Marbling

Well, my mom and I just spent the better part of today marbling. It’s extremely complicated to set up and requires quite a bit of equipment–most of which can thankfully be made at little to no cost. Once you get through the elaborate setup, though, it’s magical watching the designs appear. A few shakes with a bit of broomstraw, a pass-through with a cardboard-and-toothpick rake, and lo! incredibly complex and beautiful patterns appear. Only it takes you four hours to get set up to that point, first.

I’ll post more about marbling and how-to tomorrow; way too tired to do it tonight. If I find the time (ha!) I’ll try to put up something on my website about marbling. Too bad we didn’t take more photos of the process, but we were so preoccupied with playing with colors that we didn’t get around to it. I do have a nice shot of me lifting the fabric out of the marbling tray.

I have now written most of the subject hook for my book proposal, and am grinding my merry way along to getting the rest of the proposal written. Having done the outline and the sample chapter, though, and having had plenty of time to think about the proposal, I think I’ll be up to the task.

Didn’t make it out for a ride this weekend, since mom was around. Next weekend is the Velo Girls Skills Clinic, which runs both days, so it’s quite likely I won’t get a long ride in next weekend either (although, if the clinic ends early in the day, I’ll try to sneak one in).

Too tired to write, and I have to get to the gym at 6:30am tomorrow so I can work on putting on a little more muscle/endurance. I’m not going to be able to do everything at once, but I can at least work on not losing too much muscle tone between now and December, when I start training again…

Oh yeah, almost forgot. My mom and I went to Britex Fabrics in SF and found the perfect red velvet to go with the champagne-and-gold striped silk; it’s a rich, dark red and sets off the silk perfectly. It was a remnant, so (given Britex) was merely expensive rather than astronomically priced. I’m not sure if it’s a silk/rayon or a polyester velvet, though I’m suspecting the latter.