Year 14, Week 38, Day 0ne (week 684)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-12-13 Saturday
94 degrees, loads of puffs, nearly all sunny day with blue skies. A good breeze made it comfortable. it still was hot. This weather report was brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach department of Tourism.
I came home Friday and found my fridge was off. I called my brother who has a service company to check it. It could be a whole number of things but he found the problem quickly. Checking the stuff in the freezer, I lost was some bananas I kept frozen (it passes for ice cream). Everything else was well packed.
One thing I had to do was to move everything out of the way so we could pull out the fridge. More stuff got moved than planned. Not all of it is going back in the kitchen again. One is always surprised at what one finds when things really get moved. A while back, I almost purchased a diamond sharpening stone set. I found that I have a set that the package was never opened.
Today was a yard sale day. We hit quite a few yard sales and got some good deals. I picked up a stand fan for five bucks. That was my big purchase. The two that we have under the awning as seen better days because of sun and weather. One has a plastic housing that is breaking apart and the fan itself is slightly out of balance. The other needs to be opened up and the bearings oiled. The clips are rusted in place. This fan will make a good replacement when the heat is high or the air is still.
A ball of yarn leaped into my arms begging for a new home. It was so cute I adopted it. I did not give it a thought at the time but it is cotton, which I love.
I picked up a mandolin slicing set. This was an expensive set from the store. It was my second biggest purchase at three bucks.
Between other yard sales, round cookie sheets, a very large trivet, on which you place hot pans on, and several large bowls. I use an air popcorn popper and I use a large bowl to catch the popcorn as it comes out. The bowl I am using is breaking apart. I now have a replacement bowl. What I do with the other bowls will be something else. I don't have room for everything.
One thing I am planning on starting on, is to start a bin to put yard sale items into. Next time My mom has a yard sale, I will have a whole bunch of things to put out into it. It will take time to get that started. I have several bins but they have little bits of things in them and they sometimes need to be separated.
A bit later in the day, I headed down to Dania Beach, to an antique shop on U.S.-1 and Dania Beach Blvd. I have some of my work on display there. I had borrowed a few of my pieces a couple months ago, and finally returned them to be on display again. I changed the display around a little bit. That has to be done to make it look like there might be new stuff. I also added a couple large bowls too. That antique store has a bunch of blacksmith made items, some blacksmith tools, and some good old wooden things. It is fun to look after I have dealt with my display.
When I have to wait a time, I don't just sit there and stare at the wall. I prefer to do crochet. I could read, I could play games, but with crochet, I end up with something to show for my time, and what I make tends to be good Christmas Presents. After The Antique shop, I had to do laundry.
I took the scarf I had worked on at home, and am working on that. I think I have two more rows before the field is finished, and then I just have to add tassels. I really had not seen it in the sun. It is made up of several yarn scraps. I started with pink yarn and that ball ran out quickly. I then changed to another yarn that in my house light looked a little darker. Come to find out, that is a pastel orange. I then went with purple for the main field of the yarn, then went pink on the far side. The yarn I was going to finish it up with was an orange, but it was twice the thickness of the yarn I did the scarf in. I decided to finish the scarf in the same pink, and then use the heavy orange as the tassels. It will make that one bit of orange yarn make sense.
This week, I had finished the scarf I was carrying around. I was doing a skip stitch with it, three double crochets, then chain three, skipping three stitches below, then doing three. It is hard to get started when you have all single crochet chain, but becomes mindless once you get the first row of skip stitch. it tells you when you have to do your three stitches and when you have to chain three. I did several rows of single crochet in the middle and then returned to the skip stitch, before ending with single crochet. The single crochet in the middle helped stabilize the scarf and I think looks pretty good. I have not decided whether to add tassels or not. I will allow myself to think about that for a while.
The scarf I am working on in the truck is running out of yarn. I won't get too many more rows out of it. That is when I will call it a finished length. The pattern is three rows of single crochet, two rows of double crochet, then three rows of single crochet. I want to finish with single crochet so I might have to back up a couple rows if I end on double crochet. This scarf was done at stop lights and other times I have had to wait in the truck. I have made some stitch count errors here and there. This is a medium dark blue yarn. I will use a dark blue yarn and edge the scarf. I am figuring on using half double crochet, and when it goes in for short rows, I will shift to double crochet, and then back again to even up the edge so it looks right. I will then add dark blue tassels. I figure half an hour of work will finish the field on this scarf.
Tomorrow's weather looks as dry as it was today. I am looking at getting some woodworking done tomorrow.
I will see what I actually do tomorrow.
Year 14, Week 38, Day Two (week 684)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-13-13 Sunday
85 degrees, sky filled with puffs but mostly sunshine. One dark cloud formed out west and headed on to bother the Everglades. A steady heavy breeze moved plastic bags around and gusts moved them fast for a moment. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
This morning, I dealt with some of the stuff from the kitchen and the yard sales. I have more to take care of. A few things are out of the way for now and need not move and a couple other things are in view to remind me to deal with them.
I decided to take my pasta drying racks back to Mom's house and fix a couple that have little problems. The main problem was I was not accurate on the cutting on a few and did not square the ends with the disk sander and they did not stand on the counter properly. I removed the feet on the ones that were slightly skewed and touched the ends to the disk sander, rotating them to remove any angle that might build up. I think that will help. the way you square something on the disk sander is to rotate it and touch it many times to the sander. If it is round, I tend to roll it with the end touching the sander so any slight angle gets evened out. If it is square, I will touch it to the sander, rotate it a quarter and touch it again and continue to do that. A side to side angle becomes an up and down angle and it corrected.
I removed the feet off some of my racks and squared up the ends that the feet connected to. My table and work bench surfaces are not flat so that threw off some of my testing afterwards. I do know they are much better than what it were.
I also got some more rods. I needed to cut them in half. I guess I had better go back to elementary school and learn to count again. I found out quickly that half of a three foot rod is not fifteen inches. I cut the four rods I purchased and then was shocked to find two different length rods. Luckily, the short rods work so I cut the long rods to the same length. I touched up the ends of the rods on the disk sander and was done. I do need more rods but this will do fine. One seldom uses all the rods on the rack when making noodles.
My brother came and while we talked, I humiliated a piece of the wood I had prepared last week for my leaping fish. It is close enough to the thinness I need to start shaping the fish. on this piece, there is a knot that I am looking at. I need to figure out whether to shape the fish to remove that part of the wood or to leave it in and hope I don't have to cut too deep there. After lunch, I packed up my carving stuff.
Last year, we had to abandon the septic tank and go onto city sewer. We had accidentally ordered more sand than we needed. My brother has periodically been removing some of the excess sand off and on. Sand is heavier than it looks. Today, he gathered the last of the sand in mom's front drive. We were happy to see it gone.
Mom asked me if I wanted to sweep up the drive way. I told her no and walked away. A bit later, I grabbed the broom, a shovel, and a big dust pan bin that is used for shops, and swept the area. The shovel was needed because at the edge where the sand was thin, algae and weeds started growing and it was hard. The shovel scraped that up so it could be collected. I dumped the sweepings, which was possibly more than half a gallon, on top the stand box that mom has in back. She uses the sand in the box for her plants. She has a life-time supply, so it looks, but it gets used faster than you would think.
Mom had a plant she was given that was not doing well. It needed more water than she was giving it because the pot leaked. We took the plant out which had very little root, and tried to slow the leak of the pot, which would be perfect for a cactus, and then added some of the old dirt, some fresh soil and sand to the pot. When finished, we took it out front where it was from and watered it. It leaked fast. A cracks running up the side and we did not deal with them. We will see how the plant does for now, and maybe move it out of the decorative pot and put it into a normal pot where it can be happy for a while. We called it a day after that.
Next weekend, I really MUST get to work on ornaments. I picked up a couple more two by two boards to make into ornaments or something else. The month is almost half over and I have a lot more ornaments to make. There are other projects I need to work on but don’t know if I will even get close to them, not to mention all the wood I have to work on.
I will see what I will actually do next week.
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