Don't hate me because I'm beautiful . . . .

Because it was hard working becoming this beautiful . . .

That is a pile about 20" across, 15" top to bottom and 6" deep in the middle of combings and a few trimmings . . . and it took about an hour and a half to get all my beautiful hair combed out this morning.

Casey

Could Use a Little Help

The school my girls went/go to is different from most schools.  I'm not going to go into just how it's different or how different it is or why that's important to me.  Galloway is a very small school, but one thing that the school is pretty well known for is it's arts department - they have a terrific fine arts program that includes not just painting, sculpture and pottery but theater, voice, computer art, instrumental art and all types of creativity.  My girls both got a lot out of the fine arts programs at Galloway, but they could be made so much better with this grant.

Right now, the school is in the running for a $50K grant from Clorox but they can use as much help as they can get.  It's not difficult, just go to the Clorox Power a Bright Future site, register (it's free and no spam email) and vote.  You can vote every day from now until December 9th.  There are three categories and our school is running in the Create Category.  I had a little trouble getting registered, but once I did, voting was easy.  Just put the word Galloway in the search field and the school comes right up.

If you are so inclined, I would really appreciate your help and your votes!

Help us win $50K for Galloway!

After a competitive national nomination period, voting is open for the Power a Bright Future grant from The Clorox Company. Help Galloway’s fine arts department win up to $50,000 by casting your votes every day through Dec. 9, 2011.

Galloway's Fine Arts Program Needs to Add 21st Century Technology

The Galloway School, Atlanta, GA

Program Detail:
Galloway's fine arts program, which includes both visual and performing arts, emphasizes a student-centered curriculum based on the National Standards for Arts Education. Students currently have access to minimal creative arts technology, such as the means to record their process and progress. Visual arts students are able to create a variety of media, but they do not have a way to document the process in order to review their progress. Dance, theater, and technical design students would improve and grow if they, too, had a way to record through video their creative process. Strings, band, and choral students do not have the appropriate equipment to record themselves in order to identify areas of improvement in intonation, ensemble, and technique. The ability to create sophisticated recordings would give all of our fine arts students opportunities to learn and share globally with peer institutions.

How this Grant will Help:
In order to take our fine arts program to the next level, we must add 21st century technology. We need professional-quality recording hardware, music mixing and editing software, and wireless technology. Creating sophisticated recordings will give all arts students the opportunity to learn and share globally with peer institutions. Students and teachers will benefit from having the tools to create material appropriate for archiving and developing qualities unique to each discipline. They also will be able to view, listen, and constructively critique their work. In addition, to enhance the learning process for our performances, we need energy-efficient LED and intelligent fixtures so our technical students can gain experience with lights that move and change color. Combining interactive technology with live performances will give our students the ability to be more collaborative and prepare them for a future they have not even begun to imagine.

Fits and Starts

Since it is Tatting Tea Tuesday, I thought I'd show that I really have been tatting.  This is a false start on Crazy Mom's Count to Four necklace.  It actually isn't a mistake, I was trying to modify it and seeing which way I liked it better.

This is the completed necklace.  I couldn't quite count to four, but I am pretty good up to three so it's a count to three necklace.  It won't work for what I wanted it for, but there it is - all but the ends dealt with.

So then I got out some of Anika's HDT and started a dragon wing doily.  I messed up several times before I abandoned it.  It just wasn't fun.

This is an attempted start of the Spring Flowers pattern by Julie Patterson .

This is take two - much better but I decided it was too floppy to be a great bookmark and I really wanted to make a bookmark for Girl Far From Home.

So this is the start of Convolvulus from Tatting In Lace by Mary Konior.  Oops - see that stem going the wrong direction?

Another start . . .another oops.

Finally!  I finished (except for ends) object!  It's lovely and I think someone will really like it.  Girl Far From Home may not get it though because she's mad at me.

I was so happy to have actually finished something that I decided to make another of the same thing!

So, see!  I really do a fair amount of tatting during the week.  It's just that come Tatting Tea Tuesday, I don't always have something I want to show . . . 

Knitting is another story - I'm way better at knitting than tatting because I've been doing it so much longer.  This came in the mail this week.  I'm supposed to knit two Shaun the Sheep - one for Girl Far From Home and one for The Roommate.  I dunno if they'll get done by Christmas or not . . . maybe.

I found this magazine on the Vintage Knits website - they have lots of old magazines with knitting and sewing and crafting patterns in them.  I wanted this one because that doll on the cover is sort of a family tradition.  I got a little doll like this for my second birthday.  After that, all the girls in the family got them - most of my sisters and all of the next generation girls.  Mom had already given me the pattern for the doll, but this magazine has lots of clothing that will fit the doll.  Now I just need to learn to sew . . . I'd love to have one made for my nephew's little girl who is two and her sister to be.  My nephew and his wife are flying to China (as this is being written actually) to pick up a little orphan girl and bring her home to be their own.  

 

Dena and I bought these books (a copy for her and one for me) so we could knit some of the cute things in them.  There are lots of little holiday decorations.  She and I have plans to make a very special present from one of them.

I ran into someone selling these two books for a reasonable price.  I already had them but they are out of print and can be very difficult to find so I bought them as an investment.  When Anna's new book comes out, I think these will go up in price and maybe I can sell them for a profit.

Another used book but this one I bought because it has some really cute patterns in it and I have an awful lot of homespun yarn.

 A couple of used lace books that I found for a pretty good price.  I love lace books and love knitting lace so since they were cheap, I added them to my library!

Ice and fire

We ran into sleet driving north to visit Girl Far From Home for parents' weekend. It dressed up the trees and bushes up in the mountains where we went to visit a winery. Then on the way back to our hotel, we watched the sun set over the mountains.

Recycling is cool!

So are bow ties and the Tardis.

SubT: Ready for Occupancy

A couple hours this morning and the SubT (subterranean greenhouse) is ready for occupancy!

This is the finished roof.  You can see under the top layer of poly film the corrugated panels.  They aren't vinyl after all, they are PVC and they are getting brittle.  We had to toss most of the original ones that I bought 4 years ago because they were too bent and too brittle but we managed with the extras I bought two years ago.  We will have to have new ones the next time we replace the poly sheeting but hopefully that will be at least 2 years from now.

This is how it looks from where the neighbors can see it - not pretty but not too bad.   The neighbor on that side doesn't spend any time outdoors - I have seen her and spoken to her one time in the 16 years we've lived in this house and that was when she came over to yell at me.  She doesn't even answer the door for trick or treaters.  You can barely see it from the road because our house sits atop a hill so I doubt that it bothers anyone.

This is what it looks like from the top of the stairs that go down into the well where it lives.  (The long white pole is holding the poly that covers the opening up and out of the way - sort of).

This is the door frame that fits in the opening.  It fits tightly from the outer wall to the back of the chimney wall.  I can leave it so that it will open and you can go in and out, but I have blocked it off for several years.  When the plants get in there, there isn't a lot of room for coming and going so I just push the frame into place with the sheeting that hangs down from the roof around it and it effectively makes that a wall.  

This is the inside - cozy but bright.  It is 6' across from the doorway to the outer wall and 9' long from the opening where I'm standing to take the pic to the end where the white shelves are next to the door.  

And this is standing next to the door to the house looking out the opening that heads up the stairs.  You can see where the chimney wall comes out from the house (behind the wire table) and makes the doorway that I close up.  

Most of the shelving in the SubT is recycled.  The table was a clothing rack that had been donated to the costume shop at the school, but one piece of leg was missing so it was worthless.  The white bakers rack was missing one piece of iron and the glass for two shelves had been broken so the neighbors were throwing it away.  I just put wood where the glass was missing and it's great for my purposes.  The shelves along the long, outside wall are made from cinder blocks that were in Dad's basement when I cleaned out his house and recycled closet shelving (think elfa but cheaper).  The floor is slanted towards a drain that was built in, so I used shingles to level the various shelves.  I do have a small electric heater, but until it gets very cold and stays that way for a while, the light bulb in the outdoor light will keep it pretty warm.

The whole thing is pretty cheap, and pretty effective.

Upgrading the SubT

We have a 'daylight basement'.  I put quotes around that because I think saying it was a stretch on the builder's part.  What they did to create the 'daylight' part of the basement was extend the basement out a few feet, surround it by a brick wall and put stairs that lead below grade to a door and two windows.  

A few years back, I decided that this would be the perfect place to build a greenhouse.  The well is 6' across and the area from the end of the well to the side of the chimney is 9' long, so the greenhouse is 6' x 9'.   It's perfect because I didn't really have to build much.  I had to come up with a way to create a roof that was insulated and still let sun in.  The roof had to be slanted so it didn't collect leaves so that meant that there is a triangle at one end that had to be dealt with and the open end.  Because there is a chimney sticking out of the wall, the other end was half walled which just left a doorway.

So, in October of 2007 my nephew came for a visit and I put him to work.  We bought some PVC pipes, some corrugated vinyl roofing panels and some poly sheeting and we built me a greenhouse.  We built a sqare frame of PVC and laid it across the well where the stairs go down below grade from the top of the wall (which has a railing on it that conveniently holds the frame in place) to the wall of the house.  Then we covered that with the poly sheeting and put the roof tiles on top of that.  I used bubble wrap to drape over the doorway and the open end where the railing is - inside the poly which was also draped down below grade on all sides.

In October of 2009, I needed to replace the poly sheeting as it becomes brittle with time.  I had learned that water will accumulate on it and cause it to droop, so I added a brace to the center of the rectangular pvc frame.  I also lifted the bottom so that the poly sheeting was above ground level and the water could flow to the ground more easily.

This year, I again had to replace the sheeting and this year I am making a few more improvements.

First, the outside edge is all the framing this thing had the first year.  In 2009, I added the third top to bottom piece (the one under my daughter's feet).  This year, we (I had help again - this time from DH and DD) added two side to side braces which I hope will help keep the roofing panels from sagging.

These are the corrugated roofing panels and they are no longer flat.  Gravity combined with the heat of the sun here in Georgia to cause them to sort of melt in the middle.  I'm hoping they will flatten out a bit in the sun today and tomorrow morning but if not, I'll just use them with the humps up so gravity can flatten them back down.

Here is the framing in place.  Tomorrow it will be covered with a sheet of poly which will drape below grade on the end with the wrought iron railing and to the ground on the other end.  Then we will lay the corrugated roofing panels on top of that - I think I may tie some to the top of the pvc frame to keep them from sliding down since we have a steeper grade this year than ever before.  Lastly, we will lay another layer of poly sheeting over the whole thing again.  The corrugated roofing panels will create an air space between the two layers of sheeting that will help insulate the roof.

There is a pvc framed doorway that gets wedged between where the chimney sticks out and the outside wall.  Both the door and the end near the railing will also get a draping of bubble wrap for added insulation.

This has worked very well for the last four years.  I lose a few plants every year, but a lot less than when I tried to keep them alive in the garage.  And last year, I had tomatoes in December, January and even February (tho those didn't taste as good).

Tomorrow, we dress the frame and maybe move the plants.