First AG Brew disaster

So I just finished sparging my first AG, its on its way to a boil now.
First, I dropped my thermometer into my full hot mashtun, lucky I have 2.
Then I tried to sparge but epically failed. I have a square mashtun and just put some tube in and drilled holes in to sparge with, the holes clogged immediately and I had zero flow. Lucky I had a 5 gallon paint bag and a spare bucket, so I strained through that, then added the second thing of water and reintroduced the grains, waited 10 minutes then repeated the paint strainer trick. Hopefully my OG isn't TOO far off and nothing else goes wrong.

Did you get a pre boil gravity?

target was 1.064
Im at 70 degrees mines at 1.061
So Im feeling more confident. Now to pray for no boilovers

target pre-boil was 1.064, or is that post-boil?

err i think thats post boil >_> crap

Ironically, if that's post-boil though, your FG will be even higher. So you should be ok as far as getting the sugar out goes.
Personally, I think you'll be fine...

All things considered, it sounds like you recovered pretty nicely. First time doing anything new sucks.

meh I was happy with my ingenuity
BAH I just dropped my hopspider into the brewpot

Well, after a hour spent staring at a brew kettle, a kitchen covered in infinite amounts of sticky, an hour spent staring at a wort chiller that didnt chill enough, and a broken hopspider and mashtun. my first batch hit the target gravity to the tee. pitched my starter at 70 degrees. Fingers crossed this tastes like dogfish head IPA.

Okay, I gotta ask, how does one break a hop spider?

All of your other "adventures" I either have done myself or at least understand. But that one?

Don't worry, it gets better/easier once you get your process down and stop sweating every little thing: my first brewday lasted something like 12 hours and I was brewing a mild. Last beer I made, I watched an entire hockey game and cleaned the house during brewing and was done in 4 hours. It was a smaller 3 gallon batch, but so was my first endeavour in AG !

Might I suggest investing in a turkey fryer and brewing outside. It cuts on the cleaning time (jump dump everything in the snow, grass, etc.) and boilovers are only mild inconveniences instead of life changing moments.

Going to the dark "no-chill" side also helped immensely with brewday complexity.

I have a fryer but can't use it because I live in a second story apartment
Well my hopspider is big piece of pvc. with a towel hanger to hold it on the side of the pot. then I used a worm clamp to hold the bag on the pvc pipe. I put a bigger bag on today without thinking and clamped it too loosely. the clamp slipped off mid boil >_< lucky I caught it with my mash paddle before it sunk.
brew started bubbling 3 hours later so it looks good so far.
I also ordered a SS mesh tube for the mashtun. now Im just trying to decide if I want to splurge and make a circular stainer(using a T like this ) or a straight line.

edit: wow I cant believe I have 101 posts already

Yeah that sucks, and I'm not one to advocate brewing a on a tiny blacony, if you have one.