Crafting and other things

[unicornduke]

I took most of this week off work but haven't gone anywhere. I wish the holidays were spread out more, this is silly.

I fixed two electrical outlets yesterday, one was under the counter and whatever we plugged in would fall out. I pulled it out and somehow the plastic had broken. Replaced easy. The second one was in the terrible floor mounted outlet holder, metal, not fully secured, on the floor so difficult to work with. I do dislike the 12 gauge wire in these situations, the wire does not want to bend when there is limited space. Not sure why this outlet wasn't working but I just replaced the outlet and it is working great now.

Later, I built a stool for my loom. Not for weaving, but for threading the loom. Turns out, most people remove the loom beater and sit in the loom. Since I needed the stool to straddle the treadles and the frame but not be super tall so the heddles were at eye level. Set up in the basement and just used hand saw instead of pulling out the jigsaw or circular saw since it was simple and more fun.

I finished threading the heddles yesterday and sleyed the reed too. Tied on this morning and spent a little time this evening doing the first weaving! It's a sampler so I'm working through all the patterns the weaving book recommends trying on the sampler. When I get a few more done, I'll post some pictures. The more I learn, the more I'm thinking about taking a class at the Marshfield School of Weaving. The classes look really good and I follow one of the instructors on instagram and he weaves on an enormous beautiful jack loom doing overshot coverlets and things. Incredible work. Expensive classes though. I'd need to save up.

I made fancy ice cream this morning. I made pastry cream over the weekend for F's cat since it was basically the only things she would eat at that point (rip Remi, she was put down yesterday, dragonlady7 wrote a lovely eulogy here) so I had egg whites left over. I cooked the egg whites plus other stuff in a double boiler until they were 172F then whipped them in the stand mixer, then whipped heavy cream and folded them together. That will be for thanksgiving tomorrow at F's sister's place

I finished two hats up that are christmas gifts, they need some small things still like ear flaps but I consider them done enough. I took my sweater with me to donate blood and since there's always a wait, I got some rows knitted. I'll be taking with me to the gathering tomorrow too. Blood donation was good, went quick once they hooked me up and I'm just a tiny bit tired and slightly thirsty.

Time to lay in bed and read :)

Comments

[graydon]

That's a busy week off!

Yay successful furniture making.

Very sorry about F's cat.

When Dad rewired the farmhouse when I was a kid, it went in stages because we were living in it. Eventually it was all eight gauge solid copper. This was way over spec but Dad felt it was worth the hassle and expense because the farmhouse was, at its core, an 1840s log cabin and insanely flammable. Overspecing the wiring reduces the electrical fire risk a fair bit.

[unicornduke]

Yeah, I don't mind that almost every breaker is 20A and 12 gauge wire other than not realizing that and having to get a 15A breaker for the living room since I put in 14 gauge wiring. I'm glad most of the house is on 20A because it means the fridge circuit doesn't trip when we use the microwave and toaster, because there's like six things on that circuit besides the fridge for some reason. There's also two sets of 30A breakers that don't appear to go to anything. I need to spend some time tracing wires and figuring out where they go because if they don't need to be there then I could take them out. F's BIL did just gift us a very nice tablesaw, so that'll need 220w but I don't think I need to run it on the 30A, I can probably do a double 20A instead.

The issue I was running into was that they wired all the outlets in series, so there was six 12 gauge wires stuffed into the outlet mount and they did not want to bend even a little bit and there was very little room in the mount. I really should have re-wired the whole thing with junction boxes and pigtails but since I split the living room off, it's just two outlets so I'm not as worried about it. It really only runs the occasional light and the moveable AC unit in the summer.

My room is a bigger concern for outlet failures since I've got four in there, probably in series, mounted in the metal boxes on the slate floor so it's going to be a bit of work to fix. Ideally, I'd tear it all out and run the electrical in the basement with pigtails up but I think if I replace the electrical in my room, I'm going to have to run metal conduit along the length of the wall with the outlets coming off it. But that's not urgent so it goes in the box of things to not worry about for now.

[graydon]

The issue I was running into was that they wired all the outlets in series, so there was six 12 gauge wires stuffed into the outlet mount

How singularly unhelpful.

I admire your prioritization and yeah, you don't have to fix it all now.