80 degrees in the morning with almost no breeze, blue sky with high smears and feathers, low wispy puffs. 94 degrees in the afternoon, the wisps became pillows, and then became towers. Late afternoon, a anvil wall appeared over the everglades and worked its way east. I drove though torrential liquid sunshine on the way home. According to weather radar, Mom finally got some of it for her plants. Here in Florida, Liquid Sunshine becomes water when it hits the ground.
One can really see the time changes that are going on. The sky used to be daylight bright when I arrived at mom's house. Today, the sky was only slightly lighter than the cloud towers over the ocean to the east. Until Daylight savings time ends, our mornings will get darker and darker.
This weather report was brought to you by the City of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
FRIDAY
while doing laundry, I did two rows of the crochet granny square I was doing in my truck. I took it home to check and only had one more row, so I finished that one. I then finished the granny square I was working on at home. Mom says that I likely have enough for a baby blanket. I was thinking more of an adult blanket so it would be worthy of keeping for generations. I will see how things go. I started squaring up a heart. If this works, I will do it to others, then make them into granny squares.
On Saturday, I took a granny square I made last year using triple crochet rather than the normal double crochet, and am doing a standard granny square stitch around it to add it to the blanket I am making.
The two new granny squares. the purple one was the one I worked on in the truck.
SATURDAY
After Breakfast, we visited one yard sale. I saw a toy dragon and decide to ask about it. It is part of a game which I got for a wallet shrinking fifty cents. The game is sort of like Legos and little soldiers have to defeat a dragon and take a jewel that is used to unlock the safe to get to magical weapons. I like the dragon.
The dragon with the jewel in place It was what caught my attention first.
The game set in the box
Dragon with game board
After petting and feeding the cats. I petted and fed the cats some more. Then the beast of the back yard wanted even more attention, sleeping at my feet during several periods of the day. I had a phone conversation and
I touched up the crochet hooks I made last week. the throats of the hook was not big enough. A little grinding with the dremmel and sanding with an emery board solved that. They seem to test pretty good. I have a couple dozen hooks now.
I took out the machine lathe and finished machining a piece of black walnut that will be handles for crochet hooks. I then took a small rod I had broken when I was making it into a round rod and finished rounding it and made it into a crochet hook.
Black walnut hook and rod with stock pieces to compare with.
One thing I learned last week and was able to practice this week, was on knocking down the corners of the stock. the three jawed chuck this lathe has, does not hold square pieces well. The corners and flats don't match the jaws.
My method of solving this problem is to just grab the piece the best I can in the chuck, and centering the other end as close as possible. I then knock the corners off the other end and round it a short distance up the shaft. I then turn the piece around so the jaws of the chuck is now holding the round end, and I center the square end to the best of my ability. I then work the piece round as far as the tool rest will reach.
I flip the piece around again and finish it to match the main part f the piece. If one was working to a tolerance, one might flip it a few times to get everything completely centered. My wooden crochet hooks are not critical so I don't worry about that.
Months ago, I had machined the end of a grinding bit. This was a bit designed for the drill, and I machined it so my dremmel can hold it. I was not sure if I wanted to change it so I would not use the drill with it, so I only did the end. The jaws of the Fordum and Dremmel chucks damaged the end I had machined.
Today, I mounted the grinding bit back into the metal lathe and machined the shaft about half way up so now the dremmel can get a strong hold on the bit. It only took a couple minutes.
I am not totally sure why I had problems when I did it the first time. With some tasks, other activities give experience that shows when one goes back to the difficult project. I am thinking that I was trying to do the machining without the tail stock in place and the jaws were only holding the points of the grinding spikes and that did not give much purchase. this time I was using the tail stock to hold it in place.
Re-machined shaft on grinding bit. Needs cleaning
I had a large number of projects to work on and never got to any of them other than the crochet hooks. I was sort of lazy and the phone call was longer than planned.
Tomorrow, I will have to see what my mood is, but I am half thinking about trimming the second palm tree. It might not do all of it, but if I do some, that will be a lot. I know Mom will be happy. I also want to work on the dragon. Even if I just mar the surface even a little, I want to make a little bit of headway. I will take home a couple pieces I want to carve so I can draw or even paint on them the design I want to carve onto them. It is not having the design is the biggest problem.
I should make the spout for my tea pot. The main thing is to drill the hole for the tea to come out. Then I need to turn or carve the spout so it will look right. I also need to shape the handle so it will be comfortable to hold. Once they are done, I can attach them after drilling the hole through the wall of the pot for the spout.
I have lots of wood that is begging to be worked with. I can hear their feet tapping impatiently from here.
I will see what I actually do tomorrow.
Year 11, Week 37, Day Two (week 611) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 09-25-11 Sunday
86 degrees, blue sky with a few high smears over head and some puffs on the horizon all around. The puffs moved in and grew. they were low with grey bottoms. Around noon, a really large and grey cloud appeared to the south. I decided to put the machinery away. I was almost completely packed up when some drips come down.
I left Mom's house and was out of the drips within three blocks. I then hit the highway, going around the storm at Mom's house. A couple miles down the road, I ran into a torrential liquid sunshine shower which was part of the storm at Mom's house. Several miles more and I was out of the storms entirely.
There is a tropical wave off the coast. I do not know if this weather is related to that but it could be.
This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of tourism.
two things I forgot to mention yesterday. I was closing up for the day and the outer door refused to close. The more I tried, the worse it got. I told mom and she came over to have a look. After trying the door a little bit, she opened it wide and a lizard fell to the ground. I had smashed a large curly tail lizard in the door which was why it was not closing.
The other thing I forgot to mention about yesterday was that I picked up my dremmel case and had forgotten to latch the lid. I had small bits all over the place. I picked some up by hand, then grabbed a couple magnets I had gotten from speakers that are wrapped with a wire to act as a handle, and I swept the area with the magnets. I got a whole bunch of the bits that way.
Today, I took the broom and swept the area up into a pile and ran the magnet through the sweepings. I got five drill or cutting bits and a few screws. The magnet really made rescuing the bits of metal easy.
When I arrived today near nine, Mom had worked out in her garden since dawn. She had pulled a whole bunch of her plants onto the patio, and repotted several of them. She was just laying down cardboard when I arrived. I helped her break down some boxes to lay them on the ground, then we took some rosemary and scattered them all over the cardboard. Finally, we took some red mulch and covered the area.
the cardboard is to keep the weeds from coming up beneath the mulch, and the rosemary is to keep the cats from digging. We are not sure if it really works, but in the cats stopped digging in the last area we added rosemary we mulched this way. I helped her put some plants back. Mom has to get more cardboard and cut some more rosemary before she can finish the job.
I carved a little bit on the dragon. Mainly marking up the surface with the grinding bit to show where I will have to cut in more. Only a few places are really deep enough to where it would take some grinding to remove signs of a mistake. Because of the way the dragon is laying, I still have to work out how the rear leg is positioned.
The dragon is leaning to one side, and the rear is up a little, like it is down on the elbows in front. it is also tipped to the side. The rear leg on the low side is the problem, working out exactly how it is positioned.
I had used a yellow sand as inlay on a Sea Grape bowl to fill some gaps. Yellow was horrible, looking like it was a mistake. I used one of the grinding bits I found on the ground today when I swept up the area and then ran the magnet through the sweepings, and routed out the yellow sand filler. I added some magenta sand into the cleaned gaps and super-glued them in place.
I had an oak cup that I had cut beads into the side. this was the mate of the one I did last week. I filled it with super glue and purple sand and then mounted it on the lathe to clean up the surfaces so the inlaid sand was flush. I mounted the sea grape bowl on the lathe and cleaned that up too.
Here is something to think about. I am using some super glue that is over a decade old.
They used to have computer shows where you could get new and used computer equipment cheep. We frequented them for years. The shows faded out as fewer and fewer people were attending them. We finally stopped going.
At one of the shows, a company was offering their super glue kits with two tubes of glue, an accelerator, a filler, and a spray nozzle. I got one and then realized I rally did not have a use for that so I stuck it into my fridge. It has been there ever since, for over a decade.
Today I used that glue and it is as good as the day it could have been purchased.
I spent some time petting the cat and I let it sleep at my feet for a while. He loves the company. I did a little crochet during that time.
A couple months ago, I got a basket of knitting stuff at a thrift shop. Last night, I counted out that I had 18 wooden crochet hooks at my desk. I remembered that within the knitting kit was a card that had holes in it to tell me what diameter my hooks were. I located the card and went through all my hooks, marking on them the hook size listed on the card. I see I have some gaps in my hook offerings. Part of that is dependant on the stock rods I am using such as three different sizes of skewers I have used as hooks.
Next week, I still have my list of projects to work on. I have the dragon, a tea pot, a couple vases. I MUST start my Christmas ornaments for this year. I have some old ones I need to make and have to make a set of four new ornaments too. I need to get them all done by the end of November and that won't be enough time. I still have to think about Christmas presents I want to make.
I have Mom's tree to trim and any other projects she might come up with. I have loads of wood that demands to be made into sawdust and something to show from what is left.
I did not take any pictures of the stuff I did as everything is in process but not far enough to really show a change.
I will see what I actually do next week.
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