Month: August 2006

excuses, excuses ….

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21

A game and some explanations – pick the lie ……..

I have been oddly absent from the blog because:

1. The third and final season of Arrested Development came out on DVD. I am a rabid fan of this show and have spent countless hours memorizing lines I find especially hysterical. I insert them into daily conversations and laugh wildly at my cleverness. Naturally the release of this final DVD is tantamount to a high holy day in my house and everything came to a screeching halt as I committed these episodes to memory. Stay tuned for more hilarity!

2. With summer winding down and all the gray and rainy days we have been having, I have been very low key and not felt like blogging.

3. Julia invited me to join her in a game. Not realizing what I was getting myself into, I accepted. So did Cara. After reading both of their entries for this game, it dawned on me what a boring life I have been living and I became vocally paralyzed. No tales of breaking and entering from me folks. I have too much respect for our judicial system for that! No hair raisers about my naked ta-ta’s on exotic beaches. I have enough freckles thank you very much. What could I possibly write about? That time I got the bad grade on my english paper? How about when I skipped class with Tina that one day and we hung out in my back yard pool floating on rafts and feeling very Thelma & Louise? When you are a GOOD GIRL like me and your mother raised you RIGHT, there is very little adventure with which to entertain. ~sigh~ being a pillar of the community can be such a burden at times.

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Today we are off to take D#1 back to school for her sophomore year. She had a campus job for the summer and spent all of June and July on campus. The job ended early in August and she has been here with us for the past three weeks. It has been so, so nice to have her home and I am going to miss her! I shall concentrate on all the car knitting and try to ignore the fact that my children are growing up and leaving me. wah!

In news from the wood shop ….. John and I churned out three chairs yesterday. I started the day off making a tutorial, complete with pictures. The minute the carpenter’s protractor came out, my confidence began to flag. I persisted. Pictures were snapped, notes were taken. Then the angles and bevels came into play. holy cow.

Is this something you guys would really make? The rip cuts? The angling of edges? We used the following: a table saw, jig saw, radial arm saw, router, nail gun and electric drill. And of course the absolutely indispensible Boar. Have you got yourselves a Boar?

wouldn’t you rather the secrets to my fabulous marshmallows? for those you will need a candy thermometer and a mixer.

Darlings, if a tutorial you want, a tutorial you shall have. I am here to do your bidding.

well, you know, I mean most of your bidding – at least as far as wood shop is concerned. For all that other stuff, I’m gonna need wine. Lots of wine. and maybe some shots.

measure twice, cut once!

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Can I tell you? This chair was much harder and more involved than I ever imagined it would be. I really thought we would have this finished in about three hours – including set up and clean up. Boy was I wrong!

I spent about six hours making this and I had Boar to help. Help is putting it mildly. I would never have finished this if he weren’t there. To be perfectly honest, I would have completely screwed it up by the second cut of wood . There is a ton of math involved – angles and opposite angles. Also, I had taken pictures of the chair and taken measurements, but I came to discover not all the necessary measurements. So we spent lots of time calculating and changing things around. gah! I think for all future chairs I shall be the lovely assistant and he shall be the one in the flannel shirt.

Would you like to see all the measuring, cutting and jig sawing that went on?

P8230006_1
ta-da!

Now that we have our prototype, we are planning on making more tomorrow with some changes …. we are not using screws on the arms and are going to put a longer supports under them. Boar would like to change the angle on the back. There was also some talk of using a beefier cut of wood for the leg supports.

Despite all the complications, I am thrilled with the way this came out and I got to spend the day playing with Boar and making him share his power tools! ; )

how much wood, would …..

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I had a fantastic time yesterday. Beautiful places & beautiful people. Plus, sun ripened tomatoes! What could be better than that?

I came home full of inspiration and surprisingly, not the fibery kind. Behold, my next project.

P8220001_1

Luckily Boar is home this week and will be able to walk me through my first one.

Did you hear that? The way I said first one? I am full of wood shop self confidennce – I want lots of these!