Sunday, July 24, 2011

In Heaven There is No Beer

That's why we drink it here
And when we're all gone from here
Our friends will be drinking all the beer

You may have noticed I mention beer quite a bit in this blog, it's not because I'm an alcoholic. I barely drink actually, but when I do I really do (my parents taught me never to do a half assed job at anything. Thanks mom, thanks dad, love you!) And it doesn't hurt that my boyfriend is a home brewer and thus there is much talk of this tasty adult beverage.

So in home brewing you use what is called a Carboy, basically it is a 5 gallon glass bottle. These things get heavy when they are full of beer in the making. We have seen things called a Carboy Caddy, it is a bit of webbing and some buckles that give you handles to lift the Carboy with (very handy, if you ask me... get it? Handles...handy... *ahem*) So I set out to make one, because the ones we saw at the store are not the bestest ever and I knew I could improve it.

And so I did.

I started with 5 yards of webbing, 2 buckles, and the handles off of an old workout band


The very first thing I did (after measuring everything) was burn the ends of the webbing to keep it from fraying while I worked on it and for the life of the caddy.
(yes, my nails are blue. Very blue, in fact. It's to off set the magenta hair)

Then I made the bands that went around the carboy.



getting the length right was a pain in the @$$, the buckles are flat and didn't like buckling snugly around the curve of the Carboy.
Then came the cross straps. I figured it would be stronger if it was 1 solid piece of webbing; after playing with it for a good long while I got it to lay like I wanted and pinned everything down, ran it through my sewing machine and it was solid. Somehow between picking it up off the floor and sewing it a strap got twisted, after much swearing and saying of unladylike words I picked the stitches out and tried again (I should mention it is approaching 11pm at this point and normally I have a 9 or 10pm cut off for sewing, but I wanted to get this done)


Then it was time to figure out where the straps overlapped to mark and sew them down. After I tried twice to get the first strap sewn down properly and failing both times I called it for the evening (I have a 2 rip rule, if I have to rip out stitches twice on one part of a project, it's time to be done with that project for the evening) and finished it the next day.








For the sake of getting this post up today (although late in the day) I am going to not finish Spartan #10 before posting, but I will be editing the post tomorrow, adding a picture of the first double digit Spartan. He is almost finished

That's all for now, g'night!

***EDIT***
Here he is ladies and gentlemen! Spartan number 10, the first double digit, putting me at 1/30th of the way finished (it is an encouraging thing...no really it is...) Delios with Heroic Wind action (trademark Sir Daniel Raptus)
proof that he's #10

Good night my dears!

3 comments:

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  2. He's so cute! I can just see him standing on a rock ledge posing heroically while the wind blows.

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  3. D'awwww, I love his wind action! Also, that carboy caddy is terribly clever.

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