![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Not really racing stripes
Mar. 31st, 2024 07:15 am When I bought the van I commented that, as it is black, it would be pretty to add art to it. Blue knotwork dragons with silver outline, for example. Of course, life was busy and it didn't happen. That year.
When we were in Biltema the other day, to buy the lightbulbs for the licence plate bracket, so he could tell if there was power running through that wire, so we could get the backup camera working properly, we had some time to kill before we could go pick up the microwave I bought over FB marketplace. So we wandered slowly through the store like it was a date, chatting and looking at what is available. In the car section we saw rolls of glow in the dark reflecting stripes, about 1 cm wide. Remembering that daydream of decorating the van, we impulse bought some, thinking that we could use the tool for cutting uniform width strips of leather to cut them in half lengthwise, making a good width for knotwork outlines.
That was Friday, which was a holiday. So while he got the backup camera working, I took a large chunk of very heavy paper, of the sort that wraps rolls of thin plate metal as purchased by a firm that installs ventilation (like, say the company he works for, and in which workshop we were spending the afternoon--because it is such good, soild paper they always save it when the open the rolls, as it is good to make patterns and templates of, which they sometimes need to do during an installation, and sometimes for the hobby jobs they do in the workshop under their free time). I placed the paper on the van and traced the panel in the middle, then I started drawing a dragon, inspired by the same Urnes style viking brooch that I have used many ties before, most recently for my adaption for the contest for the Drachenwald alternative style Kingdom arms contest.
This week's dragon version is more rectangular, to better fill the space on the panel, and is both simpler, and more complex in its knotwork, depending on how one looks at it. I have removed the tiny fiddly bits that curve super tightly and suggest front legs, but I have instead added more open knots from the tail and back of head trailing bits to nicely fill the edges of the rectangle.
On Friday I managed to get an ok draft of the drawing done by the time he was done with the things he was working on, and we went home. He commented on the drive that his plan for Saturday was a rest day.
Once home, we put away the groceries we had bought early that morning (wisely anticipating that we'd be too tired to do it after the workshop projects) and put the microwave on the shelf that my old microwave had lived on. The shelf is one we'd put into an open are between two inbuilt kitchen cabinets. We suspect that a previous owner had once had a narrow inbult refrigerator in that gap.
The new (second hand) microwave is intended to be inbuilt, and is the perfect width for that space. However, it needs a shelf above it, to properly enclose the area. We didn't have anything available in the house, so we resolved that he'd make one from something in the scrap bin at work when next he goes in.
Friday evening we tested the leather strap cutting tool, and it worked beautifully to turn a 9 meter roll of reflective tape into 18 meters of half width tape.
Saturday morning I had my fortnightly zoom call with my sisters, at 05:00, because the time is attached to my sister in Seattle time zone who sets the meeting, and the US has already sprung forward, but Europe hadn't yet (we did that today). I happened to wake just after 04:00, well before the alarm, so I got up anyway, fed the cats, who both insisted that they were ready to est, and did a few other useful things before the call.
After the call I thought of going to sleep, but then saw the roll of paper with the draft dragon, and decided to play with it a little instead. By 08:00 I had finished tweaking the little knots at the edges to better fill the space and to make every branch of the knot always alternate its overs and unders. Then I carefully cut the dragon off of the page, so it would be traceable.
At this point I was feeling inspired, so I bounced into the bedroom, where Keldor was sort of waking up, and suggested that we could spend our rest dat at the workshop, painting. Because he is wonderful, he agreed.
We planned to return to Biltema to buy some spray paint, but he decided that we should stop at the Dollar Store on the way as he needed more bubble bath and bath salts. It being a "rest day" we treated that trip as a date, and wandered slowly through the store. They had spray paint, so we picked it up there , saving us an extra trip, and bought a few odds and ends of other useful items.
Then we went to the workshop, and while he enjoyed his morning coffee I started to covere the relevant panels on both sides with slightly overlapping rows of masking tape. Then I taped the dragon into position on the right side of the van, ready to trace it onto the tape. Just then Keldor, who had finished his coffee and had started welding a helmet for a friend, who had done the dishing, but doesn'thave points in welding, came by and reminded me that I had created the dragon pattern for the left side of the van, and I was on the right side, so this is the one I had planned to be the mirror immage.
So I moved the dragon to the correct side and traced it. Then we measured how far from the corner it is, and he took it around to the orher side, taped it on (in mirror image orientation), and did that tracing while I took a knife and carefully cut around the traced lines and started peeling the tape away from the dragon itself, leaving the background covered.
He finished tracing the other side well before I finished peeling, so he took over peeling, and I did the cutting for the lines on the second side. While I peeled the tape off of the second dragon, he started to spray paint on side one, then painted side two, after which we both took a break for lunch.
After lunch I peeled the paint from the background, while he made the shelf for over the microwave and then he gave the dragons a coat of clear spray paint to cover. I ate second lunch as that dried, and then started applying the reflective tape to the outline. We had only pre-split one of the rolls of reflective tape, which gave enough length to finish the first dragon, with about 1 meter to spare.
At that point we had been working six hours, and my legs and hips were complaining about standing on concrete, so we went home, where we placed the shelf in place and split the othe two rolls of reflective tape while a movie played. My legs and hips were still unhappy (despite my using the massage pistol on them during the ride home) so I massaged them again, tried to do a little yoga, took an extra hot shower, put some liniment on them, and went to bed.
I did some more yoga directly after waking, and the legs and hips are doing much better. Today really is a rest day, though we will visit a friend for dinner, but hopefully some time this week we will find time to do the second dragon's outline.
When we were in Biltema the other day, to buy the lightbulbs for the licence plate bracket, so he could tell if there was power running through that wire, so we could get the backup camera working properly, we had some time to kill before we could go pick up the microwave I bought over FB marketplace. So we wandered slowly through the store like it was a date, chatting and looking at what is available. In the car section we saw rolls of glow in the dark reflecting stripes, about 1 cm wide. Remembering that daydream of decorating the van, we impulse bought some, thinking that we could use the tool for cutting uniform width strips of leather to cut them in half lengthwise, making a good width for knotwork outlines.
That was Friday, which was a holiday. So while he got the backup camera working, I took a large chunk of very heavy paper, of the sort that wraps rolls of thin plate metal as purchased by a firm that installs ventilation (like, say the company he works for, and in which workshop we were spending the afternoon--because it is such good, soild paper they always save it when the open the rolls, as it is good to make patterns and templates of, which they sometimes need to do during an installation, and sometimes for the hobby jobs they do in the workshop under their free time). I placed the paper on the van and traced the panel in the middle, then I started drawing a dragon, inspired by the same Urnes style viking brooch that I have used many ties before, most recently for my adaption for the contest for the Drachenwald alternative style Kingdom arms contest.
This week's dragon version is more rectangular, to better fill the space on the panel, and is both simpler, and more complex in its knotwork, depending on how one looks at it. I have removed the tiny fiddly bits that curve super tightly and suggest front legs, but I have instead added more open knots from the tail and back of head trailing bits to nicely fill the edges of the rectangle.
On Friday I managed to get an ok draft of the drawing done by the time he was done with the things he was working on, and we went home. He commented on the drive that his plan for Saturday was a rest day.
Once home, we put away the groceries we had bought early that morning (wisely anticipating that we'd be too tired to do it after the workshop projects) and put the microwave on the shelf that my old microwave had lived on. The shelf is one we'd put into an open are between two inbuilt kitchen cabinets. We suspect that a previous owner had once had a narrow inbult refrigerator in that gap.
The new (second hand) microwave is intended to be inbuilt, and is the perfect width for that space. However, it needs a shelf above it, to properly enclose the area. We didn't have anything available in the house, so we resolved that he'd make one from something in the scrap bin at work when next he goes in.
Friday evening we tested the leather strap cutting tool, and it worked beautifully to turn a 9 meter roll of reflective tape into 18 meters of half width tape.
Saturday morning I had my fortnightly zoom call with my sisters, at 05:00, because the time is attached to my sister in Seattle time zone who sets the meeting, and the US has already sprung forward, but Europe hadn't yet (we did that today). I happened to wake just after 04:00, well before the alarm, so I got up anyway, fed the cats, who both insisted that they were ready to est, and did a few other useful things before the call.
After the call I thought of going to sleep, but then saw the roll of paper with the draft dragon, and decided to play with it a little instead. By 08:00 I had finished tweaking the little knots at the edges to better fill the space and to make every branch of the knot always alternate its overs and unders. Then I carefully cut the dragon off of the page, so it would be traceable.
At this point I was feeling inspired, so I bounced into the bedroom, where Keldor was sort of waking up, and suggested that we could spend our rest dat at the workshop, painting. Because he is wonderful, he agreed.
We planned to return to Biltema to buy some spray paint, but he decided that we should stop at the Dollar Store on the way as he needed more bubble bath and bath salts. It being a "rest day" we treated that trip as a date, and wandered slowly through the store. They had spray paint, so we picked it up there , saving us an extra trip, and bought a few odds and ends of other useful items.
Then we went to the workshop, and while he enjoyed his morning coffee I started to covere the relevant panels on both sides with slightly overlapping rows of masking tape. Then I taped the dragon into position on the right side of the van, ready to trace it onto the tape. Just then Keldor, who had finished his coffee and had started welding a helmet for a friend, who had done the dishing, but doesn'thave points in welding, came by and reminded me that I had created the dragon pattern for the left side of the van, and I was on the right side, so this is the one I had planned to be the mirror immage.
So I moved the dragon to the correct side and traced it. Then we measured how far from the corner it is, and he took it around to the orher side, taped it on (in mirror image orientation), and did that tracing while I took a knife and carefully cut around the traced lines and started peeling the tape away from the dragon itself, leaving the background covered.
He finished tracing the other side well before I finished peeling, so he took over peeling, and I did the cutting for the lines on the second side. While I peeled the tape off of the second dragon, he started to spray paint on side one, then painted side two, after which we both took a break for lunch.
After lunch I peeled the paint from the background, while he made the shelf for over the microwave and then he gave the dragons a coat of clear spray paint to cover. I ate second lunch as that dried, and then started applying the reflective tape to the outline. We had only pre-split one of the rolls of reflective tape, which gave enough length to finish the first dragon, with about 1 meter to spare.
At that point we had been working six hours, and my legs and hips were complaining about standing on concrete, so we went home, where we placed the shelf in place and split the othe two rolls of reflective tape while a movie played. My legs and hips were still unhappy (despite my using the massage pistol on them during the ride home) so I massaged them again, tried to do a little yoga, took an extra hot shower, put some liniment on them, and went to bed.
I did some more yoga directly after waking, and the legs and hips are doing much better. Today really is a rest day, though we will visit a friend for dinner, but hopefully some time this week we will find time to do the second dragon's outline.