A New Year, A New...Studio!

For the second half of last year, I have been going once a week to what I call the Learning Annex - my friend Delias' house, where she is teaching me the ins and outs of fabrication and soldering. A couple of months in, I started to revisit making bangles (which I did during one of my first Spruill classes, long, long ago). I had soldered a few the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, then came home, hammered them, and then needed to anneal them. And...I couldn't! No torch, no way to do anything with them for another whole week. Well, that wouldn't stand. I went up the stairs to chat with my husband.

"Honnnneeeyy", I said, in my sweetest I'myourspecialwifeandloveyouSOmuch voice, "Can we go shopping on Black Friday?". Now, Brett and I have a pact that we NEVER go out on Black Friday. "Uh, NO", he replied. "How about just to Home Depot?", I said (a little greasing the skids; like every man I know, he has an abiding love for the ol' HD). "No one will be there on Friday!". Brett just gave me one of his eyerolling, "are you crazy?!" looks...but I knew he was on board.

So on Black Friday afternoon (we are not morning people), we trundled out to - not *our* Home Depot, 5 minutes from home, but the big one that was 20 minutes away. Why? Because my partner in crime had said that was where we needed to go to get the vinyl for my studio floor. After much fruitless searching, and several phone calls, it turned out that the HD we really needed was another 15 minutes away. So off we went. By now it was about 5 p.m., getting dark, and getting cold. And did I mention that I have carpet in the studio? And that we didn't want (don't ask) to rip it out, but lay the vinyl over it? This required not only vinyl flooring, but also hardboard (masonite) to lay over the carpet but under the vinyl (clear as mud yet?) for stability. Soooo...by 6 p.m. we had the hardboard, the vinyl, tape, glue, and a few other miscellaneous necessities (Home Depot is like Target - you go in for one thing and spend $150 on four things). We were on our way!

Until we got outside to the car. And realized that the vinyl at its longest was 11 feet. And that the five sheets of hardboard wouldn't fit in the car. And of course, we were nowhere near home so we couldn't really wing it. Brett laid the vinyl in at an angle, with one end sticking out the passenger side window. Meaning we would have to drive home with the window down (have I mentioned that it was COLD out? And then we shrink-wrapped (I'm serious) the hardboard to the top of the car. Because of the way the vinyl was lying, I couldn't sit up in the back seat, so had to lay down for the trip home...which started out on the freeway, but we had a lot of wind resistance, so Brett ended up taking surface streets most of the way. Nearly an hour later, we arrived in true hillbilly style!

The vinyl is sticking out the window, and if you look carefully, you can see the masonite boards shrink-wrapped to the top of the vehicle...
And thus ends Phase 1. Don't worry, there's more (much more than I ever imagined) to come...