Year 14, Week 39, Day 0ne (week 685)

Year 14, Week 39, Day 0ne (week 685)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-19-13 Saturday
  
    81 degrees at around ten, 90 degrees past noon, blue sky above all day long, some puffs over the everglades. I was never sure which direction they were going, but since they were not coming to us, I did not care. It did cloud up heavily over the Everglades later in the evening, blocking the sun. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
  
    We hit a couple yard sales early morning. We expected everybody to have a yard sale as it was good weather all day long.
    Later in the morning, I dashed off to go to the big box warehouse store and hit some yard sales on the way. Here in South Florida, the difference between a YARD SALE and a GARAGE SALE is almost no difference. People will use which ever they choose to write, though some who write GARAGE SALE actually have it in a garage or carport.
    I stopped at one Garage sale and it was actually in the garage. I asked how much did they want for the garage and the wife said that her husband has to come with it.
    They had a number of things that were interesting, but I ended up walking out with some tiny C clamps and a square.
    A joke: What do you do when the rising ocean tide is threatening? Use C clamps to hold it in place.....


    Momma kitty was going to have kittens. Mom's friend decided she would take momma and raise the kittens. They took her to the vet. Later we learned that the vet decided to remove the babies and clip Momma kitty so she won't have any more kittens. Waiting for them to pick up Momma kitty and later in the day, drop her back off, took some time out of our activities. Momma kitty did not like being put in a cage. She had never been caged before. Momma kitty was supposed to rest over night and we had to put a tarp over the dog carrier we put her in to calm her down. We will see tomorrow if she will hold a grudge on Mom for what we did.

  
    I sat down and did some carving on Christmas ornaments. I carved two jumping fish and one penguin. I had the Penguin near done when a piece of the scarf that hangs down in front, popped off. I applied glue to hold it in place and set it to the side over night.
    On one of the fish, the lower "beak" popped off. I glued it on twice, then gave up and carved it so it was a farther back. No one will know the difference.
    One of the fish just did not look long enough so I removed the tail so the body is coming out of the water rather than leaping completely out.
  
    I finished one scarf, the one I had started at home a couple months ago and added tassels. It is done with several colors of yarn, PINK, pastel orange (low light at home made it look just off tone pink), purple main body, and then more pink. I added pastel orange tassel of a higher gauge than the body yarn. It is completely done and looks good. It is the thinnest of my scarves to date.
    Last week I finished a scarf using a skip stitch. I decided it needed tassels to look right to me so I started adding them. I ran into two problems. One is that the yarn changes color over its length and I only had half the required darker color I had cut originally, and the other was that I was really sloppy on putting the exiting tassels on and had big gaps. I decided I would have to remove most of the tassels I had and place them evenly on both ends of the scarf, and then I cut enough of the lighter color (going go white) to fill in the necessary spaces. I did not have time to do that so I put it to the side.
    Another scarf is close to being done. This one I worked on in the truck and it is a changing pattern where I do three rows of single crochet, then two rows of double crochet, then three rows of single crochet again. it does have the problem where I got the stitch count wrong in several places. This was done at stop lights and when sitting and waiting, so keeping track of where the stitch count was, turned out to be difficult. there were times I would do just two or three stitches, other times where I would do several rows, and My mind was not always on the crochet so mistakes happened. I wound up the remaining yarn into a neat ball and just have a few rows to go before I run out of yarn. I decided I will edge it in a dark yarn and try to hide the errors either by grabbing to a deeper strand if I am at a high point, or if necessary, making my stitch longer in the valleys. it won't be perfect, but should be pretty good. I have a ways to go before I can go to the edging, though.
  
    Tomorrow, I want to do more carving.

I will see how tomorrow goes.
  
  
  
      
      
  
  
Year 14, Week 39, Day Two (week 685)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-20-13 Sunday
  
    90 degrees, strong breeze, loads of clouds. A pregnant cloud passed over head and tinkled to the east of us, in the next city over. We got a few drops but not really enough to take note of it. I was about done at that time anyway. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
  
    I took out all my carvings and touched them up, fixing little errors, completing some details. I used the disk sander on the bottom of the bases and around the edges of the base to clean them up.
    Some of the penguins need to feet finished and the beaks corrected, but otherwise they are ready to be painted.
    I cleaned up the fish quite a bit, correcting some errors. I guess they will be all right when painted. I will have to check pictures again to see what colors they have.
  
    I finished the tassels on the second scarf. I had to pull some tassels out and place them better, then I added a whole bunch more tassels between the ones I have. It came out pretty good.
    I finished up the yarn for the body of the scarf, only having to do one row of my edging yarn to finish up the pattern. I then started edging the scarf. I had to pull out some stitches a couple times to correct problems that were cropping up. I will have some more time to do the edging over both sides of the scarf, and then add the tassels. I doubt it will be done in the next week unless I have loads of time to do crochet.
  
    Momma kitty is acting like nothing has happened to her. She came out of the cage and has been hanging around. I petted her quite a bit. She has a big bandage around her belly. It almost looks like a diaper. Mom is going to have to try to cut the bandage off. We don't know how Momma kitty is going to act. I said it will take several sessions. Take her onto her lap, pet her, take a snip and then try to calm her down enough to hold her again. Mom thinks it might be easier. We will see.
  
    I keep looking at all the wood I have laying around. I see I have the same problem with my crochet as I have with my woodworking.
    There is a lot of material laying around. The problem is what project to do. If you decide to do a specific project, you will find you do not have the right material around. "You have nothing to work with!" If on the other hand, I take some material and decide to make a project out of it, I have enough material to last me a lifetime. This is especially true with the wood I have access to.
    Right now with my wood working, I am doing little projects that don't require much wood. At this rate I could be working these projects for hundreds of years before running out. I do have some big projects to work on. It is just getting to them. I have a vase that is supposed to have five faces on it. I have a dragon I was carving. I have a bunch of wooden wheels to make. I had plans to make another cannon, to make a few toy trucks, loads of bowls, vases, cups, goblets. I have somewhere a decorative tea pot that I was making and should try to finish it. I have a bin full of Mahogany wood that is begging to become what they can be. I have more crochet hooks to make. I also have to make more ornaments, pencil heads, some relief carvings, just to START the list of work I need to do.
  
    I will have to see what I actually accomplish next week.

 Carved fish

 Momma kitty with her bandage

 Scar Face, or Tom. He has been around for several years.

My Scarves to date. The blue one in front is not finished.
 
 Yard sale C clamps and square