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Tool Resurrection

I've passed the thousandth hexagon in my honeycomb quilt project (I know, it's wild), and right about then, my little paper punch started tearing more often than slicing at one edge of the hexagons. Not a terribly useful trait in a tool I'm using for extremely precise quilting.

A white man's hands resting on a light wood table, holding a grey-and-white paper punch with the back removed, showing the spring inside.
Featuring Dad's hands. You can't hear all the ragging happening around the table, though.
So I brought it home to Dad. In the midst of a lot of friendly teasing about repair shop charges, reasonable assumption of risk in case of breaking the device, and warnings that even if he did get it apart, we might not be able to sharpen the cutting edge very well...he got the plate that protects the handle spring off. We all squinted at it for a while, and then put it back to try attacking the other side of the punch, where we could just see some promising-looking screws hidden under the edge of the plastic plate.

A photo from above of a metal hexagonal paper punch with two long white plastic handles on a light wood table. A small orange plastic lozenge in sitting on the table, and a narrow metal drywall scraper has been set down near the partly-disassembled punch.
See? My tool-misuse is genetic.
A few alarming creaking noises later (and with blatant abuse of a drywall scraper and a screwdriver), Dad got the top plastic plate free, and unscrewed the metal housing of the cutting blade. We each (just about—Grandma supervised) had a turn with Mum's little sharpener device (it's a little hunk of very hard steel-on-a-stick, and it works nicely), and then Dad put it all back together.

A close-up of a silver pair of scissors, the blades running out of frame to the left, resting on their black leather case, with a spool of plum thread and a small stack of white paper hexagons behind them, two small stacks of neat yellow hazeongs behind them, and fuzzily in the background, a rough-edged stack of yellow fabric hexagons, all on a dark wood table.
Back to hexagoning.
And it works! Not perfectly—the cutting edge appears to be two-part, and slightly concave, so we could only really sharpen one edge—but cleanly enough that I can carry on with my project. And now I know how to tear the tool apart next time it needs to be sharpened.

Two small green plants in dark, wet earth. The front plant has deeply lobed leaves with three main sections, and smaller lobes on each. The back plant has vaguely heart-shaped leaves with secondary points flanking the central point.
There are (almost) no weeds in this photo.
Meanwhile, out in the garden, the watermelons and cucumbers are getting ready to take off. I need to scrabble together some sort of trellis for the cukes soon, or they'll just be draped all over the ground. The melons can trail wherever they please; maybe I'll enlist them to help shade out some of the weeds.

A photo from above of small plants, most with two to four broad, heart-shaped leaves, arranged around three very rough-cut boards in the center of a square of white-framed windows. Four soda bottles peep out of the dark, wet earth like plastic moles performing a synchronized swimming routine.
We're high-tech gardeners.
And the cotton looks good so far! I hope the soil drains well enough for it—I haven't grown much in the water of water-loving plants that can't stand wet feet, so this is all experimental. The soda bottles (or, to be really pedantic, tonic water bottles) have holes punched in their bases, so they can be filled with the hose and will release the water about a foot down in the ground. Ideally, they'll encourage the cotton roots to grow deep, which will protect them from temperature and moisture fluctuations at the surface.

Several small, red-stemmed beet plants looking a little battered and bewildered in a recently-disturbed patch of wet, dark earth edged with worn grey two-by-fours. Piles of bushy, still-green weeds lie in bunches on the mulched garden paths nearby.
There are still so many weeds, but at least none of them are close to reproduction yet.
And I decided, while the soil was well-soaked and workable, to pull all the weeds rapidly approaching flowering age in the raised bed that's sort of disintegrated at one edge. And found beets! I'd planted beet seeds months ago, but nothing ever seemed to come of them, so I'd assumed they just weren't planning to show up at all—instead, we have about a dozen, which I separated from the clumps they'd germinated in and spread out to encourage better root formation. Hopefully they won't mind the relocation.

A close photo of the back edges of a coral sundress with large, scattered orange poppy motifs. Eyelets worked in thick variegated orange-and-yellow thread run down either edge; the color shifts are slightly offset from each other.
I'm charmed by the variegated thread in these eyelets.
And I did indeed finish the eyelets on my sundress, and have put the lacing back in, so it's officially done. I'm also very pleased with the decision to use the variegated thread; it stands out enough and matches enough to be extremely satisfying all around.

A stack of pattern papers, one with a large trifoliate charted design, a small spiral-bound notebook with a few notes, a black clicky ballpoint pen, and a flexible yellow tape measure rolled tightly, all overlaid with silver circular knitting needles with a red cable, holding a small swatch of alternating columns of grey-beige and sage green. The grey-beige yarn trails off toward the viewer's right, and the green leads to a ball of "nature spun" wool. All is lit with intense late-afternoon sun and shadow, on a warm brown wood table.
The afternoon light is just so pretty on this table.
Lastly, I started the first gauge swatch I think I've ever worked, to get a baseline for the adjustments I know I'm going to need to make to the sweater pattern I've decided to knit next. It may not help me clear out the Basket of Shame, but it is helping me get a little more of the stash worked into something, and that seems well worth the effort. (Besides, if I start knitting now, I might have a light sweater ready by the time the weather requires one again.)

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