I had to put pressure on the arm in a different direction and it was causing the upper and lower sections of the arm to come apart.  I used a cutting wheel on my rotary cutting tool to make the cuts.  I will also have to remove some material from top of the upper arm as well.  Once I am satisfied with the shape of the arm, it will be taped and covered with papier mache'.

That is about as far as I was able to get in this work.  It was time to get on with my day.  I am still deciding whether I will make a deeper arc in each section of the arm or whether it will work as it is now.  Sometimes it is better to sleep on things for a bit. 

I do not expect to have time to work on the doll again this week, so I will be blogging an update on another project for the next blog post.  I should be blogging about this project again soon.  Check back on the next blog post on Thursday.

Update on a Painted Gazing Ball and Experimenting Again.

Jupiter Sphere newly painted.

In my last blog entry I had said that  I would be blogging off and on about several projects because of the length of time it took for the papier mache' to dry.  Depending on the level of humidity it can take a day or more for each side of the piece to dry.  I let my projects dry naturally rather than drying them in the oven.  So to have something going on while my project is drying, I am working on a few things here and there.  Today is about one of my gazing balls.

Jupiter Sphere today.

(Safety warning for those wishing to dry papier mache' in the oven:)   Note:  It is possible to dry papier mache objects in an oven, but I do not generally do this.  First off, it can be a potential fire hazard.   If your oven is too warm, or you walk off and forget about checking on it, your hard work can end up being toast (or worse).   I would recommend using a dedicated oven for your crafts.  Some products are not safe around food utensils and surfaces.)

Now, onto today's blog post.  I have made gazing balls in many different ways.  Many of them are mosaics created from stained glass and grout.  Other balls were painted with various types of paint: acrylic, baked on enamel, and exterior spray paint.  I have also used various types of substrates for the gazing balls:  bowling balls, hypertufa, and papier mache'.   The glass mosaics come inside in freezing weather in order to prevent water from getting in and causing cracks in the ball.  The painted ones have been left outside to see what happened to them over time.  Some have fared better than others. 

Some of the balls were cast in hypertufa.  Hypertufa is a mixture of cement and additives; generally Portland cement, peat moss, and vermiculite. The resulting cement is much lighter than concrete.  I painted the balls because I was momentarily bored with making mosaics.  After a couple of years outside, some of the balls are a little worse for wear.

One of my favorite painted balls, which I called the Jupiter Sphere has failed and needs a make over.  This ball was painted with acrylic craft paints and varnished with two coats of exterior sealant.  It was place outside in August of 2015.  Fifteen months later, the ball is in bad shape.  The paint has been completely stripped off the top of the ball by sun, wind, and rain.   The equator of the ball is in somewhat better shape, but is still pitted and devoid of paint in many places.  What paint is left is badly faded.  So it is time to do something else with this ball.

My first reworking of the ball did not go as planned.   Halloween was coming up, so I thought that it would be interesting to have a glowing sphere out in the yard.  I had some Glow in the Dark paint from another project.  In theory, the ball could be left out in sunlight, the paint would absorb the light, and glow at night.  Well it glowed....sort of.  I left the ball out in full sun all day.  That night, I ran outside to see the ball in the dark.  The glow was so low that it was very hard to tell whether it was glowing or whether the paint was just reflecting ambient light from the neighborhood.  After staring at it for sometime my husband and I decided it was glowing, but you had to be standing right at it to see it.  From three feet away you would never know the ball was there.  It was a big disappointment. 

Now I am making new plans for the ball.  Of course it currently has two coats of Glow in the Dark paint over top of the old paint.  The paint needs to come off before something else goes on.  Otherwise the paint could prevent the new surface from sticking.  I plan to use a wire brush to scrape the paint down to the hypertufa.   At that point I will have a couple of choices on how to rework the ball.

I think the easiest choice might be to turn it into a stained glass mosaic.  Another option would be to paint the ball with enamel bake in the oven paints.  (Using a dedicated toaster oven of course! And maybe outside in a sheltered area since there could be fumes.)  Concrete items that have been in the yard for quite some time have kept most of their color.  However, eventually those colors do fade.  Some of my enamel yard art has been outside since 2012.  The blue and white colors have faded but remain on the stepping stones.  However, the red is very faded.  This would be my first experiment on hypertufa in the oven.  I will let you know shortly whether or not the hypertufa held together when heated.

I have to wait a few days for time and good weather to see how the hypertufa will act when heated.  It will be a week or more before I get back to the experiment.  I do not know exactly what date I will be blogging about this project again, but it will be fairly soon.  Keep checking back if you want the answer to the question of how the hypertufa behaves.  In the mean time, I will be blogging about the Doll Experiment and other projects.

Doll Experiment - Part 4

I am continuing to work on my doll experiment.  The experiment is to attempt to make a mold of a doll using the strip method of papier mache', and then attempt to change the pose of the doll.  I am also attempting to make the doll stand on its own rather than using a doll stand.  It is a fairly ambitious project and one that takes a fair amount of time.  The doll will have about seven layers of papier mache' on it by the time the doll is completed. 

Eyes anchored inside the head.

In my last blog post I was at the stage of removing the limbs and torso from the doll so I could take it off of the original doll.  Now that all of the papier mache' has been removed from the doll, the pieces had to be put back together.  I used masking tape to hold the sections of the doll together and have covered that area with a layer of papier mache' strips.  In the first four layers I used long strips of newsprint.  Now I have switched to smaller bits of paper.  The longer strips sometimes rumple as they move over the curves.  These last layers of papier mache' will be small bits of paper so that there is not so much wrinkling.  It takes a lot longer to put on a layer of the smaller strips.

The foot is flat enough for the leg to stand.

At the moment, the doll face is fairly featureless.  I will have to build up the eye, nose, and lip areas.  Before the eyes were added and without a well defined face and the rigid limbs the doll reminded me of Gort, the robot in the original version of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.  (I am a big science fiction fan.)  The doll has a very alien air about her.  I did have a plan for the costuming of the doll, but I think I am going to change the plan.  The doll lacks the appearance of fluid motion.  I would rather save my idea for a doll with an armature that I can pose as I want.  I am still working on the new plan, which is why I have not yet blogged about what the doll will be when it is completed.  But at this point I do not plan to make it into a representation of Gort.

While the doll torso was cut in half, I added eyes to the doll.  At the moment the eyes look rather frog-like because they sit on the surface of the face and do not yet have eyelids.  The eyes are mounted on screws.  You push the screw through a hole and put a silicone (or some product of that nature) onto the back in the manner a pierced earring has a back on it.  It holds the eyes firmly in place. 

I had ordered a box of doll and bear safety eyes online.  I am not very happy with the product.  The eyes were not well painted.  The screw had been dipped in paint.  Once dry a pupil was dabbed on and sometimes they were not well centered.  The eyes are one solid color other than the pupil.  Many of the eyes are so dark that they just look like black.  They actually look rather creepy.  The eyes that were in the size that work for this doll were of the dark variety.  I decided to paint over the plastic because they eyes just looked wrong in a doll.

Painting the eyes at this point were a little problematic because I still have to build up the eye lids.  I used some round paper reinforcement rings as a template to make sure that I painted the iris in a circle.  I just wanted to have some idea of where the eyelids should stop.  It helped.  I have not completed my painting of the eyes but at least it gives me something to work with on the eyelid placement. 

Since I still have a lot of papier mache' work to do, my next blog post will be on another project I am working on at the moment.  Check back for that post on Thursday.

Doll Experiment - Part 3

Molded limbs removed from the doll

I have been working on an experiment to see if I can make a mold of a doll from an existing doll using papier mache'.  I had seen this idea in an article in Art Doll magazine.  Today you can tell that something has actually happened in this experiment.  An old, damaged doll was covered with masking tape, plastic wrap, then given four layers of strip papier mache'.  With those layers all dried, I was ready to remove the mold from the doll.

I used a craft knife and heavy scissors to cut the mold from the doll.   I won't say it was hard work, but my hands were tired by the time I had completed the job.  Just removing the arms and legs took more than an hour.  This doll had porcelain head, arms, and legs that were sewn onto a soft body.  The arms and legs were not removable on this doll, so the mold of the doll was cast as one piece.  Much of the cutting took place in tight areas that were difficult to reach.   Cutting through the layers also created a lot of small paper scrap and dust.  If I try this again, I think I will try cutting using a rotary tool with a cutting blade.  The work should go a lot faster and I think it will make a cleaner cut.  However, it will not reach all the areas, so some blade or scissors cutting will still need to take place.  My main reason for not using the rotary tool this time is that I wanted to try to save the doll for another mold if possible. 

Theoretically, after making as many molds as I want, then still reuse the doll's porcelain head, arms, and legs to make another doll.  This doll's soft, stuffed body is a little worse for wear from where I punched in too deeply with the craft knife or scissors.  I guess I will have to make a new body for the doll.  I covered the glass eyes with some fiberfill before I put tape on the doll in hopes of keeping them free from the sticky tape. I have never made a porcelain doll before, so that will be a learning experience for another day.

In other circumstances, I might have cut the doll open in a different manner.  I had originally thought to take the doll off in just two pieces:  front and back.  The reason that I chose to separate it at the limbs was because I hope that I will be able to make cuts at other joints and change the shape of the pose of the doll.  Having everything separate will allow for a greater ability to move the limbs around.

Once I cut the arms at the shoulders I was able to remove the arm and hand after slicing down one side of the arm.  The thumb was the sticking point on this.  By spreading the sides of the arm widely, and wiggling it a bit I was able to free the thumb.  I had thought that I would have to slice down both sides and separate the halves of the arm to get the thumb and fingers free.  The legs and feet were a different story.  My first cut was at the hips so that the each leg was removed from the torso.  I had to cut down both sides of the leg completely in order to free the foot.  The legs came apart fairly easily.

The torso and head were removed all at once.  I considered making the head separate and was uncertain whether I wanted to do that or leave it as it was.  I decided for this experiment that I would leave the head and neck alone.  This head is gazing slightly outward and downward.  I thought it would be usable as is.  Sometimes it is better to work on one or two things at a time rather than try to do too many things with one doll.  For this experiment my main focus is on changing the position of the arms. Beyond that, I want to see if I can make this doll stand without using a doll stand.  That is plenty to work on for my first attempt.

So now the doll has been completely removed from its papier mache' casing.  That is about as far as I have gone on the project.  I will have some new information on the project on Sunday's blog post.  Check back then.