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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Six Year Old's Attention Span....


Yup. It reared it's ugly head once again. Today was Wednesday Witches mini meeting. I cleaned up part of my workroom in the hope of finding something to take with me to work on......Nope. Nothing jumped out at me.

I have been going through some of my furniture books and sketching plans for mini furniture at night while I "watch" television. My method is to work on quarter inch graph paper and do it in one inch scale. It works well. If you do it right you can trace the drawing directly to the wood and cut it out, then carve. These don't always get made right away. Sometimes they wait in a big notebook for years before I get around to the real thing. It does keep me busy and it's good practice for sketching.
I decided that Thomas Chippendale would be my furniture of choice, so I took along his "The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director" first published in 1762. Thank goodness for Dover Publishing! Their copy is a bit cheaper than the real thing. As you can see, I picked out a bed to work on. I only have to draw half of the item that I want to do. I can fold it in half on the center line and then carbon the other side in with a pencil. OK so it's cheating. It works except for a few places in the design where Mr. Chippendale decided not to be symmetrical. That doesn't happen a lot tho.
As you can see in his drawing, the top sketch is for the tester on the top of the bed and the bottom one is for the headboard.
That's as far as I got before the six year old jumped in and took over.
It's just a good thing that the six year old part of me knew that I wouldn't stick with sketching all afternoon. She brought along other entertainment.
For those of you that are just reading for the minis, you may hide your eyes now. The six year old likes to knit too. This is what I did for the rest of the afternoon. I am working on a pair of socks. When I get tired of paying attention to what I am doing I knit. I can talk and knit at the same time. I can watch TV and knit at the same time. In fact, I can fall asleep while knitting. Then my husband has to come in and wake me up before I stab myself with the needles. Knitting can be dangerous. And you thought it was just the Exacto knife!
Anyway, that's all I got done today. See you tomorrow.

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