It doesn’t feel very good, and the effects last for several days. Zero stars, do not reccomend. Also, hold whatever your hammering a few inches lower than where you plan to strike, and most of all, I can’t stress this part enough, pay attention when you commit to a hearty swing. So lessons hard fought and won in situ. If you wanna get frisky ping yourself with a cast iron frying pan. At least then you can tell your friends you are a mage. I cast iron!
Getting dirty to create something for the future.
Things are in motion, and projects are coming along nicely. The door is dry fitted and I can see a path to the finish line. It’s not going to come together exactly how I had envisioned it, but it’ll work out in the end. Not just for me, but for the kids and whole family. Got a bit dusty, dirty and grimy in the process, but we’re building towards a better future at this house. So I’ll take it.
Taking an easier day today after whacking my off hand with a hammer the other day. The wrist is a tad swollen, and it aches vaguely off and on. Just glad I didn’t damage the tenons I was pounding on to get the door dry fit together. That would have upset me, no, enraged me to no end if I had done so.
Which reminds me, I really need to get my mower tuned up for the season, and start cutting the grass. Oil change, filter clean, spark plug brushed off, and new gas put in, along with a blade sharpening. Lots to do for Saturday.
Busy working on the screen door today.
I have (for me) what I would consider a reasonable dry fit for the outer frame of the screen door. It’ll need a wedge or two to fill gaps, but it holds up, and is somewhat square-ish. So I measured out the tenons and mortise for the center brace, marked them on blue tape, and used a forstner bit to hog out as much of the meat as I could. I used a multitool to cut straight lines through the center so I could hammer out some substantial chunks, and now I’m going at it with a mallet and chisel to clean back to my scores lines. Maybe I’ll try a dry fit of all five pieces today, or maybe not. Once I start to rush, this will collapse in on itself. So slow moving it is.
I have lots of trim I need to mill up to sandwich in the mesh, plus wedges for gaps to make. Then wood filler, sanding, rounding over edges. Glue up and then more sanding, then primer and paint. Plus hinges need to be cut out of one long side, and the door frame where it’ll all hang. Then I have to put the door stop inner frame up so it won’t swing inwards and wedge shut. Hooks, push plate, handles and all sorts of hardware has to be fitted to it too. I can see this going on for another week if I do it correctly. Which would be nice for a change.
So in all, a good day today. Sunny and bright weather. I need to eat breakfast soonish though. Then on to illustrations for my book. I have six backgrounds left to go, and then character drawings to populate those backgrounds.
Is it really Wed-NES-day all ready!?!
Where has the time gone? Oh right, sick child, yep, that’ll do it. But a great nights sleep, nose cleared up, and no major coughing fits, and a negative cheek/tongue/throat/nose swabs says back to school with you! Plus it’s Star Wars day at school, they had new Grogu shirts that they really wanted to show off, so all for the best.
I’m hitting up my book illustrations, and doing some minor story editing, to clean up the story a bit. Next I’ll head out to the garage to work on my door. I do have to watch the time as I get jab #4 today. Right in the middle of the day. But I won’t let that stop me. Maybe. Possibly. I’ll try not to dwell on it, nor forget it entirely. Both are bad options. As for the illustrations I found some new brushes, that feel pretty good. There are 40 of them, so will definitely not use them all on this project. But good to know I have them lying around.
Still plucking away at dry fitting my door tenons. It’s slow going, but I think it will ultimately be rewarding? I hope. And not a total cock up / mess.
May the 4th be with you! And the 5th with you also.
Yet more non-Covid illness in the house.
Just what we’ve all been waiting for after two years of being sequestered apart, the new mingling is bringing back all the other bugs, one right after the other through the schools. Not a real great place to be right now. At least it’s not Covid. Thankfully. Coughing fits and vomit aside.
Birthday party season is going full tilt, so a fair chunk of my weekends will be devoted to that until the end of June, and school ends. Yay! Back to buying gifts and standing around with parents making small talk for 2 hours at a time. My favourite. Not a fan of trying to guess what gift other people’s kids will like. I know our kids are laser focused on specific items, so no clue what their friends go ape for.
24/2 kid watch day two, so no work on either my book or the wood working projects again today. No biggie. I hope that by moving slowly and trying to be methodical about it will end with a better product for both items, door & illustrated book. But in either case I can fill in the cracks and gaps to make it better once I’m 99% done with the heavy lifting. “Hide those wood working crimes”, should be the name of my next non-fiction collection of short stories.
I had a quip for this exact thing, now where did I put it? Must be somewhere safe.
Had intentions of working on the door and book today, but child two has taken to coughing with a runny nose – again. So all projects around the house, or in the hobby space are to be placed in hold. Great. Was just getting into both projects, and potentially starting a new sculpt, but the kids health and well being takes precedence. Perhaps it was too much outdoor strenuous activity this weekend. Masking up only does so much for the under fives with zero vaccinations for Covid. C’est la vie.
So cuddles, movies, reading and workbooks is the order of the day, along with stretches of bed rest. Propped up bed rest at that to hinder the back slide of phlegm to the lungs making them cough. Medicine to the rescue. And lots of bed rest, steam and fluids to drink.
Last night I had thought of something really funny to mention, which I did not write down, of course. And yet again, I’m left racking my brain to think of what it was. Perhaps it’ll come to me later on today when I think about other things for a while.
Oh, if anyone wants the collected short stories in pdf, you can email/comment and I’ll send you either Book One, Book Two or both. Until I get book two listed on Amazon Kindle Unlimited with the first one. Cheers!
What a busy day it was, yesterday.
Took the kids for a two hour play at the Tree Top Trekking village, which they loved thoroughly, and I was able to participate and enjoy the obstacle course aswell, even masked up. Then we had a big group lunch where they played for another hour or so, all told it was four hours of fun from start to finish.
After a brief rest at home we finally got to meet our newest nephew outside, while masking up to protect the 7 day old newborn. Can’t be too careful! He’s a sleepy cutie pie, who didn’t make a sound. The kids were enthralled by him, though my youngest got bored of the baby lump action and went for an hour long trampoline jump-a-thon to stay busy in the warm and welcome sunshine.
I need to go do a smaller grocery shop in a few minutes, so I’ll cut this short. Much as I predicted, I have done nothing with my illustrated book this weekend. I did build an armature for my next sculpture. I finished off my other bust a day or two ago. Trying to bring the memory back to my hands. I think I’ll either do a ninja turtle in Super Sculpey or a Killer Croc bust. I have several clay ninja turtles, but nothing in ceramics, or polymer clay which you bake to harden. But I’ve never done a DC’s Killer Croc before. Might be fun to try something outside the usual for me.
I have made headway on my screen door build. I put the dado blades on my table saw for the first time, ever. And made the tenons for my three cross braces of the door. It’s a very tight press fit, so I’m shaving them down a touch so it won’t shatter or explode from the stress. I see a lot of wood filler, sanding, additional planing and painting in my future. I had hoped to stain the door, but my prowess with wood is low, so thick primer to cover my various failings it’ll be! Gotta love it. I’m glad I got over my fear of the dado blade set up. Cut like a hot knife through butter. Better than I’d have done with a hand saw or my tiny Skil bandsaw. Which is a glorified scroll saw at this point. Not good for anything more than .5″ thick hard woods. My doors are 2″ thick, and 4″ wide. So the Skil bandsaw isn’t really an option.
I will most likely need to mill up more thin strips to line the inside panels of the screen doors, so I can sandwich the stapled on mesh material. So I have a fair few steps left to go. Plus I still need to drill and chisel out the mortise for the center cross brace. But the tenons are shorter, so I don’t have as much to dig out, hopefully. I’m definitely going to need to pin the top and bottom braces in place with dowels to not have to rely solely on the press fit and glue holding. I have a handle, push plate, and hook latch to add after it’s all sanded & painted. Plus I’ll be cutting in the hinge plates to the side of the door, and the frame at the back out the house. Maybe a router jig would be better for that? Not too sure. I have weather stripping for the door to butt up against so it won’t swing inwards and get wedged in place. Good lord I hope this all works out. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this door these last few years! Bah! At least at this point I’m spending time and not money on the project. Happy Lazy Sunday to you all.
Yet another Saturday morning birthday party…
Tis the season for outdoor Saturday morning private birthday parties in public spaces. At least it’s not the Rolling Thunder baloney in Ottawa this week(end). Could be worse. Going to venture out for some Tree Top Trekking with both kiddies. Should be a fun time for all involved. Looking forward to having to squeeze myself through the course to rescue a terrified or stuck child forty feet up in the air in a nylon netting prison. Should play out a few times over the course of two plus hours.
I don’t plan to work on my children’s book this weekend. Too frantic with the whole family home. Especially since it doesn’t have a due date, or any kind of financial backing behind it, or infront of it for that matter. A passion project, just because. Just wait until I record an instrumental guitar album, Woah Nelly! Will that suck! But it’ll be a whole lotta fun to do it though! Spend a weekend pretending to be a rock star while playing and recording just for shits & giggles. A great mini vacation from reality. Like space camp, and baseball camp is for “those” adults right. But done at home, and you can laugh at the end product.
Except without destroying a hotel room, or doing a bunch of coke. Dress like a schmuck and play various instruments loudly for two days straight. Would make a fantastic weekend. I think so.
Everybody needs a good catch phrase nowadays.
Something short and catchy. That John Malecki guy has “Let us spray” & “Get squirrely”, and many other Youtubers and tv personalities have theirs. I need one of my own. Like “Here’s looking at you kid” or “Cowabunga!” Or maybe something a little more niche like “Nice grin shit teeth”, you know. Something universal. That everyone can get behind. I am however, at a loss for words.
I have been prepping book two to go up on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. Which involves copying it all over to a Word doc. Formatting for a smaller page size, adding a table of contents for all of the chapter headings, and making it bookmark able/ready/enabled. Something like that. I have the series cover artwork done up, to be in line with the first book. So that’s all well and good.
I have at least eight backgrounds illustrated for my childrens book. Some of which I really like, and others I will need to redo. Tried my hand a designing my lead characters, and not getting very far with that still. Oh well, not a big deal. There are far worse problems to have in life beyond not having a grasp on your two lead characters design.
It is at times like this where I feel as though I should never have stopped drawing with pen and paper. I enjoyed that so much as a kid, teen and early adult. It wasn’t until a couple of years into doing graphic design full time that I stopped. I gave up on drawing and painting too. I kept wanting my design work to feel like pen & paint, which wasn’t what I was paid to do, so I dropped it to get better with doing art with a mouse. I have stacks of canvas from paintings I’ve done over the years. So good, some bad, mostly derivative of other better artists. Had fun doing them though, which was what mattered to me. Now I kinda kick myself for letting “the touch” go. Add another daily thing to the list. Writing, exercising, and a daily doodle. Add in some guitar/piano/sculpting/wood working, and I have a pretty full day before I’ve even done any paid work! Ha. To think I’d like to do some leather working and sewing too, if I can swing it. Building model kits too. Playing with my kids is a big one. Teaching them sports and dance and music. I’m all over the place. I get that, I really do.
So here we are, on a Friday morning. The sun is shining, and we have a few days of nicer weather to look forward to. Glad to have it.
Looks as though the plan is working.
Every single day, for an undetermined amount of time I put some work into my childrens book, and thus far it seems to be paying off. I have the whole layout done. The type is set in place, the cover & Title design is done, and I have started to produce artwork for the internal pages.
This is way more work than just writing stuff. I knew it would be, but sweet cheese. I still have a lot to do. The bonus is, that I am making headway after more than a year of putting it off. Much like my short story series I don’t believe this will bring me any sort of fame or fortune. I just wanted to do it, so I am. In my own way. No need to be hood at it, just trying things out, striking items off of the bucket list. It’s actually fairly rewarding in an internalized, intrinsic way. Good enough for me.
My thinking for the books interior pages is this, I will build out all of the colorful backgrounds first, as I’m enjoying the painting process in Photoshop right now. Though I wish my tablet was still supported, but it crashes everything when I plug it in, so mouse painting it is for now. Then I’ll have to settle on the design for my two lead characters, and some peripheral materials. But that’s a decision for future me to wrangle with, not present time me.
Still working out every single day. I used one skip it day, when my back was really jammed up, so I’ll take that 24 hours of no weights, or body weight exercises as a small win. As I came right back too it, instead of three months from now. I might even ride my bike today. Or I’ll shape up the hedge rows in the yard. Or continue to line the curbs. Cutting away all of the over hanging mess along the far side of the property.
Trying to stay busy, and focused on getting things done around here while I can. More outdoor birthday parties coming up, so saving things for the weekend weather gets harder to do, when I loose prime sunny working hours. No matter. All good here. Stay strong, we’re all ready at Thursday! Yay!
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 
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