Public libraries are great. I was pretty used to having all of humanity's collective knowledge at my fingertips 24/7, as I imagine most people are nowadays, but when your phone is a fancy paperweight and the internet won't be invented for a while being able to just go look at books is a godsend. I found a bunch of children's books and one had names for numbers which I knew. From there the writing system was remarkably phonetic and, as I went through the large characters on cardboard pages, I started seeing words I had heard but never managed to place meaning to. I'd say I'm still at or below the level of the average preschooler but it's good progress. I'll try to come by once every couple days until I know how to ask for a library card.
A lot of people did give me strange looks, although it's probably justified considering that I'm a poorly washed hairless ape in the children's section of a local library, but they were surprisingly polite about it. That's something I've been noticing more and more lately. At first a lot of people acted tense or at least weirded out when I walked by but I think word's started getting around. I'm becoming less of a side show and more of a feature of the town. Hopefully I don't graduate to urban legend in the places I rarely stop by. I'd hate to have teenagers start bothering me in the middle of the night.
In terms of my day to day life I think I can start devoting more time to things besides sitting on the street. More people are buying my figures and as I keep improving I can currently manage to work about 8 hours a day and not starve with some left over. I don't have access to much in the way of leisure, although exploring currently fills that particular void, so that gives me more time to work on other projects. The stove project can't progress until I find the right pipe, although my roof hole idea has cut the required length down to about 8 feet or so, so I think I'll turn to expanding my woodworking projects. I've put off making a table and chair before and, based on what my legs are telling me, that's been a pretty big mistake so I'll start there. The chair can even serve double duty by as something to stand on when I cut the hole in the roof. That brings me to the second part of my plan. Breaking open another crate. I've got the time now and I need the wood so lets see what's in another one of these things.
This time I decided to go be wood quality. Most were just the cheap pine planks used for most shipping crates but the boxes in here are nothing if not varied and, after a bit of searching, I managed to find an older crate made of some pretty nice wood. I was no woodworker before I got here so I can't say what type of wood it is but it's smooth and hard and reddish brown, all things to look for in an aesthetically pleasing piece of furniture. God knows why someone would pay to have something shipped in it though. It's like the thing is just asking for someone to steal it. The crate itself is about 2 feet by 3 feet by 5 feet long so I should have a decent amount of material and I'm excited to see what it is.
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Well it looks like I managed to snag another weird one. It's not another statue but it does still lend another bit of evidence to the idea that this is all some rich pony's art collection, being a bunch of old rolled up tapestries. They're all about 5 feet tall and bundled together which explains the dimensions but I didn't play too close attention. They're not any use to me besides as cloth and I'd rather not destroy them for no reason. What's more important is that I managed to pry the nails out without hacking apart the wood. I'd say I've got more than enough for a table and a chair, plus some left over for nicer figures. The inside of the crate does smell a bit odd though. A bit like burnt rubber mixed with something I didn't recognize. Can't say I've smelled many old tapestries though so maybe that's normal.
My next obstacle is designing the things. Ideally I'd want something strong but easily repairable so I think I'll have the tops and frames be separate. The frame usually has a rectangular hole in the top and the top surface needs a pair of support pieces running perpendicular to it's boards and forming their own rectangle. If I have the second rectangle be smaller than the first one than the top should hypothetically just slot right in and out of the bottom. There are downsides to this method, normally those support pieces are an integral part of the frame so doing it my way takes some extra pieces of wood, but I think the simpler frame and ability to repair or replace just half of the piece makes up for it. It also future-proofs it in case I get to the point of needing a metal working surface or somehow manage to make a proper cushion. God, I miss cushioned seating.
I think for the details of the design I'm just gonna keep things as simply as possible. The table and base of the chair will both be 8 straight beams cut to size and nailed together at the joints. The tops will just be two beams with however many it takes stuck on top and the back of the chair, if I have enough wood left, should just be a row of beams stuck on the back. Ergonomically it won't be much better than the floor, although sticking my blanket on top should help, but it'll be better than a concrete sidewalk and it's not like anything can go wrong.
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I think my last comment may have been tempting fate. There are, as it turns out, at least a few things that can go wrong in this sort of table. I've got some fixes in place but the whole thing is becoming a lot more time consuming than I had planned and I might want to wait a bit on the chair.
The first issue I ran into is the damn wood. Not sure if it's magic or just tough but sawing through it is slow and painful business. I'd have to stop every few minutes even if my arm wasn't hurting just from the heat it kicks up. The edge of the wood starts giving off little wisps of smoke full of that same smell from earlier, plus a sharp pain in the nose for the authentic burning rubber experience. I tried using a piece of cloth as a face mask but it didn't really work so I've taken to working near the door with it cracked open. It's not perfect, I'd rather not do this all day, but the breeze keeps the smoke out of my face most of the time and the improved ventilation means nothing built up.
You'd think it'd be fine once I had the pieces cut but then I ran into my second problem. I am not a woodworker and I have, within a margin of error, no measuring tools. This means instead of assembling the table in a reasonable order I need to measure every piece against the pieces I already had cut. The first ones were just guesses. This might not seem like too big an issue, and it wasn't for my (admittedly oddly proportioned) frame besides having it be not quite level, but when it came to the top I needed the edges of the support pieces to sit flush with the edges of the frame and have just the right spacing. Otherwise it either wouldn't work at all or would slide around, making for a pretty poor table. This meant I had to spend god knows how long getting the boards marked and cut just right, taking care not to let the cut curve at all or I'd have to redo it at a shit angle, and nail the first (inconveniently long) top plank in place while holding it and the two support pieces firmly in place. As someone with only two hands this was something of an inconvenience.
I still did it though. It took most of a day, a day I could have spent working in a far more productive way than anything I've accomplished in making this shitty table, but I fucking did it. I met the obstacle that was carpentry head-on and I emerged intact. Well, not counting my arm muscles. Or probably my sinuses. The rest of me seems more or less fine though and now, at long last, I have a table to put things on, I guess. I realize that without a chair this means I'll have to stand all day but I put in the work for this thing and I'll be damned if I'm not going to use it. It even makes me look like a proper market stall so we'll see if that added legitimacy translates to sales.