Yes You May 2021
May 1, 2021 – Initial Post
Well, I had mentioned in the main thread that there was a lot that I wanted to try and focus on, and of course, a lot of that is probably pretty out-of-reach in certain ways. I’ll post here again for my consideration list or maybe what I might choose from throughout the month:
- Getting back into chainmail! (I have a scarf to finish, and an idea to try out, and dragonscale to learn!)
- Learning guitar! (but gosh, then I’d have to practice… and I don’t have a teacher)
- Learning to code in Swift! (Playgrounds is fun, but I always get locked up in loops logic and tend to bail at that point)
- Designing several cool wooden items for my husband to build. – A nice box to put my Puttypeep card supplies in to fit on my shelf, a “standing desk” box (since I’m using two cardboard boxes stacked on each other on my desk…), and a very large, walk-in “cage” to put my garden in (damn birds).
And of course, there’s always the usual stuff going on that, well, I should be doing anyway even if I’m not – marketing and business stuff (not really going anywhere right now), exercise (VR, flag spinning, dance – well, dance is pretty important to me), reading the big, constantly increasing pile of books (what do you mean it’s titling, it’s not tilting!!), cleaning my room and my studio (well, the studio really needs to be done so I can do stuff in there!), and a multitude of other things. But feels like they don’t need to take up a special month.
However, I ended up going with a few different things. Well, two from the list and one added, which I did mention above:
OFFICIAL YES YOU MAY LIST (FOR NOW!)
- Chainmail – I’ll be focusing on getting back to chainmail and working on that “scarf” and if I finish, working on a new idea – still a scarf but a bit different, and learning (trying to, it’s a pretty complicated weave that I can tell) dragonscale chainmail which created a cool overlapping, scaled look. I’ll give this its own entry in my thread.
- Wooden Designs – I’ll be working on those designs for Marty to build (after school is done for him and he’ll have “time”, haha, he’s working on a dissertation right now). Just the designs, although he wants actual measurements and whatnot, so they have to be “ready” designs. I’ll give this another entry, too.
- Dance – Lastly, I want to work on conditioning up for dancing again. I was in the middle of classes (getting back into it) when our lockdowns hit and had to drop my classes. It seems hopeful that we will be back to in-person classes in the Fall but in the year of the COVID, I’ve gained weight, lost flexibility, lost muscle tone and mass, my balance is off again. So, working back up again. But I also want to challenge my little Committee of Critics I call the FUUSSs. Fat Ugly Useless Stupid Selfish. And while my tons of work has shifted the last USS parts, the first two seem nigh unshiftable. Literally no movement. Well, maybe they don’t hammer in my head so much, but when focus turns to that, nope, I don’t believe anything positive coming my way. A lot of this translates to anything physical I do with my body, including (especially dance) and Systema (a combat martial art I practice – well, been a year off that too). (No need to say anything in regards to any of this, I am with a Professional!). But I thought maybe I could record some (potentially horrible, since I’m so still off my game) improv dance stuff and ah…. actually post them. Ick. But, still figure an interesting idea to do so. (or could chicken out entirely, lol!!)
- Bonus Feature – Cleaning Studio – Slowly working on my art studio wherein lies my jeweler’s bench, 3D print station, a Shotbox for taking good photos of items, a Silhouette machine, lots of craft kits, yarn, soap/lotion/essential oils stuff, etc.
Right now there’s an issue where the top part of my menu jumps are covered a bit by my nav bar. I’m still working on this issue, so in the meantime, you’ll have to scroll up just a little after each jump to get to the beginning of the section. *grumbles*
Here you can just jump to the different Project Sections!
Overview
Chainmail
Wood Designs
Dancing
Bonus – Studio
Overview!
First off, I just have to say, a lot of my Yes You May felt like this:
Developing what may or may not be a pinched nerve in my neck about halfway through the month put a definite damper on my more physical activities. And even some of the not more physical activities. Like, who knew there were so many damn neck muscles are involved in the act of chewing or sniffing your nose (which I do a lot of due a constant runny nose)??! It also is leaving me with headaches that suck (along with those sharp pains from chewing or turn my head). I’m pretty sure that I didn’t want to sign up for this corporeal existence anyway. Stupid.
In any case, it wasn’t the worst of months, even though I felt like I didn’t really get much “done”. You can check into each project to see how those went.
Well, I haven’t worked on chainmail in a long time, although my setup has been sitting on the floor near where I sit to watch TV. Probably in the hope that I would just put the damn thing in my lap and continue to work it. But alas, it has just been collecting dust.
At this point, I only know how to do a European 4-in-1 weave, which is probably the most visually well-known chainmail pattern. There are many more patterns and weaves. Oh, a weave is when you make a sort of “fabric” out of your jump-rings, but you can make fancy chains and stuff you’d use in jewelry.
Initially, I had the idea to make scarves and other accessories “clothing” type items. I started with this rather large one, 30 rings across, thinking that would be “quick and easy” HAHHAHAAAAAA. 30 rings across takes a hell of a lot longer to do and doesn’t seem all that “scarf-like”. Chainmail LOOKS narrow if you just look at it with the natural “hang of it” but it actually can stretch out quite a bit. (see the first photo)
I wanted a scarf that would look like the very long narrow ones I have crocheted (with yarn, lol!) that you can loop around your neck several times. 30 rings across is just too “wide” for that, I think. So, I think for my next try, for which I’m going to use colored rings and maybe small rings or beads on the edge rings to accent, I’ll probably do 15 rings across. Maybe even less, will have to do some tests.
So, this is my wacky setup where I have some rows on and have been adding a few during this Yes You May event. I usually will make a large square and then just attach it to the longer length. That’s just because even with my funky rod setup, I can’t accommodate a very long piece. So it gets done in chunks.
Then here’s a video on my setup and a little introduction to how I painstakingly “weave” this scarf, ring by ring! It’s definitely a process. And hard on the hands. I think I need new pliers, which, CORRECTION, are bent chain-nose pliers, not needle nose (although could be bent needle nose, but I think these are chain nose).
Given my work from last night and how my hands felt the next morning, I definitely need better pliers. Plus these make my hands stink of weird plastic. I need to redip my pliers, but maybe I should wait until I get new ones. I think I would need to get ones with large handles that fit better into my hands, these tend to press too much in pointed spots in my hands. Which then causes problems. Next steps then, more research and see if there are pliers for reducing this.
And I’ll have to see if I can do a timelapse video for Erika!! Will have to play with the settings since it takes me so long to do a row. I’ve never actually timed myself. I should do that too.
Overall, I definitely didn’t finish the large scarf or get to start trying out the idea I had, which was to start creating those long 15 ring scarf thingies, nor have I tried to get into the dragonscale weave. Oh, and I’m actually talking about the jump-ring style of dragonscale, not scale mail, which I definitely want to learn too!! But while it looks so very utterly cool, is a very complicated weave. Probably should stick with Euro 4-in-1 for now!
Wood Designs!
There are several things that I need to have in my room and my garden and since they are so very specific in size, seems like it would be better just to have them made. Fortunately, I have a Dude (my husband Marty), who has spent the last year filling our garage with woodworking tools and rarely gets to use them. So I need:
- A better object to replace my standing desk “hack”.
- A pretty box to put all my Puttyverse card materials in.
- A very large cage for my garden because I have tasties wildlife likes.
The Standing Desk
First off, my standing desk. I have found that I am sitting pretty much all day long and it’s BAAAAD for my body. So I started using a couple of boxes to put on my desk to lift up my laptop to the point that I could stand. I couldn’t get an actual standing desk because my current desk, which I like A LOT, can’t really be modified into a standing desk due to the upper shelf and my huge deskop that needs definite support. Also, I want to be able to watch shows on my desktop while using my laptop while standing. And again, I like my desk and don’t want to replace it. So, the box “hack”. But it wasn’t really the most stable, shaking a bit as I typed. But it was the perfect height and stable enough that I could bring it slightly forward over the front edge of the desk, and move it around to angle in a way that I can see my larger screen or shift physically. Here’s what it looked like:
Fun, eh!!
So, I asked Marty if he’d be willing to create something for me based on this same idea. Initially, he was all, “Sure! Give me the dimensions.” I measured and designed and tried to draw it out. You can see my design here, drawn on my iPad Pro, and again, I’m not an engineer, nor a drawer of any kind. The second shelf was really hard for me to visualize how to put into 2D so I had a lot of explaining to do for Marty. Who immediately started asking all these questions and why did I want things this way and what was the purpose of having a one-inch offset in the front and back of the second shelf, etc. I mean, to the point that he’s challenging my design (which was a solid design, he just has to have a real “reason”, beyond just, “But I like it.”).
Fortunately, I actually had “real” reasons for why I wanted everything. Then he said we could just hack off the legs of a little Japanese bench we use to put our fan on to lift it up so we can feel it when sleeping during the hot nights, add some bars on the bottom and lo! Normally he might just take off with this idea but he saw the look on my face and for some reason, just took it back to the bedroom and said he’d create my design.
Here was his re-draw and it’s definitely better on the second shelf than mine!
I definitely wasn’t expecting what he made. I was thinking I’d just get a sort of frame with the shelves but kind of “in the raw”, but it would be essentially functional. This is what I got:
Of course, I should have known better. Once his teeth are in, he’s going to do his best, especially if it’s something potentially “arty”. He had an old door, we bought the legs and he let me pick out the “grain”. Which again, led me to believe it would just be this sort of janky business. He also sanded and rounded the edges and then put tung oil over it. And it’s exactly to specs. Not a centimeter taller than I specified (very important since I needed to be able to push in my opened computer under the upper shelf of my desk).
Exactly what I wanted. Functional and beautiful. Brilliant!
The Garden Cage
Well, I got a little way into this one by taking measurements with Marty’s help and describing a basic idea of what I was thinking and then he basically designed it from there. Then of course he tried to say, what if we just make a box this tall, never mind my tomatoes are taller than what he was saying… sigh. So I think we might have to work on him a bit around this one to come up with something that isn’t a big eye sore (which I had already said, are you going to have a problem with this as an eyesore… “Oh, no, not really.” Uh huh.
Here’s Marty’s drawing for the design of this thing:
The Puttycard Box
Nothing here yet. But should be easy enough to design as the cardboard box that I use to store all the gear on my shelf is about the size I need, although I can definitely make it larger, which is what I want to do. I have no idea about Marty’s ability to make a fancy box, although I know, given the last project, that he’ll do his best.
So then it’s just what kind of box I want, a flip lid box (probably), or an inset type lid (the kind you set down over the “lip” of the inside part of the box – not sure if this type has a name or not. It does in jewelry when making containers (which I’m blanking on at the moment but usually made with a bezel that sets inside the main container walls and sort of “grips” because it’s tight).
So that’s my next thing is to design this box.
Dancing!
I didn’t really get to recording anything of me dancing. Partly I chickened out and partly the neck thing kicked my… neck. This is me with my funky ice pack on (can see it sort of in the sun mirror behind me) and feeling sad about not being able to dance! —->
But I did join the Dance Party that we did in The Verse, for which I was dancing with camera on and didn’t feel too weird. I didn’t get crazy because I was trying to be careful with my head and neck.
It was still a lot of fun and I’m definitely going to try to make the next one.
Overall, I didn’t do much with this, although did try working on balance issues, such as trying to go from a front attitude moving to a back attitude without touching the floor, as well as any one-legged type moves like tabletops and penchés. I also chose two dance classes to attend this fall, if we’re in person. I’ll register and see what happens.
Bonus – Studio!
Yeah, I didn’t do anything on this. I walked in a couple of times, looked around and pretty much immediately fled.
Okay, I did manage to stand there and look contemplative for a bit during one of these moments. I sort of poked at some of the drawers to see what was in them and how I might label them and organize them. There are a lot of empty drawers that I can utilize to put up a lot of the “stuff” that’s just sort of sitting around in boxes and randomly on the floor.
Here’s a beginning video that I took for a “Before” in preparation, which might have been a while ago, so I think it’s even degraded further than this with more stuff everywhere. I think I was looking for some embroidery thread and tore some stuff out of the shelves under where the rainbow feather boa is (from an old Pride Parade!).
So that’s it for this Yes You May! Of course, it doesn’t mean that I can’t keep doing these projects (and I will hopefully do so)! I do have to make a Pinkie Pie plushie amigurumi for my sort of godkid this week and will be mostly focused on that, but the Studio is on the top of the list since my husband is now starting to poke me to clean up so we can get to the 3D printer and start working on some cool things we’ve been planning (and have given a certificate to our friends for something that we’re having trouble printing, need to get in there and try and fix it and finish it).
I may add to this as I continue on with these projects to give updates and also when I fix that stupid nav bar menu jump issue!
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