Making/Crafting

The planks are from Lowe’s. Style Selections Woodland Oak, #737983. They were 98 cents a square foot :slight_smile:

They match the average color of the old hardwood floor that was beneath the carpet, but minus the stains and spilled paint and whatnot.

When we bought them, the guy in the flooring department said his friend had trouble with them not sticking so he used some general purpose floor adhesive and they were fine. I’ve also read a few people online say the same thing – but with concrete or plywood floors. The instructions specifically say don’t use them with another adhesive, so I figured, let’s try without.

The first few rows went down fine. After that, they’ve varied a bit – some of them don’t lay down completely flat and don’t tend to stick in the middle. When they’re surrounded by friends they don’t shift around, but there’s a little bit of curviness going on and some air between the planks and the floor below. :confused: So we have a sort of hybrid between peel-and-stick and floating floor now.

Our house is very non-level and creaky anyway so it’s not a major deal, but I still wish we’d gone ahead with the adhesive as advised.

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Thank you for all the info! I bought the place I’m in now (first owned property) almost ten years ago. The previous owner left it in great shape, but it’s time to start considering replacements/upgrades. Which is a bit nerve-wracking.

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My brief fantasy:

DONALD TRUMP MISSING

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Hey, who wants to come over to my house and gather up mass quantities of craft supplies left behind by my late mother? We literally have a roomful of yarn, among other needlework-type supplies.

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Unfortunately I already have a roomful of yarn, and I’m still alive. Plus we have the border thing.

Do you know if there are any knitting guilds in your area? Sometimes they have trunk sales. Or they might know of a place which would be happy to gain stash. Some of the schools in my area have needlework clubs and take donations – yours might too. A lot of seniors homes seem live they’d be good fits, but they can be remarkably restrictive about yarns and needles due to Health and Safety run amok.

Good luck!

ETA: Check out prisons too (and the John Howard Society maybe?). Sometimes they have needlework classes as part of rehab/anger management.

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Latest piece (and getting a very specific 4 bars right was a real chore)…

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I have had a little 9" Delta (Model 11-960C) like this one for over twenty years now. It’s holding up well.

It’s definitely a hobbyist model, but most bench top presses could be called that. If you can find one secondhand in good condition it should do the job for you. There were a number of clones made in the '90s, maybe there still are.

My main peeve with it is that it doesn’t have a geared crank to raise and lower the table. The table is just held to the post with a clamp, so if you need to change the height the table gets all out of alignment. If you aren’t drilling very deep holes, it’s not a huge problem.

Given your disturbing knowledge of body disposal methods, I’m reluctant to mansplain, but for anyone else who may not be familiar with it, I can’t help proselytizing for cutting fluid when cutting aluminum. That’s this stuff:

I show Lenox brand here, because someone gave me a small bottle of it a few years ago and it changed my life. It makes the difference between a gummed-up saw blade or drill bit and a clean cut.

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I’d get in trouble for adding to my stash. :frowning:

Adding to the list of suggestions: does your local school district PTO have a thrift shop?

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Not that I know of. I expect a lot of it will be gotten rid of when the weather gets better.

It’s just so painful for me to go through it, I have to get past that. Just one object can bring back memories and start me on a crying jag.

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It’s amazing how much a hank of yarn can trigger memories. I have yarn leftover from projects I made in high school where I still know where I bought it and what was going on in my life at the time.

I still have a lot of yarn from my grandmother, including knitted objects she made after the dementia started but before she was willing to go into a home. Those ones aren’t going anywhere, nope nope nope. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to turn them into an art thing.

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It’s not just the yarn…it’s cross-stitch projects and patterns, miscellaneous items from my childhood, et cetera, as well.

sigh Thanks for getting it. <3

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Ouf. Yeah, that’s difficult.

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Charcoal on gray cardstock

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Wait, is that drawn in negative? As in, the paper is grey and the shading is filled in?

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Yeah. I covered the paper in charcoal and erased-out the sculpture.

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Wow, I’m seriously impressed. Amazing stuff! :thumbsup:

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Thanks!!

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Kneaded eraser?

I started out with a regular rectangle eraser because I needed a lot of pressure to get back to the paper tone. For the finer details I used a kneaded eraser, an eraser in pencil housing and a blending stump. Once you have the shapes outlined you can just draw the details as usual. The cool thing was that once the charcoal was erased it naturally left behind a fine, stone-like texture.

I’ve uploaded a somewhat better photo, but I can’t seem to get the details as sharp as I’d like.

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I’ve just uploaded my 100th track for 2017 at starthief.net. :smiley:

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