I know I have a model kit on my work bench at the moment but I’m starting to think about building a small self contained terrain piece. Like a specific set of ruins for a church or temple. I have a couple of good chunks of foam board left, and a whole bunch of air dry clay that I recently recieved. I guess if I can find a brick pattern stamp I could do the flooring aswell inside the terrain piece. Then using industrial adhesive, super glue, and a hot glue gun, I could put it all together pretty quickly. Give me the chance to try properly ruined architecture.
I don’t have any more trees on hand, but I do have grasses, scrub brush, and a few shrubs and flowers. So it’s not like it’ll end up barren looking. I have sand, stone and grout too. I could do something from a desert climate. This is when I wish I had a closet full of rock moulds, plaster, trees, and static grasses & an applicator. Damn!
Half full bags of materials.
I don’t have a whole lot of room left to store stuff, so it’ll need to be shoe box size or smaller. My shelves aren’t that tall, so I can’t make the whole temple or church ruin. I guess it would be more of a diorama piece. Damn. Now I’m excited about it. It’s going to stay on my mind for ages now. But I already bought a new paint series of eight colours for my VF-1 Valkyrie model. I should really complete that first. I should… but.
Box of parts that need to be cut off sprues, and partially assembled before I can prime & paint them.Shoe box sized self contained dungeon.
The other day I had an idea for a new sculpted bust too. So I’m going to need to make a bunch of new bases on the lathe. That takes a day or two as I have to glue up a bunch of Walnut pieces, or find a suitable maple log portion to be turned into fancy rounds. That’s a good way to get my wood working fix in without having to touch a hundred icy cold hand tools. If I use a long enough chunk of wood I can get at least four or five bases out of it. Plus sanding and slicing it up, more sanding and finish. That will satiate a bunch of create pangs I’ve been having.
I think I am slightly more interested in painting my model kit, than the initial (and very important) build up. I need to be more slow and methodical, so that it looks better generally than the last one I constructed a few years ago, and only recently painted. I can see several rough spot where I didn’t cut all of the tabs away. And my build was sloppy. Forgotten pieces, and glued on elements that shifted or fell over entirely. My decal application left much to be desired as well. Yikes.
Previous build up, with recent amateur paint job.
Plus a new larger paid project came in so I can’t jump on any of this stuff right away until the majority of my day job projects are well under way. Glad for the work though. So now I just have more time to day dream about my hobbies before I actually start any side projects. Not to worry. Once I’m in a comfortable spot with my open design jobs, I can pick up a brush, nippers, or a file and chip away at all of this stuff. Plus somewhere in the middle I will find the time to play guitar/bass and the keyboard songs I know. Sometimes I think I have too many hobbies, but they really do add a dash of something extra to my daily life. So not all bad then eh? Right.
I think I’m going to aim for 400 days of blogging, creative writing, and a general sense of nonsense and then reassess. I didn’t really have a plan beyond wanting to do a little writing every day for a year, and well…. now I am beyond that by a slight margin. I don’t have any goals for writing beyond the mere act of doing it. I try to get more concise. To limit run on sentences. To be more coherent in general. I’d actually need to reread a portion of last years posts to see if I managed to achieve any of those things. So, I’ll go out on a limb and I will say, sorta, kinda, maybe?
I do use this medium to moan, and lament about daily struggles and annoyances. But believe you me, I don’t have it too bad. I’m doing just fine. I could do with slightly better gut health, but otherwise, we’re all good. I just love to narrate a good gripe, every now and again. For those at home keeping score, I have Domestic Duties Monday’s, which sometimes gets bumped to Tuesday. I occasionally do movie reviews. Mostly if they are awful, or evoke some type of emotional response from me. Rage being a perfectly reasonable response to write about.
Rarely, I will cover retro gaming with my kids. As I have access to a Sega Master System, PS1, Nintendo 64, Super NES, Atari game system, Xbox , and an Xbox 360. So for older games we got you covered! I had kids so the PS4 & PS5 sailed right by me without waving. So nothing more recent than late stage 360 games get reviewed here.
I sometimes cover wood working projects, home DIY items, and my own spin on sculpting monster/creature busts and figures. I don’t recall ever discussing my music tastes, or instruments, but I can if I felt like it. I have taken to assembling an instrument stock pile, so that my kids have access should the mood take them. Key board, guitars, possibly drums, a violin, and a clarinet. Maybe we’ll form a family band just for kicks to keep ourselves occupied in the future. Who knows.
I just feel like I want to quit dreaming about things, and just go do them, regardless of being an awful noob and all. I don’t need to be any good, I just want to do the things, and experience them first hand, instead of watching others do the thing on YouTube. Perhaps building a new skill, or just preparing the way for my kids to learn, and do new things too. No point being miserable doing only what others expect of you. That way lies madness, depression and misery.
So in short, I don’t know how much longer I plan to keep going on a daily basis, but whatever I do, it’ll be more of the same. With the caveat that I might stumble upon a good short story theme or character, and then light up this phone with new installments. Fingers crossed. Ciao Bella!
That’s it, game over, today is the last day of my 365 day writing challenge. Obstacles met and over come. Bam! Something about apples….
But seriously, it’s a big day for what amounted to a difficult task. We had power outages, illnesses, trips, travels, and heavy work days that made this a real barn burner of a challenge. But I got through it all. Wow!
But now what? Maybe I go the whole Calendar year? that adds what, an additional seventeen days? Not bad. Maybe I can break the 200,000 word mark? I thought i just might do it, but I got to around 185,000. So close enough, I think.
So what’s on the docket today. I think I’ll do a double header and will begin my year in review of the wood working projects I built this year. There are several, so settle in. I made furniture, jigs, objects, and some pretty random items to be certain. I did at one point have the list in chronological order, but that list has gone into the ether, so now i’ll just have to randomly talk about the things as I recall them. No don’t worry, it’s not off of the top of my head, I did spend some time the other night writing them all down – again. Just not in any order beyond what i could remember first.
For my sister in-laws baby shower I made two new Cedar newel posts for my in-laws house. As I recall those were about 8.25″ square, and about 2″ high. I painted them white, and they are still affixed to the front exterior stairs. For the new rabbit Butter Scotch, I made two rabbit houses, one was a 13″ square, the other was smaller to fit into the reserve cage at the cottage. In September I used dowel construction to build a Pine display unit for my kids toys, and for them to play dolls on. My youngest has since etched her name into the top with a black ball point pen. I made a rather tall end table to display things in, that was Walnut & Ash. I made a tapering jig for the legs, so that counts as another build item too. I made a Hickory & Ash end Table / coffee table with slatted shelves. That currently sits in our basement and has not been attacked by either child as of this time. After several long years I completed the last 80% of the Ash screen door, that went up prior to my wife’s birthday party in early June. Has not collapsed or fallen off it’s hinges as of this time of reporting. Ha. I used a bunch of scrap wood to build a cubby system for all of my drills, drivers, heat gun, and staple guns, pin nailers etc… It was more shop infrastructure, than anything else. Much like the wheelie cart for my planer & jointer. It isn’t much to look at, style wise, but it’s sturdy and easy to move around in the confined space of my shop. I took some time to try to see if I could build a proper floating shelf drawer out of Walnut. It has a blue felt pad on the interior, and has remained fairly square since I built it. That also taught me not to use Wax on Walnut, as it clouded over almost immediately, so now I use the wax only on non visible portions to lubricate drawer slides and moving parts under jigs etc etc… For the farm orchard I built a scrap wood bench, that was four feet long, and a foot wide, and about fourteen inches tall. My wife, and my mother in law wanted some place to sit when watching the kids down at the farm when they go tree climbing, or apple picking. It weathered the Dericho wind storm and stayed put, also remained upright, when trees fell, and the silos were mostly ruptured. Go me! At the cottage I refinished an old iron & wood bench. Sanded it down, and put two or three coats of tan stain on it. That was done in about a day, less than that, late one afternoon in August. On the lathe I turned down some Walnut bases for some sculptures, namely my Hellboy bust and the cruddy looking great ape I made where I botched the nose terribly. I also turned down a handle for the screen door out of Maple from our tree out front. In the shop I built two peg boards, a Dado jib, the aforementioned tapering jig, and a 45 Degree cutting jig, plus a smaller tenoning jig that I used on my Pine Display Unit. In the way of metal work, I built a router sled flattening jig out of angle iron and nuts and bolts, doing the cutting with my angle grinder and a cut off wheel. That was pretty loud, and thrilling. Didn’t set fire to anything, so that was a major plus. I built a whole slew of Ash chisel caddy’s that hang on the wall. I built two toy boxes, one large one out of Pine, soon to get caster wheels, and a smaller one out of Cedar for my little ones bedroom. And last on the list is the Air brush caddy I made for all my paints, mask and the air brush compressor unit. That feels like just about everything that I made this year. If I remember anything else, I’ll be sure to mention it. I have posted photos for many of these items in previous posts throughout the year, so i won’t bore you with more at this point. Just kidding. Here they are in no discernable order. Also, just realized I made a massive Ash charcuterie board this year too. Duh!?! Can’t believe I forgot about that, I only see it 8n the kitchen every single day.
That wraps up the build portion. On to THE BOOKS! This year my goal was to read twelve of them. Sometimes I waste precious hours scrolling twitter when I could just as easily read a book, so try as I might to resist the sirens song of doom scrolling, I often did, rather than read. So I’m a bit short. I gave up on the Grapes of Wrath about half way through. But I do know I will go back to it. It was just starting to lag a bit back in August. Also the last book, Carl Sagan’s about the Demon Haunted World, is good, but I’m not sure if I’ll actually complete it before 12:01am on December 31st, or a few days into January. Here is the list of what I read this year.
The twelve books of 2022.
This year I found Adrian Tchaikovsky and read four of his novels. I have a fifth ready to go as a Christmas present. I also have a Mary Robinette Kowal book to open aswell. I am anxiously awaiting any new Lady Astronuat books she might put out. Also if Martha Wells could pump out two Murderbot books per year I’d be very happy about that as well. I will also pursue more of Don Winslow’s books in the coming years, as Man on fire was really good. I don’t typically do crime drama, but it was compelling and easy to read. More of that please. I was more than happy to find a Robert J Sawyer book I hadn’t yet read in the Oppenheimer faux history. That was really great too. I, like many others, have been waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish the last damnable book of the Fire and Ice Series, so I’ll drop fifty sixty bucks on that hard cover whenever it comes out. Not to forget the fun romp that was John Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society. That was a pleasant read last spring. I’ll have my eye out for any of his new releases aswell. I see that Fart Quest has book four out. I’ll order that for my birthday come Spring time. That’s a really beautifully illustrated series that turns on D&D charm, and general fantasy tropes. Meant for kids and pre-teens but I get a kick out of it just the same.
Not much else to say. Had an email from a client whom I did work for late last year, looking to pick up where we left off, and that’s about as great a recco as I would like to get. Repeat happy customers that come back year after year. If you could only see my grin.
So this is it. The big Kahuna. Once I press send the challenge is complete! Wishing you all well. Those who followed along playing the home game. I don’t think I’ll stop just yet. I’ll aim for New Year’s Eve. Put another 17vseconds on the clock ref, I have a few plays left in me to go. Ciao Bella! Love you all.
Due to a recent COVID-19 infection that has debilitated an elderly member of our family we are faced with having to place said family member in an LTC that has round the clock emergency care capabilities. And let me too you that shit don’t come cheap. What’s worse is it feels as though they are only too happy to nickel and dime you for every available humanizing perk you might wish your elderly family member to have & enjoy. For the base rate of $9000.00 / month, your family member gets one shower/bath per week, but daily sponge baths in their hospital bed. A bed you pay them $4000.00 for up front, which includes a wheel chair, due to Covid stealing our family members mobility. It’s fucking horrendous. There is more to it, but as it stands we’re looking at around $9900.00 per month for her care, unless she needs any other additional perks or resources which they are only too happy to provide at additional cost. Ludicrous. Fucking vultures, the lot of them. No wonder Dougie, Harper and Harris are so in love with protecting these private corporations. They’re so gods be damned lucrative. Fuck me. I really had no clue. Oh, if you wanna go into one of those cheap ones you have to sign over all of your assets. House, car, vacation properties, stocks bonds and the like. Robbery. It’s a cluster fuck of heinous highway robbery. I’m so mad I could spit fire. Jesus h crimony.
On a lighter note I just built myself an airbrush paint/primer/mini compressor caddy that I can reach from a sitting position from my desk, or can have on the table top surface with me. If you watch Tested, you’ll see where I got my general idea from.
Next up is the spray booth, cowl I want to trap over spray so that I don’t ruin my walls, or other items in my office/studio space. I’m not totally sold on it needing a vacuum port, but an open cell foam backing seems like a useful thing to have in it. Just has to be wide enough to fit my Lazy Susan inside it, and give me 13 inches of clearance above the stand itself. Big but small. I have to keep it in the closet, but I want it to work for 95% of my bust sculptures to be painted, and an occasional full figure when I pluck up the courage to do more full bodied subjects. It’s a fine balancing act. As I’m sure you are all aware.
I need to eat. Also I have a botched gorilla bust in the oven baking. I was using materials I did not like, so I bunged it in the oven to be done with it. No fun fighting with it, so at least it will be finished soonish. I can always add more to fix the eyes & face and rebake it if I absolutely had too. Ciao Bella!
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!
I have come across this time and again, in everything from sculpting, drawing, and wood working right through to cooking and writing short blurbs daily. When you can afford to not give a shit about the end product, and focus solely on the process and the actual ‘doing’ of the thing, stuff tends to fall into place after a while. It’s not fool proof, and mastery is never guaranteed (not that I seek mastery of any one thing anyway.) If you can fall in love, or at least in-line with the process you can usually achieve a fairly high standard in that medium once you really start to apply yourself, and add in a little reflection or introspection about how you operate within the process, and how you’ve come to understand the process. Mayhaps, like myself, you achieve better results though you make the wrong choices. Enough of them that they cancel out and you get a little better at the thing you work at inspite of yourself, or your failings, and short comings.
I do love to watch YouTube videos about the hobbies I have, and I tell myself I’m learning about it as I watch others ‘do the thing’. I have, learned a thing or two, but mostly it’s an escape from working and learning deeper about the process of whatever I’m attempting. Videos aren’t bad, there is a tonne of noise and needless entertainment there, but don’t get carried away. You will certainly learn more by just going and ‘doing the thing’. A morale boost is great if that keeps you going. But try not to mire yourself in a YouTube video rabbit hole, you’ll loose hours of your time that way.
I’m no expert, and this is solely based on my personal anecdotal experiences. Your experiences may differ – greatly – from mine own. But that’s ok. We’re not all one size fits all.
In alternate news I had put my workout regimen on hold for five to six weeks this summer, which I now regret. I was creeping closer to 200lbs, getting under 2 bills was my goal, and I was roughly three pounds from it, but now I’m back to being about 10lbs from my goal. Ideally I’d reach 185lbs, but I think that will require not just a shift in picking up weights regularly, but fundamentally eating better. I’d rather run, cycle, swim and lift weights every day than go back to a veggie heavy diet. Wreaks havoc with my insides. My ulcerated bowel does not enjoy excess roughage, like at all. Too much dairy in a day – forget about it. It’s a tricky see-saw balance act. But in the end I’d like to work towards being under 200 lbs again. I need to revisit my plan. Perhaps to back to two a days with the weights, and add in more lunges, squats, sit-ups, and push ups. Like everything else. It’s not about perfect, but doing some of it, everyday, even if it’s ugly and unrefined. Ha. Yes, unrefined is a great way to view myself in a workout session. Just look at how skewed my sunglasses are. Unrefined fits me well. Ha!
Now I need to have breakfast and get ready to start my work day clock. Ciao Bella!
The one that started out being about turning two book matched Hickory slabs into one monolithic water fall edged table, with a fat & chunky Ash leg on the opposite end. Then I pulled the slabs out from storage and the small one was perfect, and the show piece was cracked in three so badly it snapped in my hands. So new idea. A smaller coffee table using one live edge slab as the top, and the broken pieces of the other as the legs. Then I hated the live edge aspect, and cut it down into a more traditional rectangle. Chopped the Ash chunk into four legs, and decided it was a boring blob of a thing. So I cut skirting, and then I thought, what if I use a Dado to inset the skirting on the interior side of all four legs. After that I figured I should add a drawer that was shallow, and use the skirting to hold up and slide the drawer out, rather than metal drawer slides. Much cheaper option too. Then I thought, well the drawer is so shallow I could build a slatted shelf about 6″ up from the bottom of the legs. I looked at my available raw materials and saw I had to go front to back with six slats rather than across the width. I was hoping to make it look and feel longer by running the open slats across the longer axis, but materials dictated I go otherwise. Not angry. My last vestiges of doubt were on just doing a clear coat vs staining with Danish Oil with a Walnut Tint. I don’t like the bleached look of Ash, so tinted stain we go! Now once all of this dries I will clear coat with a Varathane brand Diamond spray finish from a rattle can.
I did my glue up in stages to try to offset my amateur hand cut mortises. The tenons I did on the table saw, so I knew they were as good as I could get those. I hand chiseled out a few other odds and ends, but the bulk was done via circular saw on a track, and my Rigid 4512 Table saw. This was the first time I’ve ever used a bow tie to stop a crack. That took some doing, but I don’t hate the end result. I used a flush cut saw to trim off the bulk of the bow tie that sat proud of the table top. Finessed some other over hanging bits with the flush cut saw as well.
Come the fall, I would like to purchase either one long slab or two matching from the same species and actually try a waterfall edge coffee table. I opted for my electric hand planer, and manual hand planes to finish the top surface. I built a router jig out of angle iron to try to flatten the surface of my slabs, but I haven’t yet built the rails/ Saw horses it is meant to stack on top of. I have it ready for next time.
It’s not perfect by any way, shape or form, but I’m slowly getting better at whatever I’m playing at. Should look fine at the cottage or in the basement with my first ever coffee table build from years ago.
Table build progression from raw materials to stained end product. Clear coat finish not shown.
The freezer works, now a little too well. Instead of reading zero, it’s at minus six, which means the vents have iced up all the way through, which makes the fridge portion hot as it has no cold air coming into it. I tried scraping the ice off, not very effective, as I can’t tell how deep the ice goes back into the vents. I tried hot water on the vents, but that made a mess. So next steps are to unplug the whole thing for forty five minutes to help the unit reset itself. Or I attempt to defrost the freezer portion, or… gulp. Hire a repairman to fix it for us if parts are readily available. Bah hum bug!
In other news the sculpture got a really solid head start yesterday. I have the torso, abdomen, legs and feet on, plus both arms down to the wrist. No head yet, or hands. I haven’t given much thought to the shell yet either. Or how I will get it to attach to the main body. The shell will be 75% tinfoil and masking tape, so I think I can reasonably contain the overall weight for that portion of the free standing sculpture. I don’t know if it will be any good, but why let fear of sucking stop me eh? Never has before. There is no confidence like that of a mediocre man! Give’r!
I have some finer hand cuts to make on my table build and that should mostly finish up the structural portion of the project. Then on to sanding for the foreseeable future. Top surface, four legs, three sides of the skirt/rails, drawer front, drawer panel, cross braces, inset slats, and the internal drawer dividers. Plus I need to stain the drawer panel, and then wax the panel edges, and the internal rails so it pulls in and out smoothly without catching, or snagging. I hope to avoid racking this way too, but I’m no craftsman. This way also meant I didn’t have to buy drawer slides, which are expensive. To have those on here, I’d need much wider skirting, which would reduce the space on the shelf, if I could even have one at that point. Maybe a larger Walnut drawer would have been a nice touch. Or if I’d cut more Hickory strips I could have glued up a wider panel to do the same floating drawer. Maybe when I build a waterfall edge coffee table I’ll add a deeper Walnut drawer to it for storage. If I can afford a darker hard wood to use that is.
My family is on day six of their journey out west. They are currently in Alberta where they will receive upwards of 100mm of rain today and tomorrow. Not a trip through the mountains that I’d want to do in such heavy rain. I don’t envy them much. Manitoba and Saskatchewan were less than impressive if I were to go by what my mother wrote. Flat & empty. Sounds like no fun at all.
I wonder if the fridge went bad after the 26 hrs power outage, because I’ve never had this particular issue before. Mind you the fridge is almost twelve years old now. Hopefully we can remedy it ourselves as inexpensively as possible. This is not my area of expertise. Down right terrifying.
But now it’s time for something a little different. I’ve been tasked with building two new replacement newel posts for my FIL. The current ones have rotten over the two decades since they were installed, so I’m hoping that the two new Cedar ones I’m making as replacements hold up just as long or longer. I will prime them in thick white oil based exterior paint, so I hope that helps.
My conundrum is that I have two slightly different pieces of trim, enough to do one newel post cap each. Do I do them in similar but not the same trim (which I have on hand, and is therefore free) or do I go buy a full length so they both match, but it’ll cost me money to do so. Hmm. The problem with being cheap/frugal is you gotta be ok with things being eclectic, or slightly off and not at all matchy-matchy. It’s for an exterior entrance that nobody ever uses, so I think I can get away with it. The Cedar I bought for a Christmas gift for my BIL where in I didn’t need all 8 lengths, just seven of them to complete my signage gifts. So the cost was sunk in another project. I think I have answered my own question.
My wrist is aflame from yesterdays mad rush of 182 images, with an additional 74 this morning. I am done on my end, awaiting review and any change orders or additional requests. Glad for the work. It made Friday fly by without any fuss. Our holiday plans changed on us by way of “The ‘Vid” so we are searching for a way to remedy that in the near future. Oh well.
Still no new progress on my childrens book. I might shelve it for the time being. Mind you, I still have five more weeks of school days in which to pick it back up before schools out for summer and my minions are home full time for 9 weeks. Then I will get very little done by way of hobbies. But I will accomplish paid work, don’t you worry about that. I think I have one or two reports coming for the summer and one more for the fall. Not terrible, not great. I hope for more than that. Or some extra can labels, t-shirts & apparel, retail signage, catalogue work or build from the ground up branding/packaging work in the alcoholic beverage space.
Though, maybe I should stop chasing the nostalgia of my alcoholic beverage packaging days. Rose coloured glasses and all that jazz. I once had the opportunity to build, from scratch a proprietary glass bottle, and it was looking amazing, but the job was put on hold during a personnel issue inside the brewery/distillery and I never got to see the design go to market. We had built a series of eight flavoured cans too for a Mimosa project, well ahead of the curve, but that got stopped too. Much to my chagrin. It was good work on my part, and that of the brand team. I was very upset to see it go nowhere.
When the leaves are out on the trees and the blooms are all as colourful as ever. A slight sheen of rain on the grass, and a shine on the rustling leaves in the breeze. A quiet morning, rich with the scent of damp earth and wet pavement. The slight crunch of grit on the asphalt as you walk about your day. Peaceful and serene.
It is Thursday, and I haven’t put any work into my childrens book in about seven or more days now. I think on it some times, but not enough to move forward with it. I have three backgrounds left to paint, and then the characters left to populate the scenes. It all feels oddly disjointed, but that’s how things are these days. I am slowly coming to terms with building over days, weeks and months, rather than rushing to complete a task in a day. I have to actively stop myself when I feel that draw to rush ahead, move faster, just “get it done”. Not that by being slower I’m getting closer to perfect. I just don’t want to take short cuts because I feel pressed for time. Take the time I need to complete the task properly. Not just to get it finished.
The screen door is now built and assembled. I need to measure and cut my hinge slots. Do the same for the frame where it will reside, and then hang it up for good. I pre cut some internal trim, to keep out bugs and such, and have a latch to attach, but I am otherwise very close to done.
I started to cut strips for my kitchen window screen as well, so that is progressing along side the door. The window is a combination of Cedar and Walnut. An odd combination, to be sure, but one that will hold up over time, I hope! These will be mitered and require a little more finesse than the bulky, chunky Ash door, that is outward facing. Thus, not seen as much as the kitchen window over our sink.
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