Let's Play Catchup!

I know you folks haven't heard from me in a while. I'll tell you, 2014 has been the busiest year yet! Not only am I still writing (and trying to keep up with three blogs), but I have been babysitting my youngest grandson—plus I have a new granddaughter due any day now. And yeah, I had a big old vegetable garden this year too. The year just flew by.

Actually so did the Met Life Blimp, which we spotted a couple times in August.

 

It floated so quietly, you could barely hear the hum. The months though, they went zooming along.

Where does the time go? I think Einstein proved that time moves faster if you are really busy. I can vouch for that!







One nice thing about this property is the open skies. Makes stargazing at night a lot of fun, as long as you don't mind mosquitoes, the screeching of Great Horned Owls, booming bullfrogs, and wailing coyotes.


Now that avatar picture above, which I fondly named, 'The Old Broad Side Of The Barn', was taken back in April, a couple weeks after my 57th birthday. 

BTW, for my birthday, Roger sent me the ladle below, which was handmade by him from a picture I sent him of something I found online. That is treasured, and hanging in my kitchen. Roger doesn't do much woodworking anymore since his auto accident back in 2012. It's hard for him to stand long enough, and he doesn't have the strength and endurance he had. So this was really a challenge.

I love one of a kind art. Sorry about the busy tablecloth, but it kind of fit the summer mood. Here's the back of the ladle...

We drilled a hanging hole in the handle later on in the year so I could put it up. I won't use it, to me this is a rustic art piece.

Life you know, is full of surprises, and not all of them are pleasant. We haven't gotten much done on the house lately, but not from lack of trying. Lots of things—big and little—have gotten in the way. One of the hardest things for me to accept this year was my 80 year old mother's gradual health decline. She is more frail than before, and earlier this year, we all noticed her memory was not what it should be. The diagnosis was Vascular Dementia. The prognosis is ongoing mental decline. 

Yeah, I cried. More than once too. It's hard when you know that all you can do is never going to be enough. It's hard when people don't understand that this is just one of those random bad things that happens, and there was no way of preventing it. We clutch at straws, we look for hope, but mostly... we cope. We just plain cope and go on.

She's on medication, and it helps. But we have good days, and bad days. Right now I savor every moment I can get with family, and so I have her over here just about every weekend. She knows us all, but tends to confuse relationships, time and dates, and events past and present. She forgets which town she lives in now, and is a bit foggy on who is related to whom. She forgets if she ate, and repeats herself. Sometimes she just sits quietly and hums, and you can't get her attention for a few minutes. I know this is just the beginning, and my heart aches for not being able to do more than I am. I keep her as safely busy as I can manage, and try and be positive and understanding when she gets upset with me. My boys and DDIL have been very good to her, and supportive. We will keep her happily at home as long as we can. Just one more of the seasons of life to get through.

Getting outdoors and working the soil has always helped me deal with stress. With my hands in the dirt making things grow, I feel closer to my spiritual side, all grounded and centered. Gardening is my meditation time. We had an exceptional garden this year, and while I didn't take a lot of pictures, I got many of the wonderful produce we grew. There's just something about sunshine on your back, the smell of good earth, the song of birds and wind, and watching life unfold before you that chases the blues away. I made time for the garden, and this year it really paid us back. I will have an entire post about it another time this week.

I didn't get out thrifting or shopping as often as I have in the past, but I did go a couple times. I will have a bunch of thrifting pictures for you in a third post. Something about finding little treasures at a bargain price always makes me feel so crafty. Probably a good thing I don't go too often anymore, because I am so out of room for more stuff!

We had a ton of blackbirds this year, Redwings and Grackles, with a few Brown Headed Cowbirds thrown in. They cost me a fortune in bird seed mix and sunflowers, and forget suet, they gobbled that down. I put out suet late into the spring because a male oriole was eating it. He'd come up by the house every day and sing, and then feed. I had pictures but have no clue what I did with them. Sometimes we'd have 20-30 blackbirds under the feeders, along with all sorts of other birds. They bring their babies over to feed. I guess I am creating a welfare state for them all, but they brighten my days. 

We had a wild tom turkey courting a hen in the big field back in the spring. I took a lot of pictures in a very short time.

I heard a whippoorwill one night as I sat here at my PC. I had never heard one before. What a lovely, haunting cry they have. So good to know that there are still things I can discover even in my late middle years.

Somebody had a first birthday this year! He seriously needed a bath when this was done.

It was worth it, though he looks like he dismembered something. That intense glare just screams 'Mad Scientist', doesn't it? Or maybe Zombie Apocalypse...

You know, I didn't even have the time or energy to get my usual fall pictures. This was the only one I could find from this year, and someone else took it with my camera. But oh, the colors were glorious this year! This doesn't do them justice.

I was surprised that my holly has a few berries, since I thought it was all one bush, and you need a male and a female to get them. Maybe it's trying to impress me.

Fall can be a melancholy time of year for some folks, though I have always loved it. The cooler, shorter days bring longer dark hours, but for me, they bring more time to craft and plan, cook and organize things. Keeping busy is the key. And who wouldn't be busy with a gradually growing family. I love my two grandsons to pieces, and I'm thrilled that they get along so well, despite the big age gap. Zack is 1, and his brother Ben is 10, but they are best buddies.

Those blocks were thrifted BTW, and the jar was a throwaway I found a good use for. I reuse a lot of containers for storage. Saves the environment, and saves me $$$.

Halloween brought us a visit from a little dragon and his royal attendants. I think one of them must have either swallowed a pumpkin or she might have a baby sister dragon in there waiting to hatch. Isn't he a cutie though? 

 Even Great Granny can't resist him. This is a crappy cell phone picture from my Dumb Phone, but she got right down on the floor to play ball with him. How many 80 year old women will do that? Heck, if I got down there, you'd have to call 911 and have them bring in a crane to get me back up again! 

Ah yes, Thanksgiving is this week, and the crazy Yule/Christmas/New Year's holiday madness a month after that. The weather has been cold and we've already had a dusting of snow once. Who knows what the next few months bring, when I return to full time babysitting of not one, but two little ones. Where will I find the time to write and garden? I guess we'll all find out together...

Watch for my next blog posts here, because I'll have some more interesting pics to share,

~NANCY

Year 15, Week 42, Day One (week 739)

Year 15, Week 42, Day One (week 739)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-22-14 Saturday
   
    The morning weather highly questionable, heavy clouds with dark bottoms. Strong breeze. Drove through some driplets on the way to Mom’s. Mid morning quick shower, fairly good the rest of the day until after dark. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Department of Tourism.

    THURSDAY
    Wood turning club meeting was Thursday. Since they could not get someone to do a normal demonstration of some technique, the “demonstration” was for people to bring at least three of their favorite pieces and tell about how they were made.
    I did not have access to the stuff I keep at Mom’s house. Instead, I brought one of my first carved turnings, which I made just for it, a few examples of the ornaments I am making in different stages, and some crochet hooks.
    I ended up with a few pieces of Corian, which is a plastic counter top material. The guy that brought it was exploring it for the lids of turned bowls he made. I can think of some projects it might be useful for.
   
   
   
    The weather was too questionable for a yard sale. A pop-up shower, which was all over the place as disappearing dots on radar, could ruin some things if they get wet. We decided not to do our yard sale.
    Mom had some projects in mind. Since they were something that required two people and my new dad was not physically and skilled enough to do part of it, it fell onto me to help her. It looked easy....

The first project was the sand box. Last week we screwed a wall in place. Mom had removed more sand from the walls for more leveling of the yard so we could get in there and work, placing the walls where they needed to be. I screwed a block on the edge of one board using a drill, then we set the next board in and I screwed that in place. Mom had to remove a bunch of sand in order for us to relocate another side wall. It not only bowed out but was slide out too.
Mom carried the wall board to the workbench where I used the saws-all to cut it to the height she wanted. I then  had to lower a block I made and installed last week. We cut off all the wood that it was to connect to.
I put in a block on the front edge of the side wall, then we attached the two pieces of the front to it and each other. Mom drove stakes in the middle of each board, sides and front and I screwed into them to give more hold to the whole setup.
I am not sure what I did but I was wore out and sore all over. While mom did all the work, I felt as if I did the work.
The clouds started crying so we went in and took a nap.

After we were all up, Mom and I went out and started working on the wishing well. The shingles rotted and the plywood underneath also rotted. The layers gave and the whole roof was bow like those old abandoned barns you sometimes see in pictures.
Mom could not do the project alone and while I still felt the work I did earlier, I gritted my teeth and helped her.
First we removed the old materials, which we could pull off by hand. Only a few spots on the side edges need to be removed once I was removing the screws. One of the edge supports had rotted and needed to be replaced.
Once the roof was completely gone, and I used the dremmel to remove some screw points that were driven from below, we had to cut wood for it.
I used the Saws-all to cut the wood. I found If I almost lay the machine down, I can cut a fairly straight line. Not as straight as a circular saw, but it is pretty good. I can adjust the course of the blade with a tip of the machine. Mom did not quite get the measurements right, but we were able to compensate for it in the process.
We attached the plywood. Mom pulled the peak of the sides together so they fit the board.
Mom has some green corrugated plastic sheets. It was a roof for a swing but she decided not to use that any more. It was a bother to remove for hurricanes so on the last threat she left them off.
Cutting this stuff was a challenge at first. I tried the saws-all and the plastic chipped. That is not good. Mom then got an idea. She grabbed a pair of scissors and it cut sweetly. She got a good pair of scissors and got to work. We cut three sheets and she decided that there needed to be the overlap to cover the whole roof, so mom cut one sheet in half.
We then screwed it down. At the peak, one went past the other. We screwed a aluminum plat on top over the edges and cinched that down tight.

I sat down, exhausted, wasted, and sore, to rest and cool down.
A few weeks ago, I had taken some chop sticks and used my mini lathe to turn them into rods for crochet hooks. On these rods, they were too long for the lathe to machine the center of the rods. Today I used my knife to remove the worst of the excess wood from the center portion, and then used sandpaper to smooth out the wood and round it some. I did several of the rods. One rod I had acquired was not bamboo and I knew it was not strong enough. I broke it up, proving it was not strong enough for a crochet hook, but later realized I should have kept it as a dowel for some project. Oh well.

Mom moved plants around to make the wishing well look good. On the big ones, I had to pull on the hand cart to tip it up. I just put my weight into it. And then she would push as I pulled the plants about ten feet to where they needed to be.
Rested and cooled down, we packed up our projects, put everything away, and then we went out for lunch.
   
    My body says I did a lot, even though I don’t see my doing anything difficult. I just put in a bunch of screws.
   
    Mom thanked me several times in the afternoon for helping her on these projects. One thing I am learning is that one does not have to make projects absolutely perfect. Many times, the impression the projects presents is more important than the fine details. The wishing well looks pretty good, even though I could spend an hour pointing out to less than perfect details.’

Tomorrow, I hope to work on my ornaments. I have one week to get them done.
   
   
   
   
Year 15, Week 42, Day Two (week 739)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-23-14 Sunday
   
    84 degrees, a few drips from clouds but mostly broken clouds with a strong breeze. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Department of Tourism.

    I got to Mom’s a bit early. I had scheduled to gas up on the way and then go to Sears. I have a gift card to use up. I found that they open at noon. That opened up some extra time to work. I am still hampered from my adventures yesterday, but was not expecting to do too much .
   
    I had decided long ago that with a few exceptions, my ornaments should be out of two by two whitewood boards. The wood is carve-able, cheep, and it is a nice size.  Basswood would be really nice to use, but locally, a supply is not readily available. While you have to deal with knots, the whitewood is a nice carving wood for the most part. It is more brittle than Basswood, but one can work around that. I found that the best whitewood carving wood is out of two by twelves. I generally buy the two by twos anyway. I don’t have to cut them to width for my ornaments.

I cut some blanks for my mice and chimney ornaments. The mice get rough shaped, a lot of excess wood removed. The chimney blanks are basically squared up and a cut round the center to identify the top of the chimney.
    I then took the trimmings from these and previous blanks and set down to cut pieces for presents that will go into the mittens and socks. I needed to cut them into squares and rectangles. The problem is that all the trimmings are angled. After working with the knife, I used the dremmel to remove the excess of the angle, the knife to split and trim the pieces so they were somewhat square. I made a nice pile of them.
    At work, when I bring something in a zipper bag that is not messy, breads are great choice, I save the baggies for re-use for non food uses. I dug some out that I had stored in my shed and after making sure they were clean, I split my tiny blocks of wood into four baggies. I then dumped some paint into each, of different colors and really worked the pieces of wood around to make sure every side was well coated. Once satisfied, I turned the baggies inside out and go every piece of wood out., leaving them on the workbench to dry. I moved them around a few times to make sure they did not glue themselves to the workbench and to make sure they were fully dried.
While they were drying, I cut the vertical cuts in the bricks of the nearly finished chimney carvings. Some of the legs need clean up before they are ready to paint. I see that using the bandsaw to cut the horizontal mortar lines like I did last week, really makes for a nice result.
    I need to glue the colored blocks into the socks and mittens so they have presents in them. That and a slight amount of touch-up, will finish them.
   
    All the mice, including the original ones need some touch-up carving. Some need heavy carving yet.  I need to locate my “seed beads” and set the black ones into the heads as eyes.  I also need to figure out what I want to do about tails. You don’t want it to snag on the trees they are hung on, so yarn is out. I have to look to see what I have available, or even go to the craft store and see what they have. Someone suggested ribbons around the necks of the mice.  I will have to see what is available for that.
   
    We decided  go out for lunch. Today is the year anniversary for the marriage between my mom and new dad. As we made the decision for lunch, a pop-up shower showed up a. I was closing the gate and realized the shed door was open, and the shower was gone before I had closed the shed.
    When we got back from lunch, I packed up and put everything away.
   
    Next week a lot is planned. I have mice to carve, chimneys to finish up and paint, presents to add to socks and mittens, touch-ups on everything. I have no idea how plans for Thanksgiving is going to go. I doubt I will work with wood as we will be in an apartment rather than at my brother’s house. Plans for the rest of the weekend is not in my hands. We might do a yard sale if the weather is nice. Other things might happen if the weather is not good.
   
    I will have to see what happens next weekend.
   
   
   
   
   

 
Completed Sand Box.

 


 
 Wishing well from behind with roofing completely removed.



 Completed wishing well with plants in place.





 
 
 painted wooden blocks that will be presents in the mittens and socks.



   
    

Another dish cloth is now done. I alternated the stitch pattern. Single crochet, then would use Tunisian crochet. I would work it so the next row of Tunisian crochet  was on the back side of the work.

Year 15, Week 41, Day One (week 738)

Year 15, Week 41, Day One (week 738)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-15-14 Saturday
   
    68 degrees early morning, 84 degrees in the afternoon. Blue skies with puffs of clouds zipping across the sky. We got one band of dark bottom puffs that worried mom a little. I stayed with the forecast of the whole weekend being nice and it was. Periodic gusts of wind took away the heat without blowing things around. This Weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
   
    This morning was Yard Sailing again. I brought a whole bunch of stuff with me from my house. With the stuff I normally bring with me and stuff I need for doing the yard sale, it took two trips to get everything out to the truck.
    Mom started setting up her stuff.  I went for breakfast while putting out the signs, and stopped at two yard sales while driving past two others. I saw nothing I could not live without.  One big advantage of doing a yard sale rather than hunting, is that I am not spending a whole lot of money for things. I don’t get much from my part of the yard sale but again, I am not spending.
   
    Mom came up with a project during a yard sale lull. She had a plant that was looking quite sick. Much of the plant was already looking dead. A fungus showed up on the plant, likely injected by an insect that sucks on the sap, and the plant was just not doing well. I got my Saws-all out and first cut the plant near the roots. I then cut into the ground around it, freeing the roots so Mom could pull them out.
    Using the hand cart, I brought one of her potted Norfolk Island Pine trees out front and we got it in place right where the other one was. It is a little shorter than the plant we pulled, which is about 6 feet tall with the pot. It looks good in that place.  Luckily, I was able to rest between steps and mom did the hardest part of the work.
    

Massive "tree" we cut down. as you can see, most of it was already dead.


    My main project for the day was carving on my ornaments. I touched up the chimney ornaments I had in process already. I then went out back and made blanks for mice and chimney ornaments.
    The previous time I used the bandsaw to make my mice ornaments, I cut way too deep. This time I sliced off only a little bit to give the impression of the shape. I left the ears thick figuring I can easily shape it exactly the way I want it when carving.
    The chimney ornaments are cut to length, a cut going only part of the thickness of the blade is done on all four sides about mid way. This is the edge of the chimney. I then used the disk sander to smooth the sides and square the ends. The ends are squared by repeatedly rotating the piece, placing the end against the disk each time. When any angle is up and down, it squares the end. 

Chimney ornament and mice ornament blanks with nearly finished example of each



    A bit later, I sat down and started carving on the mice. They were easiest to do. I rounded the shape, all over and got the body and head close to where it was needed on all three blanks. Other than cutting the sides below the ears and the space between the ears, I left the ears alone. I will do the ears next time.
    I then took on the chimney carvings. Other than the blank description given above, these are all by hand. There is not too much more that could be done with the bandsaw. I should make a 45 degree angle jig so I could put a stick or board on an angle to cut off a corner. That could allow me to remove two corners from the leg portion of the ornament and save me a little more time.
    As I am carving these ornaments, they are getting easier to figure out what needs to be done and how to do it. I will have it exactly right and carve them efficiently and quickly. That, of course, will be when I stop carving them....
    I am also developing callouses on my hand where the knife rests as I work. They will likely be perfect about the time I stop carving by hand....
     As it is, I am getting back into the swing of carving. My results are coming out the way I want it.
   
    I decided to try something I have never done before. When I make my crochet hooks, I use the Dremmel with a cutting disk to cut in the hook. Today, I took a bamboo rod and used my carving knife to make the hook. The technique is a whole lot different than with the Dremmel. With the Dremmel, I would come straight in and use the angle I am holding the cutting disk to make the slope and the hook. I work it side to side to make it even, but that is about it.
    I had remembered that for most of the history of making crochet hooks, they did not have spinning cutting disks.
    With the knife, I shaved down the slope of the hook first, and then had to work the sides of the hook. The Bamboo does not cut straight in on the ends of the grain nicely. I had to come in from the side and work the hook in by cutting wedges. Once I got it to where I wanted it, I used sandpaper to clean up the cuts and smooth everything out. I tested the hook out and it worked nicely. When I did a little bit of crochet, I forgot for a little bit that I was using the new hook to do some stitches.
    It does take longer, but with a sharp knife, one can make a hook anywhere even without any power at all. 

New Crochet hook. Rod is a chop stick I machined on a mini machine lathe to a working diameter. I then made the hook using my knife rather than the Dremmel


   
    When the yard sale was over, we packed up everything and put everything back. Mom loaned me some bins and I ended up filling another bin of stuff. I was tired, and a slight be sore, but it was an excellent day. I was ahead of mom on sales (a few things went cheaper than they should have) until her last two sales, then she ended up with nearly four times what I had made. Considering most of my stuff is junk says something.
    I have two places in my house where I need to move stuff to get to some items that would go well. I am not sure if I can do that this week. It would be nice to get to one of them at least.
   
    I would like to work on my ornaments, but Mom has a couple projects in mind for tomorrow. One is where I take a couple of my wheeled baskets and use those wheels to replace the broken ones on one of Mom’s wagons. I have some other wheels that are smaller than on these baskets and I would put them on these baskets.
    Another project is Mom’s sand pile. She is leveling out some low spots in her yard and using a lot of sand in the box. She wants to re-do the boards of the box, fixing them better. My idea is to screw blocks to the boards in the corner to hold them in place.
   
    I will see what I actually do tomorrow.
   
   
   
Year 15, Week 41, Day Two (week 738)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
11-16-14 Sunday
   
    82 degrees around ten, 86 around two. Half blue sky and half puffs with some semi-towers over the Everglades. A nice breeze kept it comfortable.  This Weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
   
    Somehow I got an early start today. I set up my table and then started on a project I thought about all night. I dug out some old two by fours that were recovered when we had to hook up to a sewer system. I dug out my Saws-all and cut the three foot boards in half. I then got out Mom’s Forster bit set and drilled holes half way through the two inch thickness of the boards in two places. I got a drill, and drilled in the centers of the pockets. I pulled a fifty foot cord and screwed the blocks to the back board of the sand box.
    The back board used to be an N gage model railroad layout and has a two by all the way around the edges to stiffen it. That gave me more to screw into. The pockets were because the screws I have would only have gotten a little bite into the wood. The pockets gave me the depth I needed to get a good bite and the holes I drilled made it easy to start with the bit going into the wood beyond directly.
    Installing the two blocks in place on the back side required some high stepping and balancing on shifting wet sand. I used the shovel to try to pull the side tight and it did not move. I did a balancing act using my cane and shovel to get behind the side. I found out that I would need to move a foot of sand in order to move the side to where it needed to be.
   
    I decided I was not going to shovel sand as my back would never take it, so I went back to my work table, got out my carving stuff. A glance at my work, I decided to paint everything that is close to being done.
    I nearly emptied my carving basket out to get out the bottles of paints that were on the bottom. I selected a red and painted the pants on the two finished chimney carvings. I then painted all the sox and mittens red except at the cuffs which is supposed to be white.
    After I decided all the paint was dry, I applied grey to the heals and toes of the sox. That made a big difference. It made them look like sox, not red boots or something else.
    I then dug out some orange and painted the palms of the mittens so they would look less like boxing gloves. Not exactly the effect I was after but will work. If people decide they are boxing gloves, that is all right. 

Sox and mittens painted by still requiring work.


    I took a darker red and dry-brushed the surfaces of the bricks on the two completed Chimneys. Dry brushing is where you only have a little bit of paint on the brush and you drag it over the top surfaces of the texture so it the color does not go (or go much) into the deeper parts of the surface. The bricks are dark red and the mortar is wood colored.
    I painted the boots. My black paint was watery and came out thinned so you can see the wood beneath the color. You can still see it is black, though.
    

chimney ornaments. The painted ones require loads of touch-up.



    I took my other chimney carvings to the bandsaw. I started cutting light grooves into the surface of one and it was uneven as there was a slight angle to the face I was cutting.  I took them all to the disk sander and sanded each surface, squaring them and making sure they are straight. There is one where the wood broke off at the top of the chimney and that will have to be. I would have to spend too much time at the disk sander to get it down far enough for that to disappear.
    With the chimneys square and smooth, I returned to the bandsaw and cut the horizontal grooves for the bricks. I laid each chimney on the side and held it to the blade for a moment. I guessed the thickness of the cap stones, and then went half way between that and the bottom and then half way between them so I ended up with four slots. I would tip the cut side up and then try to match the blade in the edge of the groove. On a couple, when I went all the way around, there was a slight error on the last edge. The knife can fix that.  I will later cut the vertical grooves between the bricks.
    I have one blank I have not started carving yet. I considered cutting the bricks for that also, but realized It is best to decide which end will be carved for the legs after I examine it. Knots are best in the chimney, not in the legs where it is hard to cut.
   
    After lunch, Mom decided to come out for a project. We had two choices. One is to replace the roof of her wishing well fountain which is deteriorating bad, or to tackle the sand box. Because I started on the sandbox already, we challenged the sandbox. We pulled the boards out. I used the saws-all to cut one side in half as it was too tall. I held the saws-all almost laying down with the blade against the edge and started cutting. The blade sliced in and I just drew the blade toward me and it cut quickly. I found that by tipping the saws-all slightly, I can guide the direction of the cut.
    We had to do some digging (by mom, who placed the dug sand in the depression of the yard) and maneuvering to get the side where we wanted it. I tried screwing the side to the block from the outside. I was crouched down and my leg let me know it detested that position. My leg was not happy the rest of the day. We decided to put the wall to the inside of the block and learned that the back board was slightly bowed which made getting it screwed in place a challenge. We got screws in place on that end, then mom drove a stake deep in the ground at the other end and I screwed the side to the stake. We were both tired and decided to call that project done for now. We can do more next weekend.
    We packed everything up, then sat and talked while recovering.
   
    I got a lot done on a number of projects. The chimney carvings need clean up and then paint. The mice need the ears carved and corrections made on the body and head because of that. I plan to put in black beads in for eyes but that will be later. What I have on both sets of carvings is eight, once I carve the last blank I had made. I need to make four more of each to have my dozen of each set. On the stockings and mittens, I have to cut a whole bunch of wood into small pieces and then paint them different colors to represent presents to go into the open ends. I have two weekends to get all my ornaments ready for display / sale. As long as other projects don’t interfere, I think I can do it.
   
    The weather will be the main factor in our plans for next weekend. If it is raining, the yard sales will be off. As long as it is not a driving rain, I will likely be in back under the awning and working. If the weather is nice for most of the day, we will do the yard sale again. I will work on carving and crochet, but not as much as I could.
   
    I will have to see what I do next weekend.