Snake! - March 28, 2020

We had our first snake-on-the-porch event today.

I heard The Husband say, "Oh, sh*t!  Snake!"

Ever since the first snake-on-the-porch event (the summer after we built this porch), we've kept a shootin' iron of some sort within reach of the back door.  The Husband grabbed up the gun-au-jour, a serious pellet rifle, and blasted the intruder.  Its blood left a crimson stain on the floor, but I'd rather have the stain than the snake.  We generally don't kill non-poisonous snakes unless they invade our personal space, but our porch is screened in, and we don't intend to try to run a snake out the door.  Nope.

Now, I've been sitting on this porch, crafting, most of the day, except for trips in the house for drinks and supplies and tools.  That snake has either crawled by me while I was sitting here, engrossed in something, or he's been out here with me THE WHOLE TIME.

It plumb rattles me, and has driven my crafting mojo away.

I tried to get back into the "zone" after I washed the blood off the porch.  One of the things I was working on earlier was paper beads.  I've been meaning to give them a shot for some time.  I played around with them a little when I first saw the idea, but quickly discovered that I needed some tools if I wanted *pretty* beads.  I had things around here that would work for practice, but no time to hunt them up...until today.

The last time I tried paper beads, I cut them out of a magazine with scissors, and they weren't very precise.  Today, I decided to fire up the Scan-n-Cut - it had a shameful layer of dust on it - and see if I could cut out perfect beads.  Of course, that required a refresher course on how to make my own cutting file, and scrounging up a cutting mat that still had a little sticky on it.  After searching a couple of rooms, I found some pretty craft paper that I'd been saving for a rainy day.  (It's not raining, yet, but it's coming.)  Miraculously, I remembered how to load a file on the Scan-n-Cut, and managed to cut out a dozen, perfectly-shaped skinny triangles from the pretty paper.  Even more miraculously,  the skinny triangles peeled off the mat without tearing.  Oh, this was meant to happen!  I grabbed a wooden skewer and some toothpicks out of a kitchen drawer, and a bottle of glue and some Mod Podge, and took them out to the porch with the snake.

The beads didn't turn out half bad.  The pretty paper had a pretty back-side, and so I was able to make some coordinating beads.  I didn't do such a great job with the Mod Podge, but today's beads are only a vehicle for playing with some embossing powder and the heat gun I got for Christmas, neither of which I have used.

While my beads dried, I was going to watch a couple of videos on how to do this properly (I was winging it today), so that once I figure out the embossing powder I can make some *good* beads.  I found a promising video and grabbed a nearby pad to take notes.  The one pencil within reach had no usable lead.  I took it to the pencil sharpener, which lately has been rocking when I turn the crank and has taken to sharpening only one side of a pencil.  I've been meaning to investigate this, so today I did.  Finally got a sharp pencil and went back out to the porch, now capable of taking notes during the video.

I had no sooner got the video started than The Husband came out on the porch, looked up at the ceiling fan, and asked, "Do we have any light bulbs?"  I've been griping for a few days about the burned-out light bulbs in the porch ceiling fan, and after finding the snake on the porch, I'd said we REALLY need to fix the light so we can check for snakes after dark.  Since it was my bright idea, I felt obligated to look for light bulbs.  So, I got up, went to the utility room, and scrounged up some light bulbs while The Husband took the light cover off the fan.  While he changed the bulbs, I washed the dead bugs out of the light cover.  Then we tried to put it back on.  OMG, getting those chains through all that tubing....  My neck is going to be sore tomorrow.

Ok, so here I sit.

What was I going to do???

Oh, yeah...the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU9RvX7p9ZA

See ya.