In My "Spare" Time: Year 19, Week 30, Day One (week 1030)

Year 19, Week 30, Day One (week 1030)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
08-03-19 Saturday

The weather report said 90% showers. We were between two bands of showers, one out in the ocean and one over near the west coast. We had high feathers and spilt milk overhead, with a few puffs heading north. At about 12:30 we got a two minute shower. At about four, blobs came on us fast, bridging the two bands and we got hit with a nice shower for about ten minutes. Tomorrow says 80% rain. Will see what it looks like.

The day turned out to be nice. I had to go to a few stores so I drove my yard sale route in sections. I went to the grocery store first and got some stuff I need. They did not have one thing I was after. One of the several ice cream experiments I plan do tomorrow is going to be with Lindt 70% chocolate. I found that.
I then went to Lowes and walked several of the isles, and from one end to the other. I ended up picking up a 2x4 that will become rocking horse ornaments.
I went to a drug store for some items I needed.
I was going to give a food processor to some one. I happened to notice some food processor blades in the “junk” room. I got them, and found they (sort of) fit the food processor I was going to give away. I brought outside at mom’s house and, with some adjustments with sandpaper, I got the blades to work fine in that food processor. I now have a grater, slicer, a plastic blade (sort of like the metal chopping blades, that I think is for whipping) and two slicer blades. I am keeping that one and giving away the one I used for a couple years. It works nice. Just has the chopper blade. I have three others of that design

When I purchased the 2x4, I was actually after 2x6s or 2x12s but Lowes did not have any. I found a fairly clear 2x4 white wood. I checked when out back and it is a good size for the rocking horses. My plan for the wider boards was to slice them down the middle or even in thirds. The whitewood boards of the larger sized wood tends work as a quality carving wood. Whitewood is soft enough, but it does tend to split when you are dealing with small details. My carvings have lost a lot of noses over the year.
I traced the rocking horse on the wood and went to the bandsaw. I did a lot of cutting with the bandsaw, then drilled out the hole formed by the body, legs and rockers. I broke the leg off the first one I made, and had a good number of cutting errors in it, but it proved the concept works. I then made a second one. I showed that to Mom and she says it is good, it will pass as a horse as it is. I will do a lot more. She suggested using bits of cloth for the ears and yarn for the tail. I will give it thought. I am not that far yet, though I have wood for a carved tail already in the design. I “think” these will be fairly easy to make. I FINALLY HAVE A START ON MY ROCKING HORSES!!! it has been about 4 years since I had the concept!!!!!!

I did not expect any yard sales considering the weather report and I was right. It was a nice drive. I was following behind some cyclist at about 18 to 20 mph.

When I went to Walmart the other day, it dawned on me about how wonderful and colorful the yarn and cloth look in those stores, but if you look at your stock, your stuff is so pathetic in comparison. Of course, the lighting makes a difference, but you usually just don’t have much, or any, of the glorious colors that you saw at the store.

I was thinking, (I knew I was thinking as I could smell burning wood) what I really need to do is cover my walls with shelving. Nothing but shelves. Then I might have a place to put things where things that need to be at hand...... I might do that for the craft room once I get to that point. Mom has a nice small work bench in the garage she said she would give me. I am strongly thinking that I need that in the craft room. Then build the shelving all around it. One long wall could be just for yarns. Of course, one problem with them being out in the open is they will get dusty and dirty over time, and while it might look pretty good, there are better things I could do for the yarn.

I will see what I do tomorrow.

Year 19, Week 30, Day One (week 1030)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
08-04-19 Sunday

The weather early morning was blue skies with a few lonely puffs. It started getting thicker after noon. Radar showed a thin line coming towards us, then thickening really wide after it got to us. We are still in the path of feeder bands for the storm that headed north of us and into the ocean. It was about 80 in the morning with almost no wind. The wind really picked up when the storm arrived. The highest temps was 91 at about noon. The humidty was as low as 50% at one point but jumped to 90% after the really heavy stuff passed but we were covered with only a light drizzle.

I did my yard sale route. After I gassed up, I changed my normal route, I would usually take the first turn after I hit the road and head north from there, on a zig zag. This time I decided to head west a bit farther and found a yard sale by surprise. She was unloading her stuff. I got some stainless steel bowls, a keyboard and speaker, a laptop shelf, and on of those trays to carry food or drink. I gave her $5 for all of that and could have asked for change if I wanted. She had a bread maker and talked about it. She said that she was moving to a smaller place and have to unload a bunch of stuff. She said that if the bread maker does not sell, she will keep it and continue to use it. She loved making bread for someone else but her problem was she would eat it too.....

Today, I cut out eight blocks of wood and drew on them the rocking horses, and then drilled the holes to help daylight the space between the legs. I decided it would be much easier to do this drilling before anything else is done with the wood. When I finish making the design, the sides are angled which makes drilling straight tough.
I spent most of my time talking to my brother and decided not to run the noisy bandsaw to cut out the rest of the rocking horse bodies.
Next Saturday, I should roughly cut them out and then have a bunch of blanks to work on with the knife.
I am kind of excited about getting these started. I tried many designs to make the rocking horses and none seemed to work. I looked at trying to carve them out of a two by two, and they looked better as dog laying. I was going to build them up using slats or edge molding and besides not getting started, it felt like it was not going to look good. I considered larger pieces to glue up and time and situation said no.
Having gotten a start on these is really something. These will work. I still have the balloons and the steam engines to make a bunch of, but I need to come up with one more design. The steam engines are not the most easy to do, though the wood I have right now seems to be softer than what I was playing with last month or so. Starting now was big. Other than the first year where I started very early in the year, I don’t remember getting started before mid September.
I am finding that as whitewood weathers or gets old, it gets harder to carve. It resists the knife more.

I made four kinds of ice cream today. I made the Lindt-chocolate ice cream, some rocky road ice cream, some strawberry ice cream, and strawberry ice rocky road cream where I added nuts and marshmallows (part of rocky road)
I had made more strawberry than I planned and that is why there were two kinds of strawberry ice cream. I used a larger pan for the rocky road, but used small loaf pans for everything else.
I nuked the Lindt chocolate then mixed it with fresh bananas. It mixed quite well
The Lindt tasted sweeter with the banana.
I nuked semi-sweet baking-morsels (chocolate chips) for the rocky road ice cream. I used too much nuts and marshmallows and chopped them way too much while the ice cream was in the food processor. What I should have done is kept them in larger chunks and used a spatula to mix them. Either that or use just a small amount
I chopped some marshmallow alone with the idea of just using them and it became a couple globs that stuck to the blades, since the insides of marshmallows are sticky. I gave up on that idea. Tasted good anyway.
I had a 13 ounce jar of jam and used about half of that for about six bananas. This became the strawberry ice cream. What did not fit in the container got nuts and marshmallows and that went into the freezer.
These ice creams were frozen, then cut into chunks so they could be tasted in small quantities. I use them mainly for a way to eat bananas when I have leg cramps at night from over-doing it. Flavoring the bananas makes them easier to eat and they go faster.
The Lindt chocolate ice cream was very good. The banana added enough sweetness to make it delicious. The strawberry ice cream tasted like strawberry, the rocky road was good but a bit too much crunch, and the strawberry rocky road just tastes like. There was way too much of them in there. Textures of the ice cream was good.
I will do this again when I run out, but will cut down on the nuts or even go without them.
If I really wanted to do this right, I would have a container to put them in and scoop the ice cream out into a bowl. Of course if I had an ice cream maker, I could make it really good, high quality texture. But these are coming out is good enough for me.

I hope to work on the rocking horses next week.
I will see what really happens next week.
1871