One Project Done

Since I know you all wait with great anticipation for me to do stuff, I thought I would let you know I have actually finished the Scrapghan!

It took considerably more time, effort, and yarn than I had anticipated when I started.  In the end, it seems to have been worth it.  It came out pretty cool.  Now if only I knew what to do with it...

It came out a lot more in the shape I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise.  I thought it was going to be more oblong:

In other news, I finally got my new rings back!  My newest one looks like this:

How very cool is the camera on my new phone (which I still hate) to get a picture this close?!  Well, except the fact that my hands are so dry they look like elephant hide.

We worked a little on drilling holes in shells and glass yesterday.  Agmorion did most of it.  I broke a shell, and drilled about three.  It is very slow going and patience is not my strong suit.  I have four bottles ready to be outfitted, and two more that need to be cut.

And a lot more drinking to do.

Which brings me to our next project.

I saw some unique bookends in a magazine a few weeks ago.  OK, yes, it was Martha Stewart.  I am normally not a fan of hers, but the bookends were really cool.  When we went to the beach last, we found two bricks that were already appropriately distressed:

So we picked them up and set them by the fire to dry for a few days.  Yesterday we soaked them to get that black gunk off them.  No luck.  We scrubbed them with minimal success.  We poured bleach on them and let them sit.  Again, minimal success.

Spin forward to after dinner, we're standing in the kitchen having a drink and discussing how to get the gunk off the bricks.  Agmorion says, "You're going to hate this, but what if we put them in the oven on the clean cycle?  That would burn it off."

It was only my first drink, but so help me, I actually started to consider it.  I even considered sacrificing a rack so the bricks would not damage the surface of my oven.

A few minutes later it dawned on me.  Why clean the oven when we have a super-heated wood stove going most of the time anyway?

Duh.

We threw both bricks into the stove.  We'll take them out Wednesday morning and see how the fire did.  Right now they are all black and sooty.  That should wash off, and then they will be ready to be painted.

Stay tuned!