Still Not Much

I intended to attack the dining/work room this weekend, but life and pickles got in the way.

Saturday we went to Woodstock, IL, and came home with two more printing presses, type, and other letterpress paraphanalia, as a direct result of the letterpress show & tell we did at MuseCon - one of the attendees had inherited it.

Both presses need rollers, which is to be expected, and we know where to get them. Most of the type is in good shape, but one set end up partially pied (jumbled). Some of the spacing material needs a good cleaning - dust, dirt, oil, and Ghu knows what else accumulated in a decade or two in an attic, with cats of possibly less than impeccable habits. 

One press is the same model as Ron's little 3" x 5". It needs a little work, the ink disc doesn't have ratchet teeth on the back for it to rotate. Our guess it was a fabricated replacement. Ron has a couple ideas to address that.

The other press is also a tabletop press. The nominal size is only a little larger than mine (6-1/2" x 9" vs. 6" x 9"), but it is overall a larger press. IIRC mine is/was more of a hobbyist model, the new one was for more serious use.  Making a mental note to get pictures to show the differences.  It needs more work than the small one. Ron's thinking he's probably going to end up completely disassembling it, for rust removal, stripping and re-painting. I suggested the auto shop nearby that likes odd projects for getting sandblasting and painting done.

That, however, will be pending actually getting it apart. Ron's working on getting some serious penetrating oil to address that. And yesterday we were investigating part-washer units and home-built alternates, for press parts and other things that need serious cleaning. I need to see if Goo Gone can be bought by the gallon...

Catching Up

"Titanic, the Musical" ate our lives, with the fun of Anime Midwest, July 4th weekend, the weekend before Titanic opened.

Anime Midwest went pretty well. Sales were lower than ACen, which we expected as it's a newer/smaller convention, but because the booth cost was lower, it was actually a better event in terms of sales vs. cost. Pretty sure we'll do it again, and considering Con-Alt-Delete that the same group does, in December.

Last year for MuseCon we packed most of our stuff up into one of the things, which worked pretty well, so the plan was to repeat it this year.  Sunday a week and a bit ago Ronpbin and I needed to go to the storage locker, to get the winch to haul things up,onto the porch, and I had the good idea to see if Max and The Grinch would fit, since they're tall, narrow, and more tippy than a Thing, and they have to be heaved up another step into the house, whereas the Things are weathertight enough to leave out on the porch.

They would, yay!  And when we got there with Ron, he played Tetris and made enough space for a Thing, too. More Yay!  Much simpler, and probably no slower than getting everything onto the porch and into the house. Plus, Robin was smart and piled a load of tables and other stuff we wouldn't need at MuseCon on the Thing when he brought it into the locker.

A picture of storage locker Tetris is down at the bottom of the post, since the iWhatsit app I used to post is annoying that way.

The Thing we used to pack in stayed at ground level, and its contents are currently in the spare bedroom. Sunday evening Ron was thinking out loud about when to re-load stuff from the locker to the trailer. My opinion is that it can wait until closer to our next event (IIRC Maneki Neko Con, whicjph I now have vendor info for). The locker is secure as the trailer, and climate-controlled. The building isn't kept particularly cool, but definitely cooler than the trailer. So I think that's the plan.

For MuseCon I did a not wildly successful Japanese-style doll clothing open build, so I have several garments I'd gotten to various stages of completion to show people, plus a couple I made to keep busy and not finish the demo pieces. Plus a pile of remnants and fat quarters Imgot for the class. So I have the question of what to do with them.  I'm thinking . . . You guessed it, I'm filthy merchant scum . . . Seeing if I can sell them to ball-jointed doll owners, who seem to have a big anime-fan overlap. So when I went to Jo-Ann for a package of bias tape and some narrow ribbon or cord, to finish one thing, I had a little accident.

More fabric came home with me, as well as a larger rotary-cutting mat and longer/wider ruler. I'd gotten a narrow mat, 12" ruler, and pinking blade and handle before Muse, and they worked pretty well, other than wanting a longer ruler at times. And wider would be nice, as they're clear wiypth measurements both ways. Turns out you can put an Olfa blade on a Fiskars handle, despite what the Jo-Ann staff thought. I was pretty certain I'd done it before, with the larger-bladed rotary cutter I use for leather. Although I may upgrade the cutter handle, the guard on the one I got for fabric annoys me.