Nineteen

Only 11 more designs to go. Twelve of the nineteen are blocked and drawn. Four more are blocked but not drawn. Two more are sitting by my tatting seat. This one looks pretty, but has a few stinking long split chains, one of which needed to be tatted in reverse order. I may need to re-think it, as the only way to tat it in one go, it needs a joining ring in the middle of a split chain.

My designing lately has taken a back seat to demolition and other "fun" stuff. Our furnace is over 30 years old and you can no longer get parts for it. To take advantage of government rebates, we've decided now is a good time to get the job done. We called several companies and had them come out and take dimensions, arranged for the energy audit and then started removing some extraneous duct work in preparation.

This mess piled up beside the bike is the remains of some duct work originally installed to pump heat into the garage to keep it toasty warm in the winter so that the shop could be used. Unfortunately a minor repair 30 years ago resulted in the furnace being red tagged and the gas was shut off. We couldn't get it turned back on until the opening into the garage was sealed. Once it was sealed off, it served no purpose, but it did connect to the duct work that they are about to start working on to install the new furnace. We had to remove duct work that was about a foot across, accessed from an opening that was 7 inches wide. Do you see a problem with those numbers?

Part of this was done by working overhead in the basement and part of it from the 7 inch wide opening in the garage wall. Much of it was cut out in sections using metal cutters. Boy, does that hurt the thumbs after a while. We took turns working at it and finally resorted to using a cut off blade. We wore out 2 cut off blades and hubby got gashed on sharp metal bits, but it's finally out and the openings in the basement and in the garage have been sealed back up. AFTER, we got most of it out, we realized that 30 years ago a section of the garage wall had been removed to give access so that the whole Z shaped thing could be inserted into the wall in one piece. Which explained how things were screwed together from both sides when they couldn't be reached from either the basement or the garage.

I am SO looking forward to getting this installation completed so we can get back to normal.