We (finally) Made a Table!

So, remember waaaay back in April, when I said that we were going to be making ourselves a kitchen table? Well, we finally finished it! And yes, it's really taken us 5 months to finish it... But you don't want to hear a lot of excuses about how we're both super busy (two jobs, blah blah blah, grad-school, blah blah blah), or how we don't have our own space to do wood-working, or anything like that. You guys just want to see pictures, am I right? So, let's get to it.

We made Ana White's Sewing Table to be used as a kitchen table in our tiny apartment kitchen. We thought it would be perfect because the table has two leaves that can be folded down (if we need more floor space), or popped open to eat at (if we need more surface area). Considering we have a fairly small kitchen, I figured this would be the perfect multi-use table. And I was right.

 Here you can see the table open and shut. See how much space I have/save?

 The whole project started with one full-sheet of plywood that we had cut down at the lumber yard.

Yes, I know our plywood isn't the best quality. I'm okay with that.

We then cut it down further to make the pieces that would make up the center frame of the table. Once those pieces were cut, we assembled them.

This is half of the middle of the table...

And that's where we ran into some problems. Things didn't quite... come together the right way. I blame our crappy table-saw. We measured carefully and sanded well, but we were off a bit, and nothing was quite square when we put it all together. Grr. No worries though, we fixed it up with our super-sophisticated clamping system.

A come-along and 2 50lbs bags of flour.

Once we had everything squared away (ha, see what I did there?), it was time to paint. We had gone back and forth on the paint color a few times, but finally settled on a deep, rich, TARDIS-like blue that made us both happy.

For the painting, we were able to bring our table home and paint out-side on our balcony, so things progressed a little more quickly. Once all of the pieces were painted, we attached the leaves with cheap hinges we picked up at the local big-box hardware store.

I have to admit that it did take us about a month between assembling and painting the table until we got around to making the legs. I don't know why, because this turned out to be the simplest step in the whole process, but we took our time getting to it.
Once we finally did make the legs though, we just attached them to the leaves with more cheap hinges and we were pretty much done.

Oh, except for attaching castors to the bottom of the table so that it can easily be rolled around our kitchen (we've got linoleum).

At that point, all that was left to do was to put some of our bowls and cook-books into the storage compartments, and have breakfast!

Okay, that might have been dinner, but you know what I mean.

I love my kitchen table! It's got storage, so I can keep all of my cook-books right in the kitchen, and I can also store some of my smaller kitchen appliances that I don't use very often (like the ice-cream maker and the crock-pot), so that they don't take up much needed counter space.
I also love that it's blue, which is my favorite color.
And most of all, I love that we made it ourselves! And it was easy.

If I could start the whole project again, would I do anything differently?
    Yes, I would invest in a better quality plywood. We picked up a sheet of construction plywood for $25. With a lot of sanding and a coat of paint, it looks beautiful. But for $25 more, I would get Oak or Maple plywood next time and save myself a lot of sanding.




So that's it, our much awaited kitchen-table (at least, I've been waiting for it for a long time). What's next, you ask? That's a good question, I say. I don't know what's next. Right now we're shopping for some nice kitchen chairs, but I don't think we're going to make them.
I'm not sure what our next wood-working project will be, but I'm open to suggestions. Leave your ideas in the comments, and let me know what you think we should make!

Librarian's Corner: Unmarketable

Unmarketable

by: Anne Elizabeth Moore

I first heard about Unmarketable on the feminist podcast: Popaganda, produced by Bitch Media. This is the first non-fiction book that I've written about for Librarian's Corner, and I couldn't think of a better book to start with.

Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity is about just that, marketing and how it manages to creep its way into not only our everyday lives, but our underground, DIY and punk communities, that we normally try to keep so carefully anti-consumerist.

The book takes the question of selling-out to a whole new level by showing us that people don't always realize that they've sold out to companies like Nike, LucasFilm, or even Big Pharma. Whole genuinely underground art movements have sprung up (seemingly 'organically') to promote Tylenol or the release of the last (up until then) Star Wars movie. I picked this book up because I was interested in how it was possible for artists to sell-out without even realizing that they were being bought.

Living in the culture that we live in, we are constantly being marketed to. Just driving to work I'm bombarded by ads, on billboards and on the radio (seriously, doesn't anyone play music on the radio anymore?). You can't turn on a TV at home without seeing endless hours of commercials, even YouTube has been over-run by ads. And don't even get me started on corporate sponsorships. "This sunset brought to you by... Taco Bell, live mas!" Ugh. But this is all of stuff that we're aware of, what Unmarketable touches on is some of the marketing we experience on a daily basis that we might not have noticed.

The book is full of stories of marketing in unusual places and in odd campaigns. My favorite (or rather, the one I found most interesting) was the story of how Sony (of PlayStation fame) used graffiti, and yes, you read that correctly, to market its newest gaming console to the public. They took over an underground art form in order to sell a product, and to be honest, that kind of makes my skin crawl.

Who would I recommend this book to? Anyone who wants to read more about artistic integrity, and this insidious ways that corporations will try to pay for it. Anyone who's interested in marketing, and the ways in which we are all vulnerable to it. Anyone who wonders how the puck movement, of all things, could be co-opted by Big Pharma. Do you fit any of these descriptions? Than pick up a copy of Unmarketable today! You can't afford NOT to! (See what I did there? Marketing.)


So that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed this month's Librarian's Corner. We'll meet here again on September 21st! Pick up a copy of Unmarketable if you'd like, and if you guys do read it, I would love to hear what you thought! Leave a comment here and share your thoughts about the book (or any book for that matter, I'm always looking for recommendations for what to read next!). Stay tuned for more of what I'm doing (there may be a cloths-making post coming in the near future).

Happy Reading!

Pennsic 43 - Recap

Whew, what a week we've had. Or really, what an intense last 3 weeks it's been! I wanted to throw together a quick post to let you all know what I've been up to all this time, and well, here it is.

Let's start with the last week in July. It was the last week of my first semester of Graduate School, and I was finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But with a final due on Wednesday and a final due on Thursday (both reflective papers), it was a busy week indeed. I finally got everything turned in on time, and I was done. Nothing left to do except wait for the grades to come in. Oh, and start packing for the week-long insance camping event that we were leaving for on Sunday. Finals = done, packing, not so much.

I went to a party that Thursday night that one of my co-workers threw at her (beautiful little) house, and we all played a rousing game of Cards Against Humanity. Let's just say I heard a few things I never thought I would hear coming our of my coworkers mouths! (It's a fun game, for terrible people)

Friday I worked, and then we took the day on Saturday to get ready for our week-long camping trip. I know, packing for a week's vacation in one day is really smart... Anyway, we got everything packed up and ready to go for an early departure on Sunday morning.

Okay so, before we continue, I should take a minute to tell you where we went. Remember like a million years ago, when I posted about going to some crazy event called Pennsic? Yup, we did it again! Actually, my husband's only missed 1 year in the last 10, but this was only my second time going. And we both had an absolute blast!

We got to spend time with old friends and (to me at least) new friends. I got to meet a lot of the people that I've been hearing my husband talk about for years, and they were all exactly as I had imagined them. Wonderful, fun, funny and charming people.

I could go through a day-by-day re-cap of everything that we did at Pennsic, but I don't want to bore you. I've already put my family and friends through that kind of torture, and I don't want you nice folks to have to suffer through it as well. So let me give you the condensed version.

Sunday: Un-packing, setting up the tent (which leaked the whole time, greeting people, then a night of amazing performances.

Monday: Field battle, then our first classes of the week (including one by a teacher who I remembered well from 5 years ago). Then we actually got up to the archery range to shoot our War-Points.

Tuesday: It was a fast day, so we planned ourselves a long schedule of classes, which we more or less stuck to.

Wednesday: We went to a bit of East Kingdom Court (it ended up lasting 4 hours) and then: two words, Midnight Madness! Shopping at all of the merchants! We had a blast wandering around all of the different stalls and buying way more stuff than we needed.

Thursday: More classes, then cooking all the things back in camp (including Creme Brulee on the open fire). We ended up staying up until 2 in the morning learning how to make a bow-string.

Friday: Our last day in camp. We went to a class, then packed up and helped take down the camp site. Drove home, and that was all she wrote.

We had an amazing time, hung out with friends, attended some very interesting classes (Like: Historical Uses of Poisons, for one), and made some cool things.

Not to mention got some cool things. Check it out:

A bunny fur and some beautiful hand-spun yarn

All these leather scraps for only $2!

And some lovely linen to make a few nice projects out of!

Pennsic was a blast (I think I've said that before!), and I honestly can't wait to go back next year. But in the mean time, life moves on. Back to the grind!



I'll be back next week with another Librarian's Corner, so stay tuned!

Librarian's Corner: Xenocide

Xenocide

by: Orson Scott Card 

So far the theme of "Librarian's Corner" seems to be: books I've been meaning to read for a very long time. This month's pick was a graduation present from my best friend, 8 years ago. I read Ender's Game in middle school (several times, in fact) and had read both of its sequels (Ender's Shadow and Speaker for the Dead) in high school. Ender's Game is the first book in two separate series: Ender's Saga and the Shadow Series. Xenocide is the third book in the Ender's Saga (following Speaker). I suppose that I should put in a disclaimer here, that since this book is the third in a series, there will be some spoilers for the first two books.

Xenocide picks up where Speaker for the Dead leaves off, with the humans and the piggies reaching a tentative peace, Ender/Andrew marrying Novinha, Miro heading out to space to meet Valentine and her husband Jakt, the Hive Queen comfortably settled and the entire planet of Lusitania in rebellion against Starways Congress. But Xenocide doesn't take us immediately back to Lusitania, instead we are taken to the world of Path where we meet Han Fei-tzu and his godspoken family.

It's hard to describe exactly what exactly I love about this book. Besides the fact that it follows brilliantly on the heels of a novel that is at its heart about humanity and how we treat one another. Ender's Game is ostentiably about Ender and his struggles to discover himself when he is being groomed to be the next great military leader. Speaker for the Dead also follows the journey of Ender, now Andrew, as he re-invents himself as a Speaker, telling the lives of others in order to avoid the truth of his own past.
In Xenocide Card has managed to weave together so many different stories into one remarkable narrative. We learn the stories of the piggies and the buggers. We learn about how Novinha and her family have both changed and remained much the same over the course of 30 years. And we have the story of Han Fei-tzu, his daughter Qing-jao, her secret-main Wang-mu and their own struggle for self-actualization in the face of the grand plans of Starways Congress.

But most importantly is the theme of xenocide that runs throughout the entire book. The threat of xenocide looms in front of piggie and bugger alike, as well as the potential xenocide of the descolada virus, and the threat of Jane's extinction. Which species is on the brink of extinction seems to shift back ad forth throughout the novel, and things are never quite what we think they are.

Xenocide is the middle book in the "Speaker" trilogy, followed by Children of the Mind, which I'm in the middle of reading right now. I don't know what I waited 8-9 years between reading Speaker and its sequel, but I'm not wasting another minute finishing up the series. And when I'm done with the Speaker series, there's always the other books, the Shadow series, started off with Ender's Shadow. I know that I've got plenty of reading ahead of me (especially since Card is still producing books in both series), so I better get to it.


So that's it for this month's Librarian's Corner, stay tuned for another installment on August 21st! In the mean time, have you guys read Xenocide of any of the Ender books? I'd love to hear your thoughts about them, you can post here in the comments! And of course, I'd love to hear about whatever else you're reading! Keep checking back over the next month for more things I'm doing.


Happy Reading!

10,000!

I'm just going to leave this here:

10,000 hits on the blog! I'm astonished, I'm amazed, I'm honored.

Thank you, you guys are the best!

I Geek Books!

Enjoy!