30 day challenge, day 14 - research

Found a short article about Ceninni's gesso on the Society of Gilders website. (PDF)

YouTube: I've left out the many examples of people using transfer leaf (US patent leaf) because that's not what's causing me grief.

Charles Douglas - best video I've found so far but very brief

Bethlehem icon school - water gilding an icon, very lovely, handling gold in whole sheets

How (not to) gold leaf - novices errors. Low quality video, Aussie narration.

Free online water gilding course - Lesson 4 is about actually handling the gold. 

Extensive series on making icons, including gilding and egg tempera - might be of interest. In Greek, w/ English subtitles

Another series, this time in Italian, about gilding wood decorations. The link is for the actual gold handling bit.

No danger of a white Christmas

...England is a awash with flooding. I'll have to watch the Peanuts Christmas special on YouTube, and the Grinch too, for any white Christmas fill.

Hoping to stop pretending to work and slip out of the office soon, and go shopping in person rather than online. 

For this holiday crafty wish list:
- get more gilding tools to improve gilding results, hopefully today
- finish lining a hood
- start a new cardigan on the needles
- make more smellies as gifts
- optional: start laying out new bodice for German undergown

I have to rein in my instinct to start a half-dozen new projects - I get so wound up at the prospect of a few days uninterrupted crafting that I tie myself in anxious knots over what I could do, and end up frozen, unable to decide what to do first, and only manage to do the boring routine stuff like housework.

If I can settle to just a handful of projects, I have more chance of actually finishing them, and thus avoiding further rebukes from UFOs round the house.

I've actually had some FO results - finished a smock, finished some knit garters - but somehow they're anticlimactic compared to starting new.