I haven’t had to stretch canvas for a couple years. I generally just buy pre-stretched canvas and build that into the sale price of the finished work. But sometimes you need a canvas that isn’t a standard size, so you have to haul out all your canvas stretching equipment and get down and dirty. Today is one of those sometimes. Ugh. I forgot how back breaking and knuckle scraping the work is. The two canvases I’m stretching are 32″ x 40″, so just big enough that you really can’t do it on a table top, which means crouching down and doing it on the floor. Oh, my knees. Oh, my back. I am old. Very, very old. And sweaty. Ew.

But I have two bright and shiny and limitless plains of possibility stretched before me now. Ah, anticipation.