Nondescript.

Not much going on around here this week. I'm still knitting the afghan and painting the tiles. I didn't get to spin my yak (what an odd turn of phrase that is!) at all this week. I did manage to get some of my seeds started - tomatoes and the like - so that's something. Other than that, a quiet week with not a lot to show for it.

Making pictures

I have been busy lately, though perhaps not terribly productive. The beginning farmer class is taking up actually a fair bit of my time; and there's always the 9-to-5 job, as well. It's been hard to do anything that feels like concrete progress toward the farm. Maybe it's the late-winter blahs (and our recent snowstorms) talking, but it feels like everything for the farmhouse is too big, too expensive, too up-in-the-air for me to actually do anything about right now, I can feel the inertia and helplessness setting in.

Well. We can't have that.

Obviously the cure for this is pick something - anything - preferably easy and smallish and fun, and just do it. I chose a kitchen work table that needs making for the farmhouse. I've looked for one that would fit my needs, taste, and budget, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing out there. It actually will be cheaper and easier to make it this time, even with my hackneyed carpentry skills! I decided I wanted delft-style tiles to top my table, and that I'd need about 90 4" tiles (it will actually probably be less than this, because of grout line spacing, I guess?). You can get decent reproduction delft-style tiles for around $12/tile, or so the internet claims, which puts my tabletop at ..... $1080. Yeah, I don't think so.

I bought a box of 100 plain white field tiles at Lowe's for $16 (they also sell them individually for $0.16, but the box of 100 is more convenient than 90 loose tiles, and gives me 10 spare to play with), and a pot of Porcelaine 150 ceramic paint in Lapis from Michael's for about $5. I also splurged and got a new set of paintbrushes to go with it (another $9). So, for $30, I'm set for tiles for my tabletop - maybe $35 if I need a second pot of Porcelaine 150. Does that mean I saved $1050??

Painting these has been incredibly fun and relaxing, for the most part. Mostly they're turning out beautifully, though I freely admit the dog looks more than a little cartoony (the cat too, come to think of it). Even the questionable ones, though, work in the greater scheme of blue-and-white order. I love it.

I'm about 1/5 of the way through. In theory, when I'm done I'll have 5 spare "picture" tiles and 5 spare "just corners" tiles, so I'll be able to pick and choose a bit if some motifs are outstandingly bad. I could also always turn a "just corners" into a "picture" if I had to, so that expands my do-over factor. I'm not too worried, though, because they're beautiful.

In tangentially-related news, I've been working on my "Epic" afghan again! Those of you who know me on ravelry.com (as "melanogaster") have seen this before, but it's a massive, double-knit, masterwork of an afghan. I worked out the chart myself, based on Schon Neues Modelbuch.

A portion of the chart, turned 90 degrees from what you'd usually expect.

Currently I'm on row 28 of... 348, not counting the 2-row setup and finish (i.e., I'm on the row [column, in the  chart] just to the right of the green line) . But I'm absurdly proud of the silly thing, and I'd be happy to pass the charts on to anybody who wanted them, as long as I got credit - I'll probably make it available on ravelry once mine is done. There will be pics in maybe 10 - 15 more rows, when it looks more obvious to other people. To me it looks fantastic, though.