CHESS BITCHEZ

So I effectively puzzled through the necessary tasks of dealing with the resin and the prep process... at least, good enough on this ghetto-ass $30/l clear resin. Look at this "majestic alicorn" (according to the designer)! Look at its impossibly spindly ankles! Look at how fully a third of its mass is the tail! It only took an hour to cut the supports off.

This did reveal one hole in the process.

My wife and kid have no problems whatsoever leaving the house with every light blazing. Apparently if there are lights on in the garage, however, that shit gets turned off. Along with everything else in the garage. So here's 2/3rds, or 9 hours, of a "majestic alicorn."

Regardless. The kid has now painted a "majestic alicorn" with rainbow tail and gold and silver feathers and she's volunteered me to print something or other for every kid in her class so we're hoping the novelty wears off somewhat soon. Because now it's time to print something to CAST and after puzzling the idea around a little bit I determined that a chess set would be the way to go - after all, it gives you six (or twelve) different forms, everything is a good size to fit in the flask, and whatever you make, it's going to be luxe as hell. There's an insanely expensive book I got through inter-library loan that has an amazing chess set by Pierre Sterle that I would love to even get another look at but what you discover is that jewelry is effectively a lost art in that everything has been done before, the craftsmen of yore knew hella more than you, and frankly if you can just get your skills up to state-of-the-art 1955 you will fucking dust everyone modern because most of the techniques have been lost to time.

But I digress.

So no, we're not making a Minecraft Chess Set. We're not making a Pokemon chess set. But if you puzzle around on the Intarwebs for a while you get some ideas. And if you're lucky, you can find yourself some copyright infringement!

Unfortunately this isn't chess pieces and a board as 3DSMax files. No, it's the whole enchilada. But this is where you remind yourself that this is a learning exercise so fuckin' hell let's see how Fusion handles meshes. And you know? It ain't bad. It took me about 2 hours to slice out all the pieces and get 'em trussed up.

First guy outta the gate looks pretty good.

Good enough that we're going to try a full plate.

This is about where you learn that even the basic stuff you've been learning from "On the Internet nobody knows you're a cat" because no, you don't want to cure your base layers for 100 seconds if you have a full plate because you need a claw hammer to get the bishop off.

Also your automatic trusser doesn't get everything you need because printing whomping flat bits causes some ugly delamination.

But by and large?

I mean... for first print? We'll take it. The production run is going to probably be bronze and pewter and I'll likely tumble those in steel shot. My cousin asked if some of these pieces were tumbled because some are clearer and I observed that's because they have straighter sides and that one wouldn't tumble resin and then I realized I've got a tumbler full of walnut shells and why the fuck not so the pawn is currently going through a walnut shell massage and ZOMG walnut shells smell delicious.

I'm building some natural edged shelves for my daughter's room. They are from ash trees that were killed by the emerald ash bore on my cousin's property. You can see the burrowing grooves on the edge.

I wrote this the other day, instead of updating my resume, cause I assumed kingmudsy was gonna post at any time. It wasn't until I finished updating my resume that I checked Hubski, and now here we are. Mudsy is just looking out for me, I guess, making sure I get my work done. Thanks bro. I appreciate it.

By the way, to answer your question, companionship doesn't buy your boat. Companionship helps you crew it. Jeeze. Read a book or something.

I worked quite a bit on the blanket last weekend and while it doesn’t look like a lot, trust me, this was a lot of threading. It’s amazing what a three day weekend can get done. That said, my neck hurts from all the looking down at this thing, so for a while it’s gonna stop being a project and go back to being a blanket.

The whole thing is turning into quite the learning experience. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seriously worked with yarn as a medium and I gotta tell you, I’m not a fan. It’s pretty, yeah, but because it likes to flex and come undone and it doesn’t have a consistent tension, it’s pretty hard to work with. When you couple that with a blanket that started out in life as pretty loose, got looser over time, and now is inconsistent in strength and tension throughout, this is a project that’s gonna take patience. Don’t get me wrong, I’m willing to give it the patience it needs, but it’s amazing how arts and crafts teach me how to be patient over and over and over again, because each medium requires its own type of patience. So I’m learning that.

Random aside, I think on the first day of working on this, I was telling Dala how in grade school we learned a lot about Native American cultures and their stories. I remember learning about a particular culture, I wanna say one from the American Southwest because a lot of them have Spider Woman stories, and how they were often extremely skilled weavers because they were taught by a weaving goddess and if they wanted to, they could weave flawlessly. However, as an act of humility, they would always deliberately put in at least one flaw in their work. If anyone knows the specific culture, please let me know. My Google-Fu is weak and I can’t find anything concrete. Regardless, that’s something I’ll never have to worry about having to do, cause as you can see from this project and my past ones, my works are very, very flawed.

Back to the blanket though. The blanket itself is made out of cotton I believe and I’m using Dala’s scrap yarn (saving a blanket and yarn, craft eco win) which is pretty much all acrylic. I was consulting with my mother on this, back and forth through text, and we were talking about the mediums. Before she knew what kind of yarn I was working with, she was telling me that it would probably be a good idea to wash the yarn beforehand, to pre-shrink it and keep the blanket from puckering. Yeah. aintnobodygottimeforthat.jpg Upon further consultation though, we figured that the blanket is probably as slack as it’s gonna get, acrylic yarn doesn’t really shrink all that much, and if I just do a bit at a time and use and wash the blanket before adding more, it oughta be pretty safe. Which, all sounds good to me. Besides, the blanket is half ruined and I’m using scrap yarn, so if this experiment fails, it’s not major loss.

As you can tell, there’s no real plan behind this blanket. Really, colors and pieces are just kind of getting added into it completely on impulse, but a few lessons are being learned. Horizontally, the blanket stretches a lot less than vertically, so while vertical lines for reinforcement will be needed here and there, they’ll probably be a lot less frequent to try and protect the natural stretch of the blanket. Additionally, as can be seen with the little green heart, any shapes added in are gonna need to be bigger to be clearer and more discernible. The threads and the stitches are just too blocky. As can be expected though, the part that has already had yarn added to it is a lot sturdier than the blank parts. Even better though, that little section is nice and thick and just lovely. That alone is enough motivation for me to do the entire blanket. At this rate though, this might not be a “winter” project but a “2020 and beyond” project, and that’s okay.

I’m turning the whole thing into less of an art project and more into an experience project. I’m taking my time, enjoying the struggle, and just not fretting about what happens to it one way or another. I rubbed a bit of Bergamot Oil onto the part that I’m working on and it gives me a lovely fragrance to enjoy. I have on my desk a mix of Cedar and Pine Oil, and I think what I’ll do is swap back and forth between the two every time I wash it and start working on it again. My wife got me both, because she knows I love Earl Grey Tea and she knows how much I love the woods. I don’t really have a use for the oils other wise, but somehow, this feels really fitting. Additionally, as a Baha’i I’ve never been good at doing the whole obligatory 95 Alláh-u-Abhá, don’t know why, just haven’t. But I figured here would be a good place to start. So every stitch, where I thread the needle, I say in my head softly “Alláh-u-Abhá” and the phrase just flows, like gentle water, so soothing. I don’t think I’ve ever had a project where I created something and not really cared how it comes out looking. It’s liberating. If it weren’t for sore necks and the need to dedicate my time to other activities, I’d probably work on this blanket for hours on end every day. But for better or worse, that’s not a possibility, and that’s okay. Besides, I still have to make something for my friend that has a Bald Eagle on it.

Rings

Soooooo, the first ring we made for my metamour was a surprise for her, so we guessed on the numbers and made it a bit too small. Attempt two fit perfectly, but it broke while my wife was sanding for the very last coat of finish. Attempt three starts this week! When we were doing attempt two we cut and prepped about four blanks, and since the ring fit great we already have the dimensions to make it to and the appropriate collets and mandrels. I will attempt some progress photos this time through. I don't think in practice the rings will be that fragile, but we will see what happens! The two failures we've had have been failure in tension -- one from being expanded too far on a mandrel and the other from excessive pressure while sanding the inside of the ring. When you're wearing them, though, most of the bumps and knocks on them should be compressive, which wood handles a lot better.

Sewing

My metamour recently acquired a sewing machine and the two of us intend to do some projects with it. I eventually want to get into tailoring but we're going to start a bit easier first. She wants to make a vest for my wife for their wedding so we are going to go pattern and fabric shopping here soon!

A small diversion

Saturday morning I was grinding coffee and this happened:

The pin the handle turns on is just swaged on, kinda like a pop rivet. Over time, the forces from grinding worked it loose, allowing it to turn and machine its own end off:

So I made up a new one out of some stainless stock I had sitting around. It was a fun little lathe project: turn the end down for a 10-32 threading die, then a slightly bigger diameter and shoulder above that to press fit into the hole in the crank pin, then a bigger diameter for the knob to turn on. I don't have a milling machine, so I cut the screwdriver slot with a hacksaw and I am incredibly pleased with how well that worked out.

I am going to make an entry way table/shelf. I haven't picked a design yet, I'm just saying I'll add updates with with plans and progress to these threads.