Week of January 13, 2025

Snow is coming down heavily as I write this. We have about 4″ now, and it is supposed to continue until around 4am. We picked up a snow shovel that is “just my size” for Charlie, so after dinner he wanted to go out and shovel, even though it was still coming down. I’ll never say no to playing in the snow, so we went out. We had fun, even though the sidewalk and driveway were covered again by the time we came back in.

It is tough to be a 3yo and figuring out the world, but not really in charge of anything. Charlie is having a hard time right now, lots of tantrums and struggles, especially around meals. To top it off, he hasn’t been feeling great (cough, runny nose, upset stomach). Tough times for a little guy. To quote Dr. Becky, he is a good kid having a hard time.

What never fails to improve his mood is getting outside. He often protests, so we start out walking with him on my shoulders, but after five minutes or so he gets interested in something and wants to get down to check it out. After that, it is usually “easy peasy lemon squeezy” as Charlie likes to say. (Picked up from Hank on Trash Truck, I think.)

Thankfully the weather was a bit warmer and calm before the snow storm blew in, so Charlie and I got out and went for a walk at Croton Point. The thing that got him down was wanting to check out some rocks, which we then walked along for quite a ways! After that, smooth sailing. I loved listening to him talk about the rocks and the things he noticed.

We hadn’t been to this part of Croton Point Park before, so count this walk as part of my “explore the local area more” goal.

We can tell he is trying hard and learning a lot, even day-to-day, and we are so proud of him. (Charlie, if you are reading this in ten years, we love you and are proud of you!) One thing in particular that comes to mind is that he opted to not eat all of a cookie he was having “so that I don’t frow up.” Good job listening to your body, bud.

Charlie, going through the glovebox in the car and picking up a packet of Shout wipes we keep in there:

These are coffee wipes ’cause Momma wipes her shirt when she gets coffee on it.

One of Charlie’s favorite things after a walk is “warming up in the car” (even when it isn’t cold out). We essentially play in the car and listen to music for 10 minutes before we leave. He gets to be in the front seat, sometimes the driver’s seat, since we aren’t driving. He loves it, and it has becoming our thing. I love it, too.

Tuesday night we made some peanut butter birdseed pinecones.

I got coffee with friends twice this week. I need to make it a regular thing.

I was down by the coffee shop this week, so I checked out the Little Free Library. It had 100% book turnover from when I checked it out in October, and there are a good mix of Spanish and English titles in there. Warms the heart.

I SnoSeal’d our boots and leather shoes ahead of the big snow storm. Great packaging, and great product.

I turned my first platter this week on the lathe, out of a piece of oak slab. I learned a few things from my first attempt that I’ll apply to the next one this week. Namely, I should plane down the warped slab before trying to turn it, because a 12″ x 2″ off-balance piece of wood is scary at 800 RPM. Also, using an angled scraper to scrape the middle flat leads to tear-out, so I need to shear scrape with my bowl gouge instead. The next one will be faster and better!

I already started on the next one by running the slab through the planer and cutting it out into a circle. I love the look of oak.

I made a fabulous discovery about my planer! It throws an incredible amount of woodchips, which is a pain to clean. I wished that it had a dust collection port, and the obvious place to put one is on top. I took a closer look and noticed that the logo had a screw in it, so I got curious and removed it. There was a hole the standard size of a dust collection port under it! I screwed in an adaptor and was off to the races. It cut the amount of mess by ~90%.

I cleaned up an old railroad track anvil that came from someone in the family who passed away recently (an uncle’s father). Next step is to sand the top and the horn down outside because I don’t like grinding or sanding metal inside. Metal dust is a pain. I’ll probably do that in the spring when the weather is nicer.

I made a base for my fly tying vise out of a live edge slab! Check out the post:

Live edge fly tying vise base

I also tied some Arakawa River Kebari (sometimes called Asahi Kebari), bead head pheasant tails, and some soft hackle pheasant tails. For the past two weeks I’ve been tying exclusively flies with pheasant tails, which I’ll post more about soon when I wrap up this exploration.

For the soft hackle PTs, I tried using a single kind of thread, GSP, colored with alcohol-based markers when I need a color. This technique is described by Barry Ord Clark in The Feather Bender’s Flytying Techniques, which I’m reading. GSP, or Dyneema, is super thin, but incredibly high strength. So far it has been pretty easy to work with, as long as I wax it at the beginning so it doesn’t slip around on the hook. It is nice not having to switch threads when you need different colors, just get out a different marker. I cut it with an Xacto instead of my tying scissors to save them the wear and tear.

Man, I like that live edge base. It will bring my joy every time I use it.