projects, fall 2008

Here are some projects that I've been meaning to post about for a while now. Namely, since the fall. I won't even start on the winter ones in this round. Suffice it to say, I've been busy.

These were felted wool and corduroy masks for a Halloween masquerade street fair in our neighborhood. Too bad everybody was passed out by the time we hit the streets.

Everybody told me I should just give up on this metal cabinet. I admit, it was more shabby than chic, and it got old having to vacuum up the paint chips once a week. Instead, I took some steel wool and WD-40 to it and stripped it down to this:
Next, I spray-painted it with Rustoleum to try to contain the creeping rust, then applied dark brown paint, then a crackle glaze, and finally an apple green paint. Maybe my friends were right and I should have left well enough alone, but I'm happy with the results:

I found this telescoping table at a garage sale. It looks like an innocent buffet here, but it seats fifteen people when you put the leaves in. Perfect when you have no idea whether your next place is going to have a dining room, but definitely needed some touching up.

This is after stripping it and refinishing with a cherry gel stain (additional cherry artwork courtesy of Nohemí Lugo, table runner by yours truly):Andy had this dresser with the paper-thin oak veneer finish and colonial-ish hardware:
and he kindly let me paint it and replace the hardware. The table runner, I made a couple years back:

This was the bike I got when I was twelve. Back when a rainbow pastel bike was a hot item. The best bike I've ever had, but definitely needed some updates.

Again, WD-40 and a green kitchen scrubbie took the rust out of the chrome.Emory bikes were handmade in Jacksonville, Florida. Some time soon I'll go back and spraypaint a bit more carefully around the emblem.

The handlebars were covered in this crappy black foam, which we peeled off to reveal pristine chrome. Since this photo, it's had new whitewalls, a new chain, and new grips (not pink). Phase three starts in the spring: fenders, a basket, and a new seat, and it'll be a bona fide cruiser.So there you go. Stay tuned for winter's projects.

This one's for Sarah Vowell.

What do the commander of the Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee, intrepid Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and the father of the Civil Rights movement the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all have in common?

Up until recently, all three were commemorated in the Commonwealth of Virginia on the same Friday each January, a holiday called Lee-Jackson-King Day.  

This is actually somewhat more innocuous than it sounds.  Virginia had already been celebrating King's birthday since 1978 (although it's worth mentioning that he had to share the marquee with New Year's Day...ringing in the new year being a pretty tough act to follow, of course).  Then, Ronald Reagan declared Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national celebration in 1983.  Unfortunately, this coincided with a day that Virginia had already set aside to celebrate its local heroes, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.  

Aw, what the hell, decided Virginia.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I reckon.  Somehow, celebrating the dogged defenders of one human being's right to possess another human  being while simultaneously celebrating the man who had a dream that one day this nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed seemed tenable here in the state that boasts the former capitol of the Confederacy.  What's most amazing to me as a damn Yankee is that this seemed okay all the way from 1983 up until 2000, when the governor of the Commonwealth, Jim Gilmore, suggested that Virginia go ahead and observe the same Federal holiday as everybody else, and celebrate their Confederate darlings on the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day instead.  

Everybody wins!

And for dessert, I offer you this one: a week ago today, the public schools in the Hampton Roads area all closed, along with most of the universities (except, as luck would have it, mine) due to a winter weather advisory predicting - are you ready for this? - one to five inches of snow.  The punchline for this Michigander is that this had all been accomplished before a single snowflake had been spotted on or anywhere approaching the ground in all of Hampton Roads.  So, as the ticker across the bottom of the screen was scrolling through every school district for miles around, the meteorologist was saying "well, we haven't seen any snow yet, of course, bu-ut..." In fact, all of the ominous predictions would amount to no snowfall whatsoever, just a snow day.   

Yep, Toto.  Definitely not Kansas.