Winter Welding (and other projects)

My dad and I have been busy around the house (and especially the garage). I did a little work on my welded shoe rack doing final welds on the non-corner joints and grinding all the welds down (my welding is less than perfect). The next step is to weld on tabs to hold the shelves up and then make the shelves. Alas that will be left for yet another day.

We also had some fun with the welding torch and some glass rod and tubing. more on that when i can take some acceptable photos. All i have to say is molten glass is pretty neat stuff.

After the earthquake my parents had last August (only a 4.4 but they were less than 3 miles from the epicenter) it became clear that some earthquake-proofing was going to be necessary. I managed to putty down a shelf of antique glass bottles which were just waiting to go flying and I convinced my dad to strap a few pieces of furniture to the walls. The cabinets still need latching but it was a good start.

I had asked my dad for a subscription to Craft for xmas and the story of him acquiring one involves him visiting the actual OReilly headquarters only to find multiple confused people who informed him that he could just order a subscription online. The fact that my dad, the engineer, could probably build a computer but is incapable (or really just uncomfortable) navigating the internet is totally hilarious. Somehow Make volume 8 came out of the deal though and I imagine that he made a few peoples day over at OReilly.

Finally, over at Curbly I was selected as a finalist for the Curbly Christmas wishlist and if I win I get $200 of rad crafting books from Amazon. They are deciding the winner by votes in the comments so if you feel like heading over there drop a vote in for "List to start a craft library by" (thats me!). (You will need a curbly account but its free) I asked for some good stuff like Denyse Schmidt's quilting book, Jenny Hart's embroidery book and all four of the Barbara Walker stitch dictionaries.