(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-24-15 Saturday
76 degrees early morning, 86 degrees afternoon. Patchy cloudy all day, with a few real early morning showers in Miami. Light breeze was enough to make the weather nice, but not quite strong enough to blow things around. This Weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
After breakfast, we looked for some yard sales. A church was having one and we were trying to figure out where it was. It turned out to be at a house which we think may be the Priest’s house. One thing I really liked, but had no use for, was a bunk bed that had a set of stairs to get to the top, and each step had a drawer in it. It was in a nice honey colored wood, likely pine. The stairs themselves was just pretty.
At another yard sale, the landscape had some mounds next to the road. I walked on the side of the mound. My leg has not developed the strength which I lost when I spent all that inactive time fighting the infection in my knee. I’ve not been using the cane in order to save my sprained wrist which has been healing nicely. When I stepped off the mound and onto the pavement, I knew I really made a bad mistake. Luckily, I was wise enough to toss the cane in the car just in case. After the discomfort of walking around at this multi-family yard sale, I had to use the cane for the rest of the day. Luckily, my wrist healed dramatically compared to last week and was able to take it. .
At one yard sale, I picked up some cookie cutters. There were shapes and sizes I had not seen. I also picked up a cookie extrusion set. This set has plungers to press out the cookie dough, and different shaped dies to create different shaped cookies. There were two large plungers and a tiny one, which I think was for frostings.
At another yard sale, I got a tiny screwdriver/plier set. This is a set for working on devices. Mom took that from me after we got home as she is always working on children’s toys and the jeweler’s . Screw drivers are hard to turn as they are so small in diameter.
screw driver and wrench set
A lot of the stuff we saw was great and nice to have, but not that I could use. One place had some Halloween decorations. She had a skeleton available. Later in the afternoon, I thought of a use for it, (put it in the chair of someone returning from vacation) but it was well too late to get, even if I decided to go get it.
I needed extra sets of keys for my truck. My old ranger’s keys had a chip in them for the ignition, but one could go anywhere to get them made. This new truck required me to go to an expert or to the dealership. I went to the dealership this time. The keys and fob were fairly cheep, but the labor for programming the key and fob to the truck was expensive. I ended up being there for three hours, and that killed the last of the morning and a bit of the afternoon.
A while back, during my last doctor’s appointment, I had started a dishcloth where I was working corner to corner rather than across the end. Since I was at the dealership for a while, I decided to work on that. After making it “square” I started around the edges with single crochet to tie it all together and make it look neat. I was getting close to finishing my second row of edging when they told me my truck was coming up. I tied off and clipped the yarn, calling it finished, about five minutes before we went out to get my truck. During my time, I had it nearly finished, and had to rip out most of my decreasing stitches because it was really out of square. And then re-do the reducing stitches again. Even so, It ended up not quite square, but this is the best of this style I have done so far. I will have to start a new one soon.
After a short break at home, I went out back and worked a tiny bit on the drum sticks I want to make. I split off some sharp corners from the Sea Grape stock I selected for the drumsticks. I used my usual method of pounding on the back of a hatchet with a hammer. My wrist did a whole lot better today than it did when I pounded with it last week. I could have done a whole lot more but decided it was not splitting exactly the way I wanted and did not want it to get too small in diameter in any one place. My wrist has healed a lot this week.
While I can make the sticks a lot smaller with splitting or shaving, I have decided that I will remove the excess wood when I turn them. It would be nice to have the grain exactly straight through the whole stick, but with only a little effort in centering, these drum sticks will be straight grained enough to not split with any use I will put them through. I have seen where other drummers are always chewing up or breaking their drum sticks because they play so hard or loud..
With my splitting the stock, I have a couple more small pieces of wood that can become something like crochet hooks.
Tomorrow, I plan on pulling out the lathe, which requires a whole bunch of stuff being moved out that has accumulated in the way over the past few months. Then I hope to turn at least one drum stick. My plan is to get both pieces of wood basically round, and then shape and size them individually from there.
What I really need to do is to empty the lathe cart, dismantle the lathe, clean and lube everything before putting everything away. I also have to check the wood parts of the cart as some bugs have been having lunch at my expense. Then of course, all my tools need to be cleaned and sharpened.
It is always the choice, clean or do a project......
I will see what I actually do tomorrow.
Year 13, Week 37, Day Two (week 683)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-25-15 Sunday
76 early morning 86 degrees in the afternoon, scattered showers mostly to the south, loads of puffs of clouds with blue sky in between, a light breeze that felt slower than the clouds were moving to the west.
Here in Florida, there are two kinds of people when it comes to Air Conditioning (AC). One type cranks the temps down to match Fall or Spring temps up North. This costs a lot of money each month. Most “natives” (Or nativized residents) set the temps to high 70s or even up to 80 degrees. They are using the AC to remove the humidity. Without the humidity, the higher temps feel comfortable. The evening temps are down to where one can leave the house open to air out and it feels like high temp AC. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
I got a really late start this morning. When I got to Mom’s we decided to go out to lunch with some friends. A couple hours later, I decided to head home as I would not have time to accomplish anything, and still be abel to do something at home.
Nothing happened today at all.
I hope to accomplish a lot next weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment