Week of October 21, 2024

Charlie and me at Home Depot:

“Daddy, what’s this?”
“An eye bolt”
“Daddy look!”

Charlie made a bus out of clay.

I worked at the Automattic office in Manhattan on Wednesday.

It was a beautiful day, so I had breakfast in Union Square before a phone call.

For lunch I went to Thai Diner. Short rib in pad thai is not something I would have expected but pretty good.

After work I went to Paradise Lost with some coworkers.

Then off to Neal Stephenson’s book reading and signing for the launch of Polostan at The Strand.

We kicked off a slew of Halloween events this weekend. Charlie asked to be a Bucket Truck two months ago and has been consistent, so Amanda created an awesome ConEd bucket truck for Charlie (his arm is the bucket!) and helmets for us.

Sunday we met up with Meg, Jeremy, and Miles at the library for a haunted house that our friend Colin helped put together. The boys are eating popcorn.

More festivities later this week!

I processed the end-of-season habaneros and jalapenos into hot sauce.

Bottles are on their way, so I’ll bottle this up later this week. Let me know if you want a bottle! The orange habanero has a great bite, but also lots of garlic, onion, and carrot. The green jalapeno has onion and garlic, too. Both have vinegar.

Charlie and I walked down to the park and went to the playground, then walked to the track and found an abandoned soccer ball, and had a lot of fun kicking it around.

I went fishing at the Amawalk outlet on Saturday. I caught two wild brown trout on my tenkara rod with a size 14 killer bug that I tied.

I didn’t get a photo of the ~6″ one because I fumbled with my net and didn’t keep tension on my line, so it hopped off the barbless hook at my feet. Here is the tiny 3.5″ one:

Still a beauty, very gratifying to catch on a fly I tied.

It was a nice day and I’m glad I got the chance to get on the water. The flow was very high despite our lack of rain. Lots of water getting let out of the reservoir. The water was almost a foot higher in some spots than last month.

While walking between spots, I spotted a scrape! The rut is starting.

I can’t wait for the election to be over. The robo calls, spam texts, and flyers in the mail are so annoying.

I made a couple things this week. Here are the posts in case you missed them:

Wading staff

Prototyping fly rod spoons

I also tied a few flies, but didn’t take good photos.

Two size 14 Grave Digger kebari

One black wool sakasa kebari

Two bead head black futsu kebari

This was my first try with dubbing, and it confirmed to me that I definitely need to make some dubbing wax. Getting the dubbing to stick to the thread was kind of tough.

I like the bead head futsu, I think I’ll tie more.

I’m off to read more of the new Neal Stephenson book before bed. Good night!