It’s hard to believe, but our little boy turned one year old this week!
We had a little get-together in the backyard with a bunch of his baby/kid friends on Sunday, a couple days before his actual birthday.
I think he enjoyed it thoroughly.
The birthday boy.
Nicki, my mom, Anna, and I all collaborated on making this awesome owl cake. It’s got dried pineapple slices for eyes, chopped chocolate for wings, two cashews for a beak, and a bunch of slivered almond “feathers” (that took a while). It turned out really well I think! Of course, Milo didn’t eat this cake. We made him his very own oat flour/applesauce/apple juice cake.
Here he is having his first bites.
I think he liked it!
The owl cake was a hit, especially with the kids.
My mom was in town for the week, and Anna was pretty happy about that. They went on a lot of walks together, and Anna made Grandma play “baby” a lot. Grandma did a good job of wearing her out most days.
Nicki took the day off for Milo’s birthday, so we spent the morning opening presents. Anna helped him of course. We didn’t get too many pictures of the process…this all happened before breakfast and you can see Anna rolling around on the ground in the background. Still, Milo and Anna had some fun opening presents. His grandpa Newman made him this great wooden dog with moving legs and feet and everything, wish I wish we had gotten a better picture of…
Nicki sewed him this cute little owl, and my mom helped Anna stuff it and sew it shut. Anna liked the stuffing part, but kind of lost steam with the sewing, so my mom finished it up.
In keeping with tradition, we also got him his first drum. We got Anna a drum as her first birthday gift, and she really liked it. Milo has been a drummer at heart since day 1, so it was a pretty easy choice to get him one. Anna and I went to the local music shop and picked him out a good one. He’s pretty excited about it as you can see.
For the rest of his birthday, we took Milo on a few short hikes out in the gorge. We saw the big log jam at Oneonta Gorge, hiked up to the top of Horsetail FAlls, and had a picnic by Wahkeena Falls.
I walked Anna across the stream at Oneonta Gorge. The water is still icy cold.
Nicki and Milo at the bottom of Horsetail Falls.
Nicki knew about this great picnic spot across the road from Wahkeena Falls. It’s tucked away from the road, and I think most people don’t really know it’s there. We had this great big shady park all to ourselves. We spread out our blanket and had a very nice picnic, and then spent another hour or so running around the park, climbing on trees, etc.
And that’s the story of Milo’s first birthday!
Here’s a little video of him playing with another of his presents…a riding toy, which I can’t figure out quite what to call. It looks like it wants to be called a tricycle, I want to call it a tricycle, but it’s got four wheels. He’s really liking it, whatever it is! You can also hear how much he’s talking these days, and how close he seems to be to walking. The little boy is growing up fast!
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a chance to put up any posts from my guitar and mandolin projects for the year. The main reason, in the interest of cutting to the chase, is that for a couple of months there I had almost no motivation whatsoever to work on them (thankfully, my lack of motivation coincided precisely with a complete and utter lack of time, so I suppose I could blame it on that). I suppose it was just one of those things, as with any creative pursuit, that just happens periodically. I had a couple minor setbacks with both projects, and it was just enough to make me get to feeling lazy and uninspired about it.
That said though, this past Saturday I had the opportunity to witness and participate in something very special that nearly instantaneously had me excited about building again. It was an auction of the tonewood collection of the late John Sullivan. John was a very well known and respected luthier here in Portland, who passed away a couple of years ago. I never got a chance to meet him, unfortunately, and I didn’t really become acquainted with his work until I started in to building myself. Still, in the past few years as I’ve become more familiar with his work, and as I came to discover that I’ve been hearing his instruments for years in the hands of several of my favorite musicians, he’s become somewhat of an inspiration to me. So it was pretty exciting to find out, late last week, that an auction was being held to sell some of the wood that he had collected over the years.
It turned out the auction was being held right around the corner from our house at the old Day Music building. I rode the bike down there not knowing quite what to expect. It turned out to be an intimate affair. Most of the builder-types there, maybe 20 or so of them, seemed to know each other. There were also a handful of musicians there playing, several of them playing instruments that John had built. I met John’s wife and she was very friendly, introducing me to some people and eventually helping me find a few pieces of wood I could afford. I had my eye on some red spruce mandolin tops, but they were all in lots of 10, and even though I tried to talk myself into it, I couldn’t put down the cash for the whole box. In the end they decided to take the wood that hadn’t sold and split up the big boxes so I was able to buy a few individual pieces.
Here is what I ended up getting. One red spruce mandolin top, three old one-piece sitka spruce mandolin/violin tops, and three red spruce flat top guitar tops.
Here’s a close up of one of those one-piece sitka tops. The wood is really dark, so I think it was split quite a while ago. John had marked it out with a template for a viola, as it’s a good sized piece. I don’t know that I’ll ever try my hand at a viola, but you never know. This would make a great mandolin top as well.
Another view of that same piece. By the time all was said and done I had spent several hours there at the auction, checking out wood, talking to and meeting other builders, listening to music etc. It was great. Plus, having this connection, however tenuous, to a luthier who’s work I really look up to and respect has been the catalyst I needed to get me inspired to want to get back into the shop. I loaded up my little stack of wood in the bike trailer, buckled it in, and rode home with little wedges of spruce clanging around like marimba bars at every bump. I’m sure I won’t get an opportunity to build with any of this wood for a while, but when I do finally get a chance, I hope I can do them some justice.
So with my newfound inspiration, I spent a little time last night getting the shop all cleaned up and organized (the first step I always seem to need to take prior to any big push of work, plus I needed to make room for the new wood). After I had everything pretty well back in its place, I laid everything out and took stock of where I was at on both projects. Anna’s guitar is really fairly far along. I stopped just prior to doing the binding, because one of the pieces of binding I was going to use ended up breaking right in the middle. The body is all glued up though, and the neck is roughly carved. I’ll probably try to get the neck all finished up, then do the binding and the fretboard.
The mandolin project has really been challenging. I’ve got the neck mostly finished, though the scroll work is going to need a lot of sanding. I’ve got both the top and back plates carved on the outside, but haven’t started shaping the insides yet. There is still a lot of carving work to be done. I tried my hand at bending the sides, but it didn’t go very well. I know I just need to just get some new sides cut and keep trying until I get it right, but it was so frustrating the first time. Wood just doesn’t like to bend like that. Still, it’ll happen in time.
For now, it’s summertime and I’d be kidding myself if I thought I’d be spending a bunch of time working on any instrument projects. But if I can manage a night or two a week it’ll be enough to keep me practiced, and learning, and excited, and I guess that’s what it’s really all about anyway.
