(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-29-16 Saturday
A frigid 79 degrees early morning, A sweltering 80 degrees after breakfast, a comfortable 83 degrees during the heat of the day. These massive temperature shifts in one day are really hard to take. They fixed the clouds mid week and they were still unbroken all day long. A really brisk wind (23 mph) with strong gusts (up to 40 mph) to blow things around. A few dots of sprinkles in the morning, then a little bit of showers around six in the afternoon. This weather report was brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department of Tourism.
If it wasn’t warm, I would have thought I was in Seattle on a sunny day. Never saw the sun.
After breakfast, I decided to chance looking for yard sales. I found one by an elderly lady who lost her husband. A landscape guy pulled up before me and he got a tool box that looked like it had a lot of tools including a couple hammers. I avoided getting (another) sander and (another) Jigsaw. I did buy some clamps and a few other items I really did not need. Clamps will get used. There was a little fine mist that passed that had her trying to cover her stuff with tarps, but the wind made it tough as they flapped wildly. What came down was not enough to wet anything but enough to get people worried.
Another yard sale I found was by a pair of women. The leader of it was putting out signs so was not there. They were not ready to get started. Everything was still under plastic. After glancing in some of the plastic bags and tarps, I decided not to wait and drove off, since what I did not see something I absolutely had to have.
I decided that yard sailing was not going to be fun todayas stuff was being blown around and there was a chance things could get wet. I finished the Northern part of the loop and headed home
My truck decided it needed service and would not listen to me so after I stopped at home, I headed out to the dealership. I knew it was going to take time. I still had in the truck some yarn I purchased a couple weeks ago. There is an orange yarn that is so vibrant and I just love looking at it. I grabbed the bag along with my crochet kit (which also has my tablet to play games if I want) and after telling them what I wanted to have done, I settled down in one of the chairs of the waiting room with a cup of coffee. I took out a tooth-brush based crochet hook I had made last year and selected end of the orange yarn. I was not sure exactly what I wanted to do. I thought of little ornaments such as lightbulbs, but after a couple half-hearted failures in making the “magic loop” to make tight circular works that stuffed pieces need, I decided I would make a scarf.
I have made narrow and wide scarves. I stitched about 20 links in the initial chain stitch. It looked wide enough and then began adding actual stitches into the ch ain. About the third row, I realized that this pretty orange yarn will look blah if it is alone. beautiful yarns really only look good when compared to something of a lower quality color. I then decided to make this a Christmas scarf as I had green yarn and also a yellow yarn (really should be a white yarn but none in the bag and I was not heading all the way home in Sunrise to get white or head to a store to buy new).
I considered having yellow between the orange and green on both sides, but decided that orange against green won’t be bad.
At the end of two hours I was just starting my third row of red (red yellow green, red yellow green, when they came for me having finished my truck. I had done a whole lot less done than I expected that I would have created in that time. I am not sure but part of it is because I have not done this stitch for a while and I was deciding on how I was giong to make it. I considered early on the possibility of making waves, but decided I was not that energetic. One has to pay too much attention to get the different length stitches right.
Back home, I set up to do some carving. I had an idea for rocking horse ornaments. The idea was to make it out of three glued up boards. The middle one would have the head and body. The sides would mostly be the legs and rockers with part of the body. I drew the head and body on a piece of molding so that two would come out of the same piece of wood. I looked at it for a while and realized that the wood was too thick to really cut out effectively with the dremmel. It needed the bandsaw, which was still put away, or a jig saw, such as what I did not buy today (I have several of them which is why I did not buy one, but they were buried or at home). It was near lunch time, so I packed up everything and went inside.
I napped for a couple hours as the dark clouds sort of added to the restful mood.
Later I went outside and was petting momma kitty while she ate. Her body language said she could be held so I picked her up and was petting her on my lap. Midway through the session, she started making a growling type nosie. Slightly frustrated sounding. I wondered if I was petting her right and paid a little more attention to her. Then I looked up and saw that one of the pigeons was strutting around, whispering naughty names at the momma kitty. Mamma kitty wanted at the bird but did not want to give up on the attention I was giving her. That is why she sounded frustrated. At the distance of about ten to fifteen feet, momma kitty would not catch it anyway.
After I came back in, I settled down and added several more stripes of color to the scarf.
I will see what I will do tomorrow. Weather reports say it might be worse.
Year 16, Week 43, Day Two (week 874)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
10-30-16 Sunday
The clouds started out unbroken, but whatever held them together gave way suddenly and they came apart and actually let blue skies show between them. There were some high platelets that helped keep the sun from shnining. 76 degrees early morning 82 late afternoon. The breeze just enough to be nice. I don’t remember seeing any sun but it was a whole lot lighter than yesterday. This weather report is brought to you by the City Of Pompano Beach department of Tourism.
My brother came up a little late. I had brought out my carving stuff with an idea of working on the rocking horse ornaments. Right after I had my stuff out, my brother arrived and mom decided to have the awning put back up. I had to relocate my stuff so they would not be in the way. A bit later, I put the carving stuff away. Other than digging out the step stool, He did most of the work while I watched. Mom directed him. I am not ready to do ladders.
Later I gave him a hand on fixing the fold-down awning. I had not realized it but when it was put up by the painting crew, it was being held by the threads of some really long screws stuck through the holes. With the winds we had this week, it held surprisingly well. We had to replace them with bolts and nuts and that required some drilling since the bolts were a little bigger than a couple holes.
Today, I added some more rows to the Christmas scarf. It is now about two feet long.
I expect to have a couple times during the week to sit and wait, so I will continue to work on the scarf. It is going fast now which makes it fun. I think what slowed me down yesterday was weaving in the beginning of the new colors before getting on with the crochet. Also, there was some hesitation in getting the stitch right as it had been nearly a year since I started on a project like this. This is a project that people notice.
I expect part of Saturday will be getting equipment and other materials out of their hiding places before any real work gets done. We are hoping that only a fraction of the stuff we had under the awning will return. More room would be wonderful.
I will have the band saw and lathe back out, so a number of projects I have planned can be worked on.
The thought crossed my mind that I really need a month or two off to work on projects I want done before Christmas. Yeah Right!
I will see what I accomplish next week.
1580
Saturday yard sale finds. The clamps, a couple hack saw blades, and a icing dispenser unused.
I picked up a couple things but they were not on hand when I took the picture.
Where the scarf was when I left the dealership
The scarf when I put it away on Sunday. I doubled the length which is now two feet long
A friend had a yard sale on Sunday and I picked this up. I know it is a horse, but could well be a dragon if one looks at it right.
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