Stouffville, Ontario Canada (647) 962-1997 gwstudios@rogers.com M-F 8:30am - 2:30pm & 8:00pm - 11:00pm

I’ve got a bust in the oven.

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The downstairs apartment oven that is, because Sculpey smells a bit when you bake it. Have all the windows open in the basement, and two exhaust fans running full tilt. Won’t smell for long. On the bright side it isn’t a lingering noxious smell, so that’s nice. Once my Hellboy bust is cooked, he can come out of the oven around 6:00pm, after cooling down inside the oven for a few hours. Fingers crossed for no major cracks or after the fact calamities. This will round out the year at Six sculptures. I can’t recall if the two Sammie Slimes I made for my kids was this year or last year? There was snow on the ground, so could have been January or February of this year. I don’t know, the time it all runs together in a bit of a muddle now.

Today started off with a pow. Last of the pumpkin order was delivered to the school for their fall fair. Got a price list off for review. And another brochure out the door, with only a minor tweak kind, so nothing major. Plus I downloaded photo sets and logos for a new report coming soonish. Got the document set up and ready to roll once I get my data sheet. Have the aforementioned bust in the oven, pumpkins out of my hair, and some laundry washed and hung up in the kids closets. A real banger of a Monday. I’ll sort the rest of the washing shortly. Eating my breakfast now, forgot about it as I came in the door after drop off. Even managed to pump up the vehicle tire prior to leaving the house this morning. Oh I need to call about a doctor’s appointment. Nice catch! See you around town. Ciao Bella!

Timing is everything.

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You know what really sucks, having a great idea or an amazing opportunity present itself at a time when you can’t act on it or do a damn thing about it. That really sucks. It’s like having an amazing idea for a story in your dreams but waking up and not being able to recall any part of it all all. Or getting an offer for a piece of equipment you desperately need when you’re committed to going away, and are heading out the door as you get the notification. D’oh! Damn. Double damn!

There are worse things, of course, but that kind of thing can really rankle. Although if you have time on your side you can sidle up to things you want at really random times. You might even stumble into a fantastic opportunity by just being somewhere at a useful time. Time. Such a funny, fickle thing. It can kill you, if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, or lift you up if you’re in the right place at the right time, or toy with you with right place wrong time, or right time at the wrong place, and seeing incredible things pass you by.

Just an awkward thought I was having while washing my kids Taekwon do outfit, and finding a new, huge stain that the machine has put there. I’ve tried three washes, at three temperatures, with pre-treatment, and stain removers, and no such luck getting rid of it as of yet. Such is life.

Was it something I wrote?

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Not gonna lie, big shock to see the amount of traffic that came by here yesterday. Nice to see, but just goes to show I have no idea what anybody likes, or enjoys about my blog posts. Though: I will say this, anything to do with wood working will get at least a handful of views. Maybe not the day of, but eventually it will. That much I know. So, there is that.

I don’t have any immediate wood shop plans, except to make myself a smallish air brush painting cowl, that I can wrap in plastic, and run a vacuum out the back to trap any overspray. I don’t think the build will be very interesting, or complicated, so I don’t,  as of yet, plan to document it. The reason for the build is that I finally broke down and ordered specific air brush paints. So instead of painting into a cardboard box, like I used to do, I’ll make a sturdier wooden box, lined in plastic, and with a plastic hose adapter embedded in it to contain the mists. It’ll be covered by an open cell foam pad to soak up particles, that can be replaced. But I don’t forsee myself suddenly becoming a painter of many things. I have my busts to do, and a few miniatures laying around to finish up, and then it’ll sit in the closet for a long while. Actually I bought Fantasy Series Two from a kickstarter that hasn’t released yet, so when those 200 models show up, the air brush & cowl will get some serious use. I call it a cowl because it’s so small, and not quite a full booth. Semantics I suppose. Cowl sounds cooler than spray booth to my ears.

On the sculpted bust front my Hellboy is coming along. Trying to take my time with this one. I had done an interesting bust of him several years ago, which I was hoping to recreate, but the armature was incorrect, so now I’m doing just a head and neck version. It’s a work in progress, and still needs a fair amount of work. Like reshaping the planes of the face, smoothing, texturing, adding hair and a pony tail. Pores and veins, and whatever else that can make this as high quality as I can manage right now.

It still seems oddly flat in the face, so I think the planes are off. Probably needs to be drawn more front to back, from nose to mandible. I need to consult my physiology reference books to see where I went wrong. But it looks like an angry guy with horn nubs on his forehead, so I have that going for me. The red Sculpey feels more like oil clay, which while icky, feels like a return to Chavant. I dig it. Now I wish I had bought more of it. It was like $10 cheaper than any kind of Super Sculpey. And that’s something that I can really get behind.

Already have some work lined up for this week, which is always good to know. That’s it for now. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!

If I followed the stats…

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Then yesterday was a dog shit day for viewership/readership numbers. Interesting. I still have no clear idea what “brings all the boys to the yard” as it were, but I certainly didn’t have whatever “It” is in yesterday’s post. Though I will say this, on the whole a post with at least one photo usually does ok, for me, that is. But that photo is usually placed within the post, and not a cover image (unless it’s a short story). Yeah – so I have no idea what turns people’s heads or makes them sit up and take notice. I don’t intend to try and formulate a metric of things to tick off in order to garner more readers though. That sounds like it would suck all of the fun out of the process. Chasing stats has never, ever been fun. Talk about turning something fun into an Excel Spreadsheet time vampire of dreariness. Shoot from the hip, keep it loose, and aim at the broad side of whatever barn you like.

We took a brief family car ride to the Richmond Hill Go station last evening for their Halloween light show. It was pretty good. Tuned in to a radio station for spooky music. Had a photo op station with candy for the kids. And one ticket let’s you drive through twice. Which we did. It was about 30 minutes of lights, music & fun. A great time. Also if you search Facebook you can find codes for 50% off the ticket price. So a bargain! Here’s a few images from the event.

I have the kids at an indoor play park (masked obvs) and we’ll be here for at least an hour, possibly two if I can help it. Tire the kids out, and get our money’s worth from the entrance fee. Laugh out loud to the rescue on a cool, rain soaked Saturday morning. I even have some time to myself to both read and do some writing. Also answer the kids questions when they run on by to check in. Life is good, even if the quality of my writing isn’t.

I also broke down and ordered myself some air brush paints for my baked bust sculpts. I am currently working through a bust of Hellboy. Trying to take my time with this one. I have two very svelte looking Walnut bases I am looking to display with a quality hand made item on top. Once the clear coat went on the other day the Walnut absolutely just POPPED! Bam! So, I want to display them front & centre. Also I shaped them on the lathe, so I’d like to highlight that feature as well, once they are completely finished. I was going to do a copy of this Don Lemon bronze Viking bust I love, but then the red sculpey was shouting for Hellboy instead. I can’t fault it, red is red. Do someone red with the red stuff, not rocket science.

If you are wondering what I am reading, it is “Shards of Earth” by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I’m little more than 100 pages in, and it seems pretty good. Aliens, war, destruction, abject fear. It’s all there. I bought the second book too. That’ll be four of his books I’ve read this year. Next year the last book of the Portiid series comes out, so I’ll nab that one too once released.

I think that keeps us all up to date. The rains have started up again, so I’m going to go back to reading & watching my kids get dizzy on a mini tea cup ride inside the park. Ciao Bella!

Friday, friday, fri-yay!

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Wasn’t there a terrible song about Friday’s written and performed by some music executives tween child about a decade back? Oh, fun memories. Can you believe it is the fourteenth already, holy shit. This month is just a zooming on by! What a wizzer! Phfoom! Aaaand it’s gone. Can’t forget about Halloween on the way to Christmas!

Having to really think about whether we’ll wait until after remembrance day this year to put up our Christmas Tree & exterior lights. I think that if I get a nice day between Nov 1st and 11th, I’ll just go ahead and do the outside lights. I dislike putting them up in heavier winds and near freezing rains. Plus i need to check the downspouts and it’s better on a drier day for that sort of mucky business.

I took a turn on my Record brand wood lathe recently to turn a few small Walnut bases for my sculptures. Unfortunately I had already put my finished items onto permanent wooden blocks, so that means I need to do some new things to fill them up. But not just new. New and good. The Walnut, after a clear coat looks pretty top notch. So I don’t wish to waste them on generic, run of the mill silliness. I’d like a slightly higher quality bust to go one or two of them. There is no time line for these, so I can have them ready at some point next year. Though I have the bug right now, and the finger tip sensitivity you build up when you really start going again. So if I can manage it, I’ll keep going rather than wait until after another long hiatus.

I picked up some regular sculpey and it’s so sticky & oily it feels more like the soft wax clay I was using. It’s kinda nice. Could do without the dye being left on my hands, but it spreads like oil based clay, and tools nicely. If I can keep myself from rushing, or growing impatient I might make something reasonable this time around. Maybe? Maybe not. It’s just a hobby man, don’t over think it. Be present in the moment. Remember the things you’ve learned along the way, and use the reference materials you have!

The farm ran a little light on pumpkins this year. The July to mid August drought was rough on the patch. Still got a good few, but not the teaming masses of them from years previous. Need to grab some for my kids school, but it has rained a bunch and I don’t fancy slogging through all that much to grab twenty pumpkins. Hopefully we get a clear day this weekend, and I’ll grab them then.

Not much else to say, except the fridge looks to be going off – again. Not sure what the deal is there. Must have been more moisture in it than I could see, as it kicked off some ice while the fucking thing was empty. So. Yeah. Fun times. Ciao Bella!

Changing interests.

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I have spent a great deal of time, over the last three years watching people build & make things on YouTube. Everything from home remodels, to hand made furniture, slab tables and machining. I would like to think that attempting much of this would be fun. Not that I’d be any good at it, but rather to experience it first hand, noise, smells and all. I never cared much for machining as a kid, though my father did it as a tool & die maker, thus a skilled tradesman, before moving into consulting and being a bridge between the shop floor, and the white coat techies and their sales staff. Now I wish I had access to some machining tools of my own, and an ear to bend to help figure things out. I would have had a riot of a time getting some furniture building tips from either of my grandfathers. Both of whom passed away before I even thought about doing it myself. They made chairs and tables in England, before and after the second world war, of which only one grand father had to take part. I myself had a brief stint in wood shop at school for several semesters, built some sets for a university play I was in, and then worked in a cabinet makers shop for a few months making antiques repairs, and milling up baseboards and trim for twelve hours a day, and cleaning up saw dust endlessly. So the wood shop wasn’t totally foreign to me, but I didn’t know I was going to fall for it this hard.

Now that there is no way to get it, I’d really appreciate their hard won expertise (my grandfather’s more so than the German cabinet maker). They could have sat, tea in hand, and pointed and watched as I worked on projects, chiding me for silly mistakes, or making corrections to my order of operations. Those are things I could really go for now. But alas, the furniture makers are more than a decade dead now. No video or hand books left behind of things they’d learned or wanted to pass along. I do have a hand made T square from my Grandpa Holyome. A dense hardwood straight edge he fashioned. Which I use fairly often. I’m not Mr Precise, so it works wonders on eye balled projects. I have properly machined tools too, but those I bought, they weren’t built by my family decades ago. A life time ago now.

When I get to thinking about all of that lost experience and knowledge I feel a little sad. What do they say now, like tears in the rain, or a breath on the wind. Gone.

I’m sure there were some small but strategically important hints or tweaks to techniques that would have gone a long way to improving my skills which they might have shared with me. Not only that, but to have made better memories with them. In all honesty, if they weren’t dead, they’d still be in England, on a six hour time difference. Not living next door or just up the road from me. And they’d both be in their mid nineties by now, anywhere from 94-98 years of age. But the fantasy was, nimble of mind, comfortably close at hand, teaching as we went. Cup of tea to keep them comfortable. Oh well. C’est le vie.

Of course I forgot about crossing Day 300.

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Talk about consistency eh? Was so angered by the refrigerator acting up for the fourth time I totally spaced on crossing day 300 of my writing challenge. Which is a milestone for sure. Perhaps when I get into the whole self indulgent year in review mood, I’ll get a final word count for every single post over the 365 days. What do we think the total will be? My early guess will be around 250,000 words for the year. Nothing too insane, given I wrote about 100,000 for my second book in the early part of the year.

I have definitely not been anywhere near as consistent with my working out, but I’m still working on that. I need to find some additional exercises to do in order to keep things fresh and add a hint of fun. Or, now hear me out here, make it more exciting. Standing still while using dumbbells is not a thought that inspires me to action. Though I feel better now after doing it more often than not. I do miss my olympic lifting sessions. I just don’t have the room for a squat rack, full complement of bumper plates, bars, and kettle bells, and essentially a full box gym. Which is a shame. But that’s the reality. I also don’t want to pay to join a gym I won’t go to as much as the expense would demand. Wah-wah-wah. I get how this all sounds.

With the recent big clear out of the shed, by sending the pergola to the cottage, and gifting our Barbie Corvette power wheels vehicle to my niece I was able to move all four bicycles out of the garage and into the shed. You can now move freely inside the garage for the first time in many months. I took some time during our holiday weekend at home to rearrange some elements in the garage. Giving me the ability to make some longer cuts on the table saw before I have to rotate the whole saw in the space for really long cuts. Or anything over four and a half feet long. Which is pretty rare for me. I work in the two to three foot long space most often. When I build boxes and end table and such, I keep my projects on the smaller side. As much as I would love to, I just don’t know if I could do a whole dining room table build. Would get awful tight in the space I have. I’m thinking on whether I could replace my radial arm saw by getting a larger and more robust sliding double compound mitre saw. One with a twelve inch saw blade to it. I’m hearing conflicting reports about the veracity of that statement, but I think a chunky well made mitre saw would do what I need, and save me even more floor slash wall space. I need to somehow regain some assembly space, which I don’t currently have. I don’t like having to leave partially assembled bits on my work bench if I still have more building left to do. And constantly moving things between the bench, the floor, or the table saw top is a hassle. Again, more whining. But, in this case I am doing something about it, albeit slowly. Piece by piece over months or years. Playing the long game here with this one folks.

The youngest is home under the weather again. I think she’s pulled a groin muscle after tripping on a dining room chair, falling at the park, and falling over at school all within a 48 hour period. Then swimming for two hours last night to aggravate it. So she’s doped up with kids Tylenol for the ache, and is watching the Spongebob movie for the hundredth time. On the plus side her cough is settling down again. She’s self contained, bundled in bed with drink & snacks. Which means I’m able to work, glad I’m not as busy as the last four weeks had been. Stay well out there. Ciao Bella!

Went looking for paint and bought…

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More Super Sculpey instead. Air brush paint in particular was what I was looking for. I guess the next stop is a games workshop or some such like that. To see if they stock anything that I can run through my airbrush without having to thin it down at all. Not a major sticking point if I don’t pick any air brush paint up though. I have plenty of acrylic to brush it on like usual.

On the up side, more clay! Yay! Not that I need to go crazy this year. I can save some for the winter when everything gets real slow around here. As much as I enjoy painting my sculpts, it’s not exactly something I am talented at. I do enjoy both the building and the painting of my pieces. I think I’d rather be known for sculpting rather than the painting if I had my way. Not that either is likely at any point soon. Ha.

Went looking for balsa wood too while I was out to the craft store. Nothing there, like at all. I wonder why? Glad I’m not trying to build any new terrain otherwise that would put a real damper on my mood/build. Should look through my storage closet and see if I have any of my own left. I know I have foam core, and card stock left over. That stuff I saw when we were prepping our photos for the Markham Fair photography department. Have tooth picks, tongue depressers, and popsicle sticks out the wazoo though. Handy for building docks or a wharf for a future build. Always wanted to build a seaside fishing town with various strange buildings. That, and twenty other things. Ha.

This gods be damned fridge.

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Day after the big feast of roast beast and this damnable freezer has flash frozen over yet again. Guess putting one package of frozen burgers in it on Saturday evening was a step too far. Fucking thing. Now I really need to get a tech out here to look at it, see what’s going on with it. Or – the dreaded “or”, we have to think about replacing this twelve year old refrigerator. Not terribly happy about the thought of that, but some things can’t be helped.

Otherwise, yesterday’s big meal went over ok. Tasted good, didn’t create any undue gastric distress in anyone. Which is a massive plus in my book. Also I attempted roasted potatoes for the first time, and they were pretty damn good. A nice crunch, with fluffy interiors. The dusting of vegetable flavouring was right on the money. I could have done without the 4 straight hours of stress & worry, but it all came together, and I had it on the table for 6:00pm. So mission accomplished!

The day before we managed to get a whole lot done too. Leaves, grass, tree pruning, halloween decorations up on the house. Kids helped as much as they could. I pulled up the finished Glad bulbs, and pruned back all of the dead weeping heart in the yard. I moved a juvenile Oak tree, which I hope doesn’t kill it. It grew in so close to the stone walk way I had trouble grabbing as much of the tap root as I would have liked. But it couldn’t stay where it was. If it dies, it dies I guess. I have acorns to plant if I have too. The squirrels dug up & ate all of my black walnuts, so no hope of those growing here any time soon. Although it’s nearly time that I could go get more pods from the farm. Rather than buy slabs, I’ll grow my own! Only takes 25 years. Ha. Talk about long range planning.

Made some changes in the shop too. Tore down an old water damaged set of drawers. Kept the top two intact, and cut the rest off. Put the newly shorted, and undamaged portion under a work bench to store saw blades and lathe bits nice and close at hand. Kept all of the drawer slides and screws, then broke down all that crappy chip board ready for garbage day. I can now make a 4.5 ft cut without having to move my table saw. A real boon! I used to have to move it to do more than 2 ft. Which was a hassle. Plus, should I ever get around to buying a bigger bandsaw I now have a spot along the wall for it. But that is likely years away. Given the state of our refrigerator, water softener (which runs too much) & water heater (that fills a bucket with water every week from the overflow valve). A big tool purchase is a no go until all that gets sorted. Oh well. Not a huge deal.

I keep thinking about my radial arm saw. I think I could get rid of it, if I upgraded my mitre saw station to a sliding double compound saw. I don’t put a dado blade on the radial arm saw, I just use it to cut down overly wide boards, as it can handle 16 inches in width. A solid 12″ sliding compound miter saw would do nearly that without too much issue. And I could regain some additional floor & wall space in the shop. Wishful thinking perhaps.

In other less exciting news, I did the bulk of our laundry yesterday too, so I’m not planning on doing much of anything today. Had a sleep in until almost 9:00am, so that was a welcome rest after yesterday’s stressful afternoon. Not going to be much of a banger of a Domestic Duties Monday, but I will take a rest when I can get one. Oh yeah, we also got out to vote early on Saturday. One plus to not going up north for the long weekend. That, and no holiday traffic with kids in tow.

All the best to you and yours on this holiday monday. Ciao Bella!

Gah! The gravy!

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I didn’t even think about it until just now. Can I substitute in some Swiss Chalet dipping sauce from a pouch into the mix? Kids won’t touch gravy anyway, so no love lost there if it’s missing. But the wife and I will be looking for it with both eyes open. So update to plan. Once turkey comes out to rest, I put the heat up for potatoes, and immediately do the stuffing. Clean that pan, and use it for gravy. Small mix up, but something we can bounce back from!

I can’t believe I didn’t even twig to it until now. Wowzers. Now let us pray I don’t over cook / undercook this turkey breast lump and do us all in!

About 2 hrs left, or there abouts until show time. Feeling anxious, having a hard time sitting down. Pacing the kitchen waiting, watching, and planning out my timing. Found out the dinner rolls too. But, alas my dear friends, no carrots this year. Boiled then drizzled in brown sugar & butter. Oh my! I’ll miss them!