a different sort of accomplishment

this is my vacuum cleaner

for the last few weeks it's been getting overtime duty as I have been cleaning and painting a bedroom as well as preparing to replace the floor in the family room

earlier in the week, I had an issue with the filter -- the superfine dust I had been cleaning up had plugged it up and we ended up doing a combination of blowing it out with the air compressor (the DH took it out the side of the workshop and did that chore) and then I dipped it repeatedly in a dishpan of hot water ---- I can't get a new filter locally, but the one I ordered on line should be here by the end of the week

on Saturday we decided to prepare for after the new flooring by cleaning up the area rug we plan to put down in the center of the room after we're done laying the Pergo

the area rug had been rolled up and stored in the garage since we moved in 2001, so we were pretty sure it needed a good vacuuming

we spread a tarp on the patio and laid out the rug -- and discovered that at some point a mouse had chewed on the fringe on one end and had done a little bit of damaged to the rug on that corner

I cut the fringe off both ends of the rug (I never was overly fond of the stuff anyway) and began to vacuum -- only to have the tube that runs from the beater rod to the tank plug up

at the end of the day I ended up bringing the vacuum in where I could have the computer next to me and I could step through the instructions to remove parts and used a long hemostat to remove all the rug fuzz and dog hair --- but not the color dog hair I'm used to vacuuming up now days -- back in 2001 we had a yellow lab (sniff, while I love the big black lab, I still miss the yellow one!)

wow --- after all that I deserved to get to spend some time making art!

and this is the progress made on the bracelet

after each piece had a bezel worked around it, I trimmed them up and started attaching them to the backing that will be what I make the bracelet from

looking good!

 I've also worked on the mug project, and I started on the black birds yesterday afternoon

Today is the first day of early voting here in our state.  We're going today to do that.