Week of October 14, 2024

Charlie and I were on our own until Wednesday, when Amanda came back from London. We played outside, got pizza at Baci, went grocery shopping, did dishes, and read books. We also worked through the meltdowns together and took 3x as long to get out the door each morning, because even though I only post smiling photos here, my son is still a three year old.

Later that week we had to pick peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos in the dark ahead of a frost. For now we set them out on the porch in the sun each day to ripen, and Charlie helps me sort out the ripened ones. We freeze them until I have time to make hot sauce.

Amanda peeled her luffa plants and plans to make sponges out of them.

Charlie carved one of the pumpkins we grew!

We found a leaf bug!

Friday Charlie was home from daycare with a stomach bug. He bounced back the next day, and we visited a school open house (It is wild that it is already time for that!), played in the backyard and workshop for a couple hours, then went to Miles’s birthday.

Then Sunday Amanda and I both woke up with the stomach bug. It hit us hard. It felt like a repeat of the time we got food poisoning from some place in NJ (the worst state in the union, by far), but this time we at least had two bathrooms on two floors instead of one tiny apartment. Charlie was fine, had full energy, and very much wanted attention. It was a challenging day.

Charlie is picking up the very basics of phonics. He has surprised us this week by telling us what letter various words start with after we say them. We recognized a few from ABC books we’ve read, but then threw some curveballs out and he gets 75% of them. Time to break out the phonics book.

Our street got repaved this week. Looking forward to getting Charlie out there on his bike and scooter. Much better for cruising.

Last week was one of the toughest weeks at work in the past couple years. So many things changing so quickly with short turnarounds. Many late evenings. I have a feeling there are more of these weeks to come, so I need to plan ahead to stay flexible and take time off to recharge.

I have a few small projects in the works.

First is a wading staff so I don’t fall when I slip on rocks in the river. Charlie helped me strip the bark off a piece of cherry with the draw knife. I’m making it a T-handle so it is comfortable to hold on to and so I can use the handle to release snags. I’m thinking of adding some depth marks so I know how deep the water is (inspired by my uncle Kevin) and some holes with magnets for drying flies, inspired by Tenkara Path’s beautiful spools.

Second is some fly tying wax. I already make my own wood finish wax, so why not fly tying wax? I found an old timer’s recipe, which included rosin. After some research, I learned you can make rosin out of pine resin, so I scraped some pine resin off of a pine tree on a walk.

My general plan is to dissolve it with acetone, strain it, boil the acetone off, then cook off the natural turpentine and water at a higher temp. Then I’ll mix it with wax and a little grapeseed oil. The rosin is the sticky component, the wax and oil make it pliable. Apparently you can just boil it down and burn off the bark, woodchips, and bugs, but that added carbon will turn it more into a pitch and make the color darker. I’m looking for a nice amber colored rosin, hence the acetone step.

Third is fly rod spoons. I read Tenkara Bum’s post about fly rod spoons, which aren’t really available anymore. If you are lucky you can find a brand from Japan like Rodio, but the shipping is killer and they are hard to find. It is easy to find larger spoons, but for throwing them with a fly rod you want a weight of 0.5g (roughly 1/60oz)or less. That’s tiny!

The closest thing I could think of is the spinners on rooster tails. They are the same basic shape and some are quite small. I spent a couple hours doing research and found a company that sells fishing lure components and ordered a sample of their smallest spinner blade sizes and split rings. I think I can drill an extra hole and add a barbless hook, then paint them to my liking. Send me a message if you want a couple to try out.

Dime for scale so you san see how small some of these are.