Hi everyone. I wanted to post some pictures from our fun memorial day adventures, but realized that we had a bunch of other photos I haven’t put up yet so I’ll post a bunch of them real quick-like here.
For one thing, we had a really nice Mother’s Day brunch here at our place with a bunch of friends and food. I never did get any pictures of that though, as our camera was (and is) on the fritz. We’ve since borrowed a camera and have been using that as a backup until we get around to sorting out our camera woes, but no pictures of the fun Mother’s Day brunch (if anyone has any good ones feel free to email some over!).
A couple weeks ago, Nicki’s friend Michelle came out and stayed with us, and for part of her trip Nicki took her and the kids out to the coast.
They went to Beverly beach, outside of Newport, OR, and stayed in a yurt. To hear Anna tell it, it sounded like a fun time.
They also went to the aquarium.
It rained torrents the first night they were gone, but then they had some sunshine, and I think they spent some time beachcombing…
…which is starting to be one of Anna’s favorite pastimes.
I had some free time in town, and a day off from work so I started building a fence for our front yard. I did the bulk of the hard work in one long day. Dug all the holes and got all the material. I dd the bulk of the actual cutting of the rails and setting the posts over the course of the next two days. It was a pretty fun project all in all.
It came out looking pretty good too. Everyone really likes the fence. I mean everyone. People stop their cars and yell out “nice fence!”. The UPS man says nice fence. The mail man. The neighbor kids. Random pedestrians. All like the fence. It’s a pretty nice fence. It really ties the yard together.
Anna was pretty happy to have Michelle to hang out with. They spent several sunny afternoons painting in the backyard. Anna would get covered in paint and then run through the sprinkler to wash off.
Milo has been enjoying the nice weather.
We made some popsicles and he and Anna have been enjoying them on these warm late spring afternoons.
This past weekend we went on quite an adventure. I had some more free Mariner’s tickets from work, so we drove up to Seattle for the game. It being Memorial Day weekend we decided to make a full weekend out of it and stop and visit some friends nearby as well. The game was fun. We got out of town late and traffic being what it is on Friday before Memorial Day, we pulled into Seattle with less than an hour before game time. Still the kids did great, made it through to the seventh inning stretch, and then we headed out. The game ended up going to 12 innings, and the M’s pulled it off in the end.
Next morning we headed out early. We had reservations on a 12:00 ferry leaving from the south tip of Whidbey Island across the sound to Port Townsend. We left early with the hopes of finding a nice bakery or something on the island, and having a leisurely morning with plenty of time to catch the ferry. The kids slept while we drove, but woke up as we came into Oak Harbor. We inquired about a local bakery, but were told that there wasn’t really anything in town. The kids were getting restless and the situation was getting tense, so we pulled off the street at random and came across this beautiful little city park. We played and climbed on these big old oak trees for a while and then proceeded on.
Our last hope for sustenance before we hit the ferry terminal was the idyllic town of Coupeville, WA, where we were told there was a nice little place to get fresh bread. When we got there we noticed the locals were all setting up for a parade.
Here’s it is, the “knead and feed” in coupeville. Stop there if you are ever in the neighborhood. We got coffee and scones and a loaf of fresh wheat bread that was really great. We ate quickly. We only had a little bitof time to catch our ferry, and we wanted to catch a little bit of the parade.
The parade! It was really cool. We watched the first few cars go by and then we headed for the car because we were really cutting it close to be in time to catch the ferry. We got the kids into the car and started to head back out of town…except…that…the only road out of town had a huge parade going down the middle of it.
So we were trapped, and on some level we resigned ourselves to missing the ferry. We watched the whole parade which got done just in time for us to almost, but not quite, make the ferry. Oh well.
Thankfully, this particular ferry terminal was in a state park with a pretty nice beach right at the loading area. We killed an hour and a half pretty quickly just laying on the beach goofing off.
Waiting for the ferry.
Milo waiting for the ferry.
Milo climbing on some driftwood while waiting for the ferry. The boy is getting strong and adventurous.
The ferry came and we zipped across the channel in about 20 minutes or so. It was a nice ride, and a beautiful day.
Here’s a view of Port Townsend from the ferry as it pulled in. Our friends Owen and Molly and their new baby Fern live near Port Townsend and we stopped in to see them.
Here’s Anna and Milo meeting Fern.
We spent the rest of our weekend camped out in nearby Fort Flagler state park, hanging out, and checking out the local beaches. Anna really liked these beaches with their coarse sand and tons of shells. As we were walking to the beach, she would generally walk up until the very first hint of any sand or shells, then immediately sit down, take off her hat and shoes and start filling them up with sand. That was as far as she ever made it most of the time.
She did like to venture down to the water occasionally though.
We took one last walk on the beach Monday morning and said our goodbyes to our friends. A great end to a great trip (thanks Owen and Molly!)
It was one of those rare trips that was just so nice on so many levels, and that was made all the more interesting and fun because of the weird unplanned setbacks. I think we could have stayed an extra week or two up there on the peninsula. (And maybe we should have, because then we got stuck in a 10 or 15 mile long back up on 101 heading south which slowed us to a crawl for over an hour with the car running on fumes and nearly overheating…but I’m trying to forget that part of the trip.)
Well, I think that catches you up on our adventures of late. Next weekend we are off to…you guessed it, the beach! This time with Anna’s school. Should be fun. Then we will rest…or work in the garden or something.
Well it seems I haven’t updated the blog in forever again. I’ve got somewhat of an excuse this time…our camera just went on the fritz and we’ve had all of our pictures locked up on the memory card with no good way to get them off. I finally broke down and bought a cheap little card reader so we could get the pictures off, but it looks like we’re without a camera for a while again…
Recently we’ve been working at some pretty big garden/yard projects. We dug up the scraggly shrubs that have been planted in front of our house, tilled up a bunch of the grass and started in on a sketched out vision of what we hope our front yard will one day look like. We’ve been throwing around ideas since we bought the place, but we had been waiting until the exterior painting was done before moving forward with anything. We brought in a bunch of soil and laid out a big front bed and a perimeter of plantable space around the entire front yard. Our plan is to put up a half size fence like a split rail around the whole yard and one day to have all or most of the yard in plants.
We got a really nice bunch of native plants for the front bed. Red flowering currants, snowberry, clustered rose, kinnickinnick, and wild strawberries.
This picture doesn’t do it much justice at all, but it’s about how things look right now. We got two apple trees and a dwarf fig tree which you can see at the right of the photo. You can see the soil we laid out along the future fenceline. The idea is to have the herb garden moved to the southwest corner, and to hopefully fit one more larger tree at the northwest corner of the yard. The fence will really make the yard a lot more defined and will be really nice…when I finally get around to designing/building it.
We also constructed a ramshackle planting bed from a bunch of old bricks and rounds of wood that have been taking up space in our driveway for years. It turned out pretty good. We just tonight went over to our friend Sally’s house and picked up some wayward raspberry canes that had escaped their planting box. We brought about 10 little plants home and stuck them in the ground. With any luck, by about this time next year we’ll be rolling in raspberries!
In the midst of our big landscaping/gardening adventures I had a birthday. Turned 32. It was fun. The most exciting part was that we took a trip out to an awesome native plant nursery (Bosky Dell), and we spent a nice morning browsing plants and scheming up what could work with our plan. I also ran into an old friend/classmate from my botany days at Portland State, which was pretty cool, and we ended up getting a great tour of the property from the woman who owns the nursery. Had some friends over for a nice dinner and Nicki and I even went out later that night. This picture is of Anna posing next to my birthday presents. She has made it known that she must participate in the opening of any present no matter what.
Anna’s school had a mayday party/potluck that was a lot of fun. Anna had been singing the songs for weeks, and was pretty excited for it.
We also went to Westwind, our annual pilgrimage to the coast for a weekend of cooking and camping and music and all kinds of other stuff. You can read back in the archives about past years if you got the notion. Nicki and I have been going for 6 years I think…this was Anna’s 4th year, and Milo’s 1st. We always rendevous at the Otis Cafe before heading in to Westwind, and you should too if you ever get out that way.
Anna was very excited for Westwind, and was in her element pretty much the whole time.
She made good friends with Pete another friend of ours who was out there with the kitchen crew.
One popular game was making “cupcakes” by filling her shoes with sand over and over.
Milo liked playing in the sand too, but we had a tough time keeping it out of his mouth.
Walking to the beach with our homemade kite.
Digging on the beach.
On Anna’s first or second year we took a really cute picture of her sitting at the window in the main lodge looking out at the ocean with her reflection in the window. We were trying to recreate it with Anna and Milo, but it proved difficult. This one just seemed funny.
Nicki and Anna took a long walk on the beach on Saturday. The weather was supposed to be all wind and rain, but it was really pretty nice the whole weekend.
Lots of beach time for Anna.
Anna was also wanting to do her share in the kitchen. She likes to cut butter at home when we make biscuits, so she was pretty happy to be given the butter cutting job.
And here’s one rare shot we actually managed to get of (nearly) the whole kitchen crew. Working hard making salad rolls for dinner Saturday night.
Unfortunately, this was where our camera suddenly stopped working, so we didn’t get any more pictures the rest of the weekend. The lens is stuck out and won’t move. It’s the exact same thing that happened to our last camera, and apparently is a common problem with that make/model of camera. It’s out of warranty, so I’m going to try and see what I can do to fix it, but more than likely we’ll be looking for another camera sometime soon. Until then, here’s a video we took of Anna running circles around the Westwind lodge while a little impromptu band plays in the background. Enjoy!
I just downloaded 220 or more pictures off the camera. I think they’ve been on there pretty much since the last time I updated the blog. Here’s a few of the best ones…
This was way back in late March. Nicki took Anna and Milo on a picnic to Woodstock Park.
Coming home from the picnic. Anna wanted to try and share the stroller with Milo. Looks like they figured out a way to make it work.
Another sunny day in late March. Anna getting a chance to take her bike for a spin in the sunshine.
A few days later we were here: Jawbone Flats, OR. Population 5 or so (and a few dogs). This is an old mining town located in what is now the Opal Creek Ancient Forest Preserve in the Oregon Cascades. It’s one of the few (as I understand it) lower-elevation stands of real old-growth western hemlock forest left in the state. The forest was preserved in the late 1980′s/early 1990′s by the friends of Opal Creek who from what I understand underwent a pretty difficult legislative battle to get the stand of forest preserved. Some more of the story can be found here.
I used to come to Opal Creek with a Forest Ecology class back in the early part of the century (heh). Nicki and I also made a few trips up there on our own over the years. Now some friends of ours are involved with the Friends of Opal Creek, and they invited us to come visit them. They live up there year round, including all winter long doing stuff like keeping the hydroelectric system running, shoveling snow off roofs, fun stuff like that. I think they got snowed in for several weeks this year. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want their job, but I think I’ve romanticized it somewhat…it look like hard work.
The snow had started to melt when we got there, but by the next morning several inches had fallen. No sound but the roar of the creek(s).
Some remnants from Jawbone’s heyday I imagine.
We got a few nice walks in during the snow.
Here’s a short video of Anna on a walk we took down the entrance road. It was sunny when we left, then it snowed, then it rained. Earlier in the day it had snowed half a foot, by afternoon it was gone. Spring in the Cascade mountains.
This past week my parents were in town. Anna and Milo sure enjoyed having their grandparents around, and I think the feeling was mutual.
For one thing we had a few days of perfect spring weather. We took the opportunity to get out in the yard and set to getting our garden spaces in order. We needed to move the chickens to make way for our spring garden, and our future garden expansion plans. The chickens couldn’t have been happier, as they are now thoroughly enjoying their new patch of grass.
Anna helped out a little bit. In the end though, she ended up wanting to play inside, so she went inside and set up some hugely elaborate game in the living room while we all worked in the yard. You could tell she was happy to have the whole house to herself and to be left alone to do her own thing. We were taking turns going in to check on her, and pretty soon when she heard the sound of someone coming in the back door, she started just yelling out “I’m fine!”.
We got a lot done in 2 short days of work. Got the whole chicken coop and fence moved and a big garden of spring veggies planted. When it starts to get a little warmer, we’ll plant the summer stuff in the other remaining half of the garden, and then we’ll fill in late summer and fall/winter crops as the spring stuff starts to die off. As much work as it is to move the coop and fence, it’s definitely worth it because the chickens make such good garden bed preparers.
The weather turned a bit to the cooler, rainier side for the rest of grandma and grandpa’s visit, and as a result we weren’t out and about taking pictures as much. One of the days I was at work, everyone else went on this hike up in Forest Park.
We all dyed easter eggs Saturday night, and they turned out great this year. We used a bunch of yellow onion skins for the red dye, red cabbage for blue, and watercress and turmeric for yellow. We let them sit out overnight, the colors came through really well. Grandma and grandpa flew back early Sunday morning, so we had to do our morning egg hunt without them. Nicki had made Anna and Milo little easter baskets with a few special treats and handmade gifts, and they were both pretty excited.
Well, that wraps up the photo tour. Hope all’s well with you wherever you might be.
Well I’m finally getting around to downloading our photos for the past month or so. I know that at least a few of you people who read the blog have told me that you check in regularly, and end up waiting and waiting for new posts. Trust me I feel your pain. I evensometimes check in to see if there’s a new post up yet. Just haven’t been making the time for it like I used to I guess. Still, we’ve been keeping busy as usual.
We had Nicki’s folks here for a nice week long visit, and somehow ended up taking exactly one picture the whole time they were here. It’s a good one thankfully. We had a really nice time and Anna and Milo certainly enjoyed their time with Grandma and Grandpa. Anna in particular enjoyed having two new playmates to introduce all of her games to.
We’ve been back at the park quite a bit, enjoying the nice (and not-so-nice) spring weather. Nicki took a bunch of nice photos of the kids one day.
Anna and Milo on the swingset.
Milo really digs the swings.
Anna likes ‘em too.
We recently roasted the world’s largest squash. It was from our CSA..not sure the variety. It was sort of turban shaped, and barely fit in the oven cut in half. It was delicious.
Anna’s friend Nora is in town from Montana for a few days. We went to a party this past Saturday and they had a lot of fun together. There were tons of boys as usual, so Anna was pretty excited to have a girlfriend in the house.
Action photo.
Jamboree.
Anna’s school class put on a “gnome tea party” yesterday. The kids had helped to sew their felt hats and dye their capes, they’d learned songs and made gnome cakes. Anna had been talking about getting ready for it for weeks. We were instructed to wait in the yard and to let the gnomes come find us. They came out singing and Anna was first out the door.
A gnome photo.
I had to get back to work quickly after the gnome party, but Anna still had her gnome hat and cape on when I got home at the end of the day.
And finally, some somewhat recent footage of Milo crawling for you out-of-towners. This is actually a few weeks old…he’s much quicker now.
I had a feeling the blog was overdue for an update once again, so I’ll put up a few recent photos. I’ve got Milo sleeping in my arms tonight, and typing one-handed, so you’ll have to forgive any typos or stilted dialogue.
We’re still getting used to chasing Milo around the house. He’s been crawling now for a few weeks, and he gets around pretty well now. He’s starting to push up onto hands and feet a lot and also starting to pull himself up onto chairs and things too. He’s pretty happy to be able to get around I think.
He’s been playing the piano some. Bangs on it pretty good.
Another piano shot. He really likes all the instruments, and has a little bouncy kind of dance that he does. Usually he wants to just grab at the guitar and banjo if I’ve got them out, but once in a while he and Anna will just get into doing their own thing and I’ll play for them for 5 or 10 minutes.
He’s eating a little more, but not voraciously like Anna did at his age. We gave him some frozen blueberries the other night. He made some sour/bitter faces for a while but I think he liked them in the end. Mostly I think he likes the texture and being able to eat with his hands.
We’ve had our annual February spring fake out of nice weather. It happens every year without fail. I think we hit 65 or thereabouts for a day or two. We took some walks and were pointing out signs of spring. Sunshine, blue sky, crocuses in bloom, buds opening on trees…it was great.
Walking to the park.
Of course, the rains and cold quickly returned. That’s alright though, we can use the rain and it’s still nice to know that spring is nearly here.
We’ll just find ways to entertain ourselves inside in the meantime. Here’s Milo, apparently pretty happy about sitting in a clothes basket.
Anna building some tall block towers in our windowsill this afternoon.
We’ll that’s all the pictures I have for now…I did want to try and see if I can get a video to upload…trying this new method, which will hopefully be easier and more successful than I’ve been in the past. I chose this video to upload kind of randomly. It’s Milo, not really doing much of anything. I had started filming figuring that something exciting might happen, and then he just got really interested in his toys suddenly and didn’t move for a long time. Still, he gives a couple of big smiles, so it seemed worthy of a post. Hope it works.
Milo is really growing and has hit some huge milestones lately. I’ve been meaning to put together a post for a few weeks, but I was waiting until I got some good pictures or video of all of his fun new tricks. Unfortunately, I think that most of this stuff just isn’t very photographable, so I’ll just put up a few nice photos we’ve gotten recently even if they don’t go along with the story.
Accomplishment #1: Teeth! We’ve been saying for months now that Milo has been teething, but we never saw a hint of any teeth about to pop through. But within the last week his first tooth, one of the bottom middle teeth, finally broke through. It’s neighbor has subsequently broken through also, so we can officially say he has teeth (plural) now. (No picture of the teeth, you can hardly see them…this is a picture of Milo on the lawn in front of Reed College. We had a really nice sunny couple of days last week.)
Accomplishment #2: Crawling! Milo has been getting around somewhat for a while now. He wasn’t actually crawling, but if you set him in the middle of the room, he would somehow scoot and roll himself over to the couch or the edge of the rug pretty quickly. At some point in the last few weeks though, he started really pushing up on his hands and knees and trying to figure out where to go from there. At first he just got frustrated and didn’t really know what to do, then he got the hang of crawling backwards. Now he’s gotten pretty good at crawling backwards will routinely try to crawl himself under the couch or under the chair. He’s just starting to make a few tentative crawls forwards. You would think crawling would be easy to get a picture of, but so far I haven’t gotten a very good one. Here’s Anna scooting herself backwards under the yellow chair after Milo got himself almost all the way under there.
Accomplishment #3″ Talking! Well, this one might be a stretch, but we are convinced that he says “kitty” now. He is still really excited every time he sees Floydie, and always gets a big smile and reaches out with both hands to grab an ear or tail or handful of fur (we’re trying to introduce the concept of “gentle”). He usually sticks to simple, one syallable vocalizations, but several times now I’ve heard him deliberately spit out two syllables like “keh-dee”. sometimes it’s more like “teh-deh”, but still I think the intent is there. It’s kind of one of those gray areas, when do you actually give credit for a first word? I remember we finally agreed at some point that Anna’s first word was “moo”, but I seem to remember thinking there were some other almost-words she was saying right around the same time. The jury may still be out on this one until we get confirmation from a neutral observer, but I’m tempted to say that Milo’s first word is “kitty”.
Accomplishment #4: Waving! Now this one may be the most exciting one for me, because it just feels like such a direct communication. He won’t do it all of the time, but almost always if you give him a wave from across the room, he’ll give you a wave back. He does one of those waves like opening and closing your fist, and always with a big smile. Sometimes he even gets both hands going! It’s a huge thrill.
Well, I had a few other photos of some stuff we’ve been doing lately, but I think I’ll just leave them until next time (hopefully not several weeks from now), and keep this post all about Milo. He’s really becoming his own little person, and its amazing to notice the little ways that he’s changed the dynamic of our family life for the better.
It’s always a bit discouraging when I get around to downloading pictures from the camera and I realize that it’s the end of the month and I haven’t even created a “January” folder for uploading pictures to yet.
It feels like January has gone by in a weird kind of hazy lazy blur. We’ve had snow, floods, and lots of cold and very windy weather. We started a big rearranging project before the holidays and everything is in pretty much the same state of chaos that it was in mid-December. Both the kids have gotten hit with back to back, week-long respiratory something-or-other, and Nicki and I have been pretty much just doing our best to keep the day-to-day stuff of life taken care of.
Still, now that I sit down to reflect on it a bit, a lot of monumental things have been happening around here. Not a lot of photos, but I’ll post a few here.
One sad bit of news, traderjoefish is no longer with us. We discovered that he had died one evening last week. It was really difficult deciding how to tell Anna about it. We didn’t really have any idea what she would think about it. We decided to wait until after school the following day, and then I would mention that traderjoefish had died and then just be ready to field questions. I was nervous. Everything went just fine though. She was very curious, asked a lot of questions, and wanted to see him and everything. I told her we could bury him in the garden so he would help our plants grow next year and she thought that was a pretty good idea.
So, rest in peace traderjoefish. You deserved to be swimming in some tidepool in Thailand, but instead you were in a little plastic aquarium on our kitchen countertop. Weirdest white elephant gift ever, but you were a pretty good fish all in all.
Now with that sad news out of the way, some pretty nice things have been happening as well. Milo has been starting to eat some food. His first taste of anything other than breastmilk and water was actually a fork with sauerkraut juice on it. We took some video of that which was pretty hilarious. That was a few weeks ago though, and since then we’ve tried a few different things. He’s not the voracious eater Anna was though. He turned his nose up at three different kinds of squash, and so far hasn’t been all that fond of pear either. He likes sweet potato though, that’s what he’s eating in this photo.
Despite is not being all that keen on solid foods, he’s still growing like a little weed. He’s sitting up by himself all the time now (though he still topples over every once in a while). Here he’s helping out folding some laundry.
He’s a pretty smiley boy most of the time.
He’s also really close to crawling now. He’s up on all fours quite a bit, but usually ends up scooting himself backwards or flopping down on his stomach in frustration before he can make any forward momentum. Still, he’ll be on the move in no time, which should be a new challenge.
Anna and Milo are still best buddies. She’s got nothing but love for him (unless he’s trying to chew on something of hers, which happens about a hundred times a day), and he spends all day beaming big smiles back at her.
All in all, even a weird lazy January isn’t all that bad with these two to keep things interesting.
Hope this transmission finds you all happy and well. So long for now.
I haven’t had much opportunity to post any updates on my guitar- and mandolin-building projects lately. For good reason I guess, I’m finding it a lot harder to find appropriate times to even get down to the basement to get anything productive done, much less update the blog about it. Usually, the best free time comes when Milo is asleep, but then using the power tools isn’t an option. I’ve taken to planning out a list of cuts I need to make on the bandsaw and things that need sanded (the shop vac is the loudest thing ever), and go down for an hour on a Saturday or Sunday morning and crank it all out as quick as I can. Then I fill in the quiet work of cleaning up the cuts, planing, measuring, hand cutting, gluing etc in 20 minute bursts here and there or in the hours after everyone goes to bed. It works out pretty well.
I’ve been spending most of my time working on Anna’s guitar, mostly because it’s easier because I kind of know what I’m doing. The body mold is very nearly done, I’ve just got to finish making the inside spreader clamps and I’ll be ready to bend the sides.
I’ve got the headblock and tailblock cut too, so I’ll be able to bend the sides and glue up the whole rim assembly pretty quickly.
Several weeks ago I was able to get the top completely finished up. I started by laying out the channels for the rosette I wanted to make. I started this guitar with the notion that I didn’t really want to use premium materials, since it’s intended for a kid, and I fully expect it to get beat up, banged around, dropped etc. I used pretty inexpensive woods, and have kept things pretty simple for the most part. But I really wanted to do an abalone rosette, and I figured this would be a good chance to get some practice doing one. Here I’ve already routed the channels and layed in two thin trips of purfling as a test fit.
And here’s the finished rosette. It came out pretty nice! (Those openings on the left are intentional. They’ll be covered by the neck, and there’s no use wasting beautiful shell underneath the neck). It’s a shame I didn’t take more pictures of the inlaying process. It went pretty smoothly, I’ll definitely want to do a few more though…for practice.
With the rosette inlaid and the soundhole cut I roughed out the bracing, glued it up, and carved the braces. This is my favorite part by far. It goes too quickly. I’m currently trying to decide whether to leave these braces a bit heavy (for stability/strength/resistance to destruction) or trim them down a bit (for potentially more responsive top/better sound). Probably better leave them heavy for this one.
The back bracing is all done too. Wow, I guess I’ve done more than I remembered…should’ve taken more photos.
Since I haven’t been quite ready (or willing) to start on the side bending yet, I’ve also started in on the neck. I’ve cut and glued up the scarf joint at the headstock, and glued up some pieces for the neck heel block. I just need to lay out all the measurements on the blank, rough cut this on the bandsaw, and I’ll be able to start in carving.
Looking forward to doing the bending. I’m planning on doing it by hand with a torch and pipe (old school). I’ll pretty much need to do the mandolin bending that way, so I better practice. Bending guitar sides seems easy by comparison.
Speaking of the mandolin…I’ve made a little progress, but I haven’t been working too hard at it lately.
Several weeks ago I cut most of the templates I will need.
I’ve also cut out and been working on a body mold for the mandolin. This hasn’t been easy, and I’m not sure at this point how well it will work, but I’ll likely give it a shot.
I cut a set of blocks from mahogany, which will form the internal structure of the mandolin, and will be what the bent sides are glued to. I had to put a 1/4″ blade on the bandsaw to cut the scroll and it came out pretty rough (I’ve subsequently learned that most people use an 1/8″ blade). As a result I’ve been filing and sanding away at the inside of the scroll trying to fair out that curve. Unfortunately, as I do that it gets further from matching my template exactly. This may or may not be a big deal, and at this point I could just cut a new block. Or I might just fair out the curve and make that the proprietary shape of my new scroll…we’ll see.
I’ve had better luck with the neck. I’ve trued it up, glued some “ears” to the peghead, for the oversized headstock, and laid out the neck on the neck blank.
I fashioned and installed a cross grain “scroll strengthener” at the peghead scroll location. Now I’m ready to install the ebony peghead veneer.
I’ve also built a crude “sled” for the neck to ride on as the peghead is cut out so that the cut stays parallel to the fretboard. Once the peghead veneer is glued on, I’ll be ready to cut the neck out and carve the neck.
Well, at this rate, the next time I manage to post any updates the instruments will be finished, so be sure to ask me about them in person if you’re interested! Adios.
Thought I’d put up some more photos from the rest of our week of snowbound excitement…
At some point the weather warmed up to the point where a proper snowball could finally be formed, so my mom and I bundled up the kids and set to work building some snowmen in the front yard.
Milo and I tried to make the Worlds Biggest Snowball, but soon realized we’d never get the next one up on top of it.
We salvaged some produce from the bottom of the fridge, found some scarves and hats and voila! Two snowmen (or snowwomen, I’m not sure). Anna had lost interest by that point, so mom and I ended up putting on the finishing touches. We named them at some point…Frosty, and I forget the other one’s name….actually I forget which one was Frosty too.
Sadly, sometime the next day the snowpeople suffered a terrible fate. We like to think that maybe it was natural causes, but now suspect foul play.
Christmas morning. Anna was pretty excited to see what was in her stocking. Milo got this cool wooden rattle and some teething rings…some other things I’m forgetting. Anna got some painter’s tape, a deck of cards, some trail mix, a paper cutting stamp…and probably some other things I’m forgetting.
Later, we sat around the tree and opened presents. Anna made sure to help everyone get their presents open.
I think I mentioned that we had been snowbound and in a craft/project frenzy. Here are some of the fruits of those labors. Some hand-dyed (onion skins) and freezer paper stenciled onesies for Milo (he’s already almost too big for them we’ve found out).
Some hand sewn felt blocks. Nicki and my mom made these and they turned out great (I cut the starfish).
Milo likes them too.
Nicki made Anna this camping-themed skirt, and she and my mom collaborated on this little fabric tent which folds out and has two little people that camp out in it. It’s hard to describe, and I guess this picture doesn’t do it great justice, but it’s pretty neat. Anna is really enjoying it anyway.
This post is getting long but bear with me, I have to tell you about our Boxing Day snowshoeing excursion that almost never came to be. For starters, the road report was saying not to even leave town…they were saying chains required from Troutdale all the way out to Cascade Locks. The sun was shining though, and we already had the chains on anyway and we had been cooped up long enough. We headed out and Doyle, Dawn, and Kadin were going to meet us at the trailhead to the Government Mineral Springs Cabin. This is an old Forest Service Guard Station in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, outside of Carson, Washington. Nicki and I have stayed there twice before, once before Anna was born and once when she was about Milo’s age.
The road out the gorge proved to be not too bad. We took the chains off right away and made good time. Put the chains back on in Carson, where the snow was quite a bit deeper as expected. They had had a ton of snow and the trees were heavy with it. We got 10 miles or so out of town, almost to the trailhead, when we came across some people going the other direction who told us a tree was down across the road. We went and checked it out, didn’t seem too bad, but still impassible.
Here’s the rest of the road, trees leaning. We had turned back, ran into our friends, and were evaluating the options when the County road crew showed up and cut the tree out of the way for us. We ventured on as it was getting later in the afternoon at this point and we still had to snowshoe into the cabin.
We got to the trailhead (or close as we could get), and started getting us and the kids geared up. About that time we realized that our main bag of food was comfortably tucked away in our refrigerator at home. We took inventory of what we had brought collectively, and made the decision that we still had plenty of food to make a comfortable trip of it (we were only going in overnight afterall) so we packed up what we had into packs and onto a sled, hoisted the kids into slings and into our arms, and set out.
Here’s the trailhead. There had been a ton of snow, and almost nobody back there for several days. A group of cross country skiiers arrived at the same time as us, and broke a narrow ski track before we walked in, but otherwise we were breaking a trail in several feet of fresh wet snow. Nicki and I have snowshoed on this trail to the cabin before and it’s generally a short quick stroll. This time it wasn’t that way at all. It was pretty grueling. I’ll skim over the details.
Eventually, by nightfall, we were all safely and comfortably sipping wine in the toasty cabin and the kids were happily pulling all the utensils out of the drawers and running around crazily.
The garage/woodshed. The next morning.
The cabin.
Precariously leaning tree.
The hike out was slightly less grueling, if only because we knew what we were in for, and because we had taken an early load of stuff out so the last trip was mostly just with the kids and one load of stuff on the sled. Also, by this point there was slightly less trail to blaze.
Back at the trailhead after the hike out (which was mostly in a drizzling rain). We got to the car and were soaked. On the drive out it was clear that several more trees had fallen in the night and had thankfully been cleared by the road crews that morning. Power lines were down too.
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks here in Portland. I’m not quite sure where to begin…
The snow has been coming down for days now. This is what it looked like outside this afternoon.
We’ve been pretty cooped up for the better part of a week with a mixture of snow, ice and windy weather keeping us from getting out and about very easily. My mom’s been in town (her arrival coincided suspiciously with the onset of this weather) and so we’ve been keeping busy doing crafts and making gifts and doing stuff around the house.
Here’s Anna and Grandma making some ornaments for our tree.
Unfortunately, Anna, Milo, and Nicki have all been battling a bout of sicknesses this whole time. Anna got off somewhat easy, but Milo was really quite sick for several days and is just now getting back to his old self.
Earlier this week we had a brief window of warmer weather and the snow melted enough for a trip out to lunch and a walk to the park.
When the snow fell earlier this week it was nice and soft…too cold for snowballs or snowmen, but just right for running around in. We made a train track in the front yard.
It was snowy, but manageable, and not too icy.
Then the snow really started to fall. The wind has been blowing too so we’ve had some North Dakota style snow drifts forming up against the cars and the garage.
Sunday we had our winter solstice celebration. Nicki had made some very thoughtful gifts for Anna and Milo, and had planned a bunch of activities to celebrate the changing of the season. Some of the plans were foiled by the weather, but we still had a nice day.
Here’s the hat Nicki made for Anna, and a birthday crown for Milo. She actually had made the crown for Milo’s 6-month birthday last week, so he got his gift again on the solstice (he didn’t seem to mind). They also each got a new book.
We also made some seed and almond butter covered pinecones and hung them out for the birds. Anna thought it was a little too messy, but seemed to have fun anyway.
Here they are. So far we haven’t seen a single bird, or even a squirrel. I think they are all probably pretty hunkered down too until the weather clears a bit.
Despite our best efforts to keep ourselves entertained, by today cabin fever (Anna called it cabbage fever) had started to set in. Today, with the kids feeling mostly better, and me stranded at home from work, Nicki and I left Anna and Milo with Grandma, put on our snowshoes and headed out for a walk to the grocery store.
The snow is 10 or more inches deep now, and mostly untouched. Very few cars on the road and the whole city was quiet. We met a few other walkers and a few skiers on our journey.
We went down through Woodstock park, where we take Anna all the time. I was contemplating the slide, but couldn’t figure how to do it with the ‘shoes on.
Snowshoeing down Woodstock after hitting the grocery store. We met up with our neighbor on the way home and stopped off at our local restaurant for a drink on the way. It was a much needed and rejuvenating outing.
We didn’t have anyone to take a picture of us so we attempted a self portrait. Those never quite seem to work out that great, but this one is kind of nice.
Hope you all are keeping warm and enjoying the winter weather and this holiday season.
