Saturday I started out by cutting out backs for the hanging hard pouches I had fronts for - 8 in all, and an extra for a shield pouch, because oops. Plus a pile of vaguely-rectangular-ish blobs that are hard pouch fronts.
In the afternoon I cut out flaps for them (including the oops), from some nice thick pebbled soft black leather (this batch is all going to be black). Then while I had the soft leather out, I cut out a bunch of little square 1/2 soft pouches - 7 of those.
Meanwhile, Ron was working on taxes. He plowed through the business taxes, then after our lunch break (see below), he did our personal taxes. Yay, done! I assisted at a few points, but I don't think he cursed at the computer much more than I did.
I was working on cutting in the living room, so less yelling from room to room was required when Ron wanted my input or had questions. Before cutting, while excavating my cutting bench, I started loading up the new shelves. They're Elfa shelves, which use vertical standards mounted on a top hanging bar. We'd gotten a pair of stock standards, which didn't come down as far as optimal. So, at lunchtime we went to the Container Store and got a longer pair (and had them trim a couple inches off so that they'd still fit above the book case), and also got lunch.
In the afternoon Robin set up the airbrush outside, and dyed most of the pouch fronts and backs black - most, because 2 of the fronts were dyed and waxed in the past, and also because he ran out of dye. Marmaduke was over, so got an airbrushing lesson, rather in the vein of Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence.
Yesterday morning we unloaded the shelves, disassembled, reassembled with the new standards, and re-loaded. The medium density fiberboard for the actual shelves were originally in the spare bedroom, cut down for the new use in the dining room:
Still space, and my plan is to work on all those clear glass bottles on the middle-ish shelf (where the blue bottles are) next weekend. But they're off the floor for now. I think some of the leatherworking books that currently live in our bedroom are going to come down to the new shelves. Patterns and templates are moving from their scattered piles to those white metal file-ish trays on top of the white bookshelf under the new shelves.
The white metal shelf on the bottom has a rim on all four sides, and its holding my stylus, pens, and other things I want regularly when working at the bench. Next shelf up has a bunch of small containers with hardware, tools, and other things that get used reasonably often and also go to events in the tool bag. And binder clips in the small cardboard box (and another bin that's out in the living room at the moment). Ron even found a spot to put my iPad holder. Now I qust need to figure out where to put my magnetic knife blocks, which I use to hold my round/head knife and small square when doing layout and cutting.
After rearranging the shelves we got distracted with getting Ron the paraphernalia for brewing copy for much of the morning, and there was a break for a MuseCon meeting. But I did manage to go through the stash of soft pouch parts I'd cut out in the past, and cut out some more. In all I ended up with 10 more 1/2 soft pouches in various colors, 4 medium sized horizontal soft pouches, and 2 vertical soft pouches. Plus a couple-few more partials.
After the MuseCon meeting Robin finished dyeing pouch parts, and Ron waxed the hard fronts, and some soft pouch parts I wanted lightly waxed (for color). In the late afternoon/evening I started marking all the soft pouch parts - belt loop locations, guide lines for the lacing holes, and latch locations, as well as trimming corners on flaps. I made it through all the 16 pouches that I'd found or cut out Sunday, but declared myself done before getting to the seven I cut out Saturday. It helped that a bunch of parts had been marked previously. And I binder-clipped pairs of pieces together. Here's the pile of all the soft pouch parts - that's 23 in all:
Add in the parts for 9 "hanging" hard pouches, and molding 4 more fronts last night, that's, um, 36 pouches worked on. Oh, wait. On Saturday I'd cut out more than just the 4 fronts we molded last night. I think another 4-6? So, 40-ish pouches in all? Call it Stupid Amounts and leave it at that.
And now that I've gotten over the getting-started hump, I should be better at working on things in the evenings.
This morning I ordered another half-cow of the leather we use for pouch fronts and hanging pouch backs (at least the black ones), since we're down to a piece big enough for one, maybe two things. This week I need to look at where we are for latches, we're going to be putting rather a dent in the supply, I'm pretty sure we're going to need more.
I think tonight I'll either work on the flaps for the hanging pouches, or see what I can do about belt loops and the belt loop-ish tabs for hanging pouches. For regular belt loops, that means pawing through the scrap pile for anything the right weight (or heavier, that can be split down) big enough to cut 1-1/8" x 5-1/2" pieces from, that isn't big enough for some other parts. I may also end up cutting some strips just for belt loops, because I've got a lot of pouches underway. Tabs for hanging pouches are bigger than I can usually get out of scrap, so we'll cut some strips, split down to the right thickness, and die-cut them.
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