I have to admit that it’s nice to get out and see people and have my kids run free again. We’re masked up, and having a blast. Laugh Out Loud was a tonne of fun for both kiddies. It has recently been redone on the inside. New equipment, and a whole new layout. Both kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Pink flushed cheeks and sweat soaked brows. I give that an A+.
Now for me to eat lunch, and tackle some lawn work. Ciao.
Another week in the can, with a few brand spanking new physical wood projects to show for it. Fantastic! I love when things come together. Now if I could just focus that drive into my children’s book, I’d be all set to go. I’m trying to have fun with drawing again, and I have a lot to do, so it could take some time. I’m resisting going to the computer first, because I always wanted to illustrate a book by hand, and what better thing to do that with, than my own? Right?. So I will keep trying. It’s not like I have a publisher or editor waiting for my work, it being a hobby and all, so I should try to keep it light. But on the other hand it means something to me, so I want to put a lot of effort into it. Tough balancing act.
I managed to get a fair chunk further on my old fisherman bust sculpture, which is great news. Nothing boosts morale like some solid wins under the belt. Been a tad out of practice with sculpting lately as well. Have to build up my finger sensitivity and 3d spacial awareness. Takes a different kind of thinking to build out primary shapes and build a life like form. Hard to describe it, except you know very easily when it’s wrong. Lots of adding, subtracting, and pushing clay around to get the volume and shapes correct. Playing around with it in my palm until I’m happy with it. Same goes for drawings too. Could be a bit of a wait until I get it all where I want it to be. Should be all the better for it.
I originally wanted to edge the drive way and front lawn along the curb, but it is to rain for ten hours today, so that’ll be a tomorrow thing. Though we have a children’s birthday party to attend (masked, obviously). Which will eat up my morning. But if the suns out after lunch I can get some minor lawn care done. Perhaps tackle the lawn mower maintenance too. Who knows!
Things I’ve built recently. A 4ft long bench, a smaller 2ft Cedar toy box, an Ash cutting board plank, a 3ft Pine toy box, and a Walnut tray with floating inset plywood panel. It was a productive week in the shop. None of it is heirloom quality mind you. No fancy joinery. Just butt joints, miters and glue and Pin/Brad nails. Quick and easy. Plus various grits of sandpaper. I also busted out the palm router to round over edges, and my plunge router to add details to the large Pine toy box that now lives behind a couch under a windowsill.
So that was my week. With any luck in the next few weeks we will see the weather start to get warmer, and then the kids and I will start to walk to and from school every day. It really helps to tone down the hyperactivity when they have to walk everywhere. We do have to be prepared to leave 15 minutes earlier than normal, but if we don’t need boots, snowpants, scarves, hats, gloves, neck rings and toques, maybe we can manage it? Maybe?!?
Did one drawing in the morning for the book, and then went into the wood shop to build the kids a bigger toy box.
This time out of pine, with a plywood base – for stability, and to try to not warp over time. I made it 36 inches long, 16 inches high, and 11 and 7/8ths wide internally. Turns out my 12 inch board was not actually 12 inches wide, so accommodations were made in the cut. I added hand holds in the sides with a 1.5″ hole saw, then rounded over every edges with my palm router. Glued and Brad nailed it all together. Except the base, which I used inch long pin nails. Brad nails were wandering in the thinner plywood base. It isn’t for carrying, but to sit and hold stuff, so no fancy joinery this time either. I’m in a soft gap between projects, so I don’t know how much, or little, time I have to work on household stuff, so I tend to start and finish projects quickly, if I am able too.
I need to get these drawings done. I just don’t want them to suck. But I should aim for finished instead of some whacked out idea of my ideal art style. I haven’t drawn in years. So not a surprise that I’ve lost the feel for it in my fingers, wrist and arm. I’m too tight. Too stiff. Too rigid. Maybe a couple pages of circles and lines will loosen me up a bit.
Any way. How are you all doing as we get ready to finish with April, and head into May. Which reminds me, I need to give the lawn mower a once over. Sharpen the blades, clean the air filter, change the oil, and buy new gas. Check out the springs on the air intake. Too floppy and it sputters, to tight and it roars like a jet engine. Wash it, oil it up and give it some grease for good measure. I’ve had the same Briggs & Stratton lawn mower for 16 years or more now. One of the best purchases I ever made.
If the weather will cooperate in the new few weeks I want to get our gazebo built too. Get that done, several long years in the doing.
I have my third draft of the children’s book written up, and I have my page breakdown for images that correspond to the story. Looks like 16 internal pages. Like I said before, it’ll be a short one. Now I just need to start my sketches and drawings, for real. Woah Betty, that makes me nervous. Been a fair few years since I’ve done any drawing by hand. Could be a bust! Let’s press on and see what we see today. Gotta give it the day, at least.
I have the paper and pencils on hand. I have ink and brushes in case I go that route. I have pens and markers in case I go another way. Plus I most likely will can the artwork, and add colour in Photoshop. Stay tuned.
Now that I most likely have all of Book Two completed, also known as 41 Chapters of The Ghost of the Dirty Starling, I may actually bother to rewrite my childrens story, and begin to illustrate it myself. Of course I might end up writing an epilogue to my interconnected space serial, which opens it up for more exploration, but we’ll see about that. I seem to need a break from it for now. That happened last time as well. I am astounded by authors who are able to create fresh new worlds and pump out glorious novel after glorious novel, year after year. My hat is off to you lot. That hurts my brain to think about. My childrens book is simple and short and features only two characters. I’ll need to come up with an appropriate look for them. One was based on our former dog, now he’s been dead for nearly a full calendar year. I hope that doesn’t make me weepy thinking about him. Hard to say.
The other major question is; do I bust out the pencils and ink, or draw it in illustrator? I could draw it up by hand, scan it and colour it in Photoshop. That would work pretty well for me. I think the simpler I keep it the more likely I am to follow through with it. Hell I wrote 50,000 extra words of a second novella rather than tackle it from December through April, so that might tell you how I feel about starting drawing/inking again.
I have a bust in the works in my office in Chavant soft. I hate the soft Clay’s. So sticky. Plus it deforms too easily as I handle the piece while I work it. Nothing like working hours on a nose or ear, to mash it the next day because you grabbed it with warm hands and forgot to watch out. I tend to use Hard wax/oil Clay’s to avoid just that scenario. Or I use Sculpey Firm and bake as I go, to avoid it too.
Today I build myself an Ash cutting board. I wanted to test out my 45 degree cutting jig, and see how the saw stacked up against 8/4 barn dried Ash. It burns, is what it does. My planer doesn’t care much for hard woods either. My new electric hand planer from Bosch was amazing though, so kudos to them on a find product. I also practiced my trim routing of round over edges. Cut in some 45 degree hand holds, and a through & through finger hole, about 2 inches in diameter. Then used my propane torch to burn the top surface and bring out the grain. Looks interesting. Sanded to 220 grit, and finished with a butcher block prep oil. Not great, but not awful. Works as a cutting surface.
About 24 inches long, 1.75 inches thick, and nearly 11 inches wide. Had a huge crack down one corner, which I cut off, as I don’t have epoxy to fill in the rather large gap. I chose to cut that corner off instead. It’s pretty heavy. I have it resting on a cookie drying rack as the oil penetrates the wood. Nice quick project.
Just had to tweak my lower back while fiddling with that damn wheel barrow tire a few days ago. Tried treating it with rest, heat and cold but it’s not really getting any better. Kept me awake last night too. Will have to turn to Tylenol for a spell to get over this initial hump of soreness. Here I thought working out with weights would help me not do my lower back in by simply leaning over to work on a project for an hour, but here we are. I’m pretty sure this all stems from a previous injury I suffered doing too much weight at a Cross-Fit event prior to my wedding. Feels like I compressed a disc or something along those lines, and it just goes off if I compress it at an odd angle for prolonged periods of time.
It’s the sort of thing that hurts if you lean over, but also hurts if you lie flat on your back. And doesn’t like it when laying on your belly either. Sideways it is then.
This too shall pass.
Things are shaping up to be busy again this week. Which isn’t a bad thing, that’s terrific. Received word of a few new reports coming later this year, all good news to me! Love to hear it. The reward for good work is more of it. Which is nice.
Just stopping briefly for lunch, and then I’ll get right back to it. Projects await!
Sell sheets, 3D renders of retail displays, and final edits for the report. Swallowed up a good chunk of the day. It’s funny, I had originally planned to build our metal gazebo today, or at least this week, but then it snowed – again. Plus it’s cold and also kinda rainy. So now building to be done today.
I also seem to have put my back out fixing my wheel narrow wheel that wouldn’t seal along the bead. I tried a ratchet strap, heat, exploding fumes with a torch. And the only thing that worked was a rope, a long piece of wood, and punching the tire in frustration as I juiced it up with compressed air. Leaning over the tire for an hour has done a number on my lower back. Argh. I’m sure shoveling out my compost pile, and putting three wheel barrows full of earth in the front beds by shovel didn’t help much either. Silly what can bring us low. Guess my work out regimen hasn’t been doing as much for me as I had planned.
Day four of lousy weather while we are all off. Gotta love it. As soon as we all go back to work the temp will rise, the sun will shine, and we’ll not have the time nor inclination to enjoy it. Ain’t that a bitch. On a high note for today we didn’t wake up to snow. That’s gotta count for something!
I have some cold weather gardening to do today, so I best be getting a move on. I keep waiting for the sun to get warmer, but I’ll not finish if I wait for too long. Time to move the good soil out of the compost pile and spread it in the flower beds. Time to dig out my wheel barrow and spade. Possibly my forks too. We’ll see. I don’t make a habit of filling our permanent flower beds. I could edge them up, I suppose. I was going to trim the hedgerow at the back of the house, but I might have left it too late. As I understand it, that’s a late winter project.
Enough procrastination, time to get to it. Enjoy your last day of the extended long weekend, if you get the day off that is.
Nothing says Easter like pushing upwards through your bed sheet first thing in the morning, which is why we’re glad to have Cialis as today’s sponsor. It has Risen, so we cured ED for the moment with little blue pills.
It’s a holiday Sunday, and we’re still waiting on baby news, so nothing much is going on today as we wait. The kids had an Easter Egg hunt this morning. Our town had a walk through egg give away on Saturday which the kids enjoyed. Would be nice not to have snow on the ground today, but it’s April in Ontario, so what are you gonna do? Complain, and move on. Little over two months left of the school year, which is kinda crazy to think about. Our youngest completing year one of kindergarten. What a raggedy ass bitch of a school year it’s been too, thanks Covid. I don’t even know if our oldest remembers a school year without interruptions and sickness looming over everything.
Take it easy today. Watch a movie, and stay healthy out there.
What a funny looking number. Looks fake to me. Or oddly staged, as though someone were trying to find a random number. But here we are on day 123 of writing every single day. Yesterday I sort of completed my story arc, and now I’m trying to decide if I need to add an epilogue to fill it out a bit, or just leave it be. I could easily fill book three with the whole thing in greater detail, but I’m not sure at this point if I want to. Feels a bit rushed, but that’s the thing, building up to nothing is how life tends to feel. Blink, breath or loose focus for an instant and it’s all over and done with. Like studying your whole life for an event, having a sneezing fit that obscures the brief pinnacle moment and you’re left wanting at the end. Tragic, I suppose. Inevitable? Not sure. But that’s how I write. The fiction in my writing is that nobody gets off scott free, they all die in the end. Not so true here, is it. Awful, horrible people shrouded by money, privilege and power can do as they please and languish in luxury until their natural deaths. Fuck that, I say. Treat them as you would any, and every throw away character. Boring, work a day deaths for all involved, hero or not. A stubbed toe that gets infected, and they die of blood poisoning even though they were set to ascend the power structure or live forever after one more minor detail was completed. Nope, not on my story arc, fuck face. You die, no pomp, no circumstance, no banners or lying in state for you. Left to rot and decay in a random unlisted room someplace. Maybe the janitors turned off the environmental controls after cleaning, and didn’t realize you had a panic room back there, but were so cheap you used Company environmental facilities instead of paying for your own separate supply, and it’s constant maintenance. Ha. Eat shit.
I’m thinking that as the weather gets better, I want to focus more attention outside at the house. Windows, tree pruning, the lawn, the gutter blockage, driveway, vehicles. I’d like to start the screen door or coffee table build soon. I’m thinking about sculpting more again too. Playing the guitar and/or piano is somewhere I’d like to focus my attention as well. Same with teaching the kids about baseball, soccer and bicycling. We got out yesterday morning and played some ball hockey which was a lot of fun. So much to do, and try to focus on. Easy to get paralyzed by it all and wind up doing nothing at all. Except write. I’m pretty good of late about doing some of that every day.
Oh-oh, Spiderman No Way Home arrived this week and I got to watch that with my wife one evening for a date night. I ended up having to work for forty minutes in the middle and missed a chunk, but I liked what I saw the first time around. Watched the middle portion the next day, and liked it even more! Was pleasantly surprised by it all. Made me tear up in a few spots too. Not that that is particularly difficult as I get older. I’m sad that some major plot points were spoiled for me on Twitter, but I still enjoyed the whole movie anyway.
Hope you enjoyed all (41) forty one parts of book two, The Ghost of the Dirty Starling, as much as I did writing them. It started out heading one way, and moved around a bit, and was ultimately a fun little novella to write. Maybe now that it’s off my shoulders I will write some one off’s about my dad life experiences. Or not.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
You must be logged in to post a comment.