Trivet Pursuit

Well, not much has been happening around here, to be honest.  One of my miniatures club members had an 80th birthday recently, with a Zoom "party" -- I made this 1:12 bunting and delivered it earlier in the day in lieu of a card.  I thought it turned out pretty well for a spur-of-the-moment birthday greeting. 

David is reorganizing his workshop in the garage, and was tossing this piece of ipe wood into the scrap box.  Some years ago we replaced a tiny concrete patio with a small deck (so that we could have a French drain underneath to direct water away from the lowest point on the property, which is right in front of the door to the garage), and said deck is made of (responsibly-harvested) ipe.  Even as a piece of scrap wood, ipe is extraordinary stuff.  It is surprisingly heavy, being very dense, and when newly-cut has a lovely auburn color with a fine but distinct grain.  We let the deck age naturally, so it's now a sort of ashy brown, but I decided to oil this scrap and use it as a trivet.  David rounded off the edges of the ends for me, to match the sides, and I sanded it and put two coats of linseed and beeswax on it.  You can't quite get the full effect from the before and after photos, unfortunately, but now it's smooth with just a hint of the grain under one's fingertips, and with the auburn color deepened beautifully.

This inspired me to finish another project that had been sitting around for far too long, two sets of tiles from the bargain bin at Home Depot, four squares of something stony that I can no longer identify, and four squares of Carrara marble.  Laura had managed to get some cork for me -- a bit more and a bit thinner than I wanted, but needs must -- and I cut squares just smaller than the tiles and rounded the corners, then glued it to the back of each tile.  The reason I had left it so long was because I was agonizing over what kind of glue to use -- Aleene's Tacky (of which I have an inexhaustible supply since I get to take home the leftovers from day camp each summer and never manage to use up the four or five bottles before the next year's four or five bottles land in my box)? it's a workhorse around here, but is it right for trivets?  E6000? it's supposed to be really strong, but gosh it's smelly -- so now I just threw caution to the winds and used Crafter's Pick Ultimate.

And so suddenly I've gone from having no trivets to having nine!

Comments

[DawninNL]

I always enjoy a punny title!

You now have a lovely set of trivets.

Your tiles reminded me that I have 2 handpainted Portuguese tiles which were gifts for attendees at a conference there. I always meant to put something on the bottom to use as trivets. I think that will get done this week. So thanks for the inspiration.

[Toffeeapple]

I loved your title! I have never owned a trivet, feeling that they would use valuable (and scarce counter-top space) but, I am pleased that you now have a sufficiency of them.

Your bunting looks very festive, well done.