Week of December 2, 2024

Christmas decorating is a process. We dehydrate grapefruits each year, put cloves in oranges, and string cranberries. We got that done this week.

I really like that all of the wooden ornaments for the tree are ones I’ve turned over the last four years.

We also got a train for around the tree and Charlie loves playing with it. It captures his attention!

Speaking of Charlie, he has his first imaginary friend. His name is Fire and he is a dragon who lives on top of the castle on the playground at his school, scaring away all the knights. Fire flies alongside the car with us wherever we go. He eats mulch.

Always up for exploring new playgrounds.

I did a lot of woodworking in the evenings this week.

I turned a second bowl and four Christmas ornaments, and made a fly tying tool caddy. I have a third bowl half done, but had to stop halfway through hollowing.

Finished the bowls with a thin coat of a blend of raw linseed oil and beeswax, buffed with 0000 steel wool after 24 hours. Linseed dries. The ornaments are finished with a jojoba oil and beeswax blend, which doesn’t dry.

I opened up the Shopsmith headstock to oil it this week. Still running nicely.

I want to turn a couple more bowls with this practice pine before trying some maple, cherry, or oak. Then I want to break down a couple big pine rounds I have in the backyard into blanks from a tree that was taken down a couple years ago.

I also need to make a dust collector for the lathe. I think I’ll go with something like this.

I also tied some flies. I am trying to improve my dubbing skills, so focusing on dubbing bodies right now. I’ve found Barry Ord Clarke’s videos very helpful. Next will probably be some Walt’s Worms.

I picked up my sketch book for the first time in months (remember that resolution? yeah…) and sketched a bunch of ideas for flies and ornaments.

We finished off the Thanksgiving leftovers with a turkey pot pie this week, and we used some of the stock we made for chicken and wild rice soup.

Amanda and I got ourselves an air fryer on Black Friday. What are your favorite air fryer recipes?

This time last year: https://cagrimmett.com/2023/12/11/week-of-december-4-2023/

I had just gotten back into the workshop after a 2 and a half year hiatus after some nudging by my friend Jon. That sparked the rebuild I started a month later. Big difference now a year later!

Two updates I want to make to my blog:

Adopt Jeremy Felt’s “This week also appears in [year]” feature.

Change category and tag archive pages to titles and dates only, no content.

Two updates I want to make to my digital garden:

Add bookmarks to more top-level pages, maybe in the sidebar? If a bookmark tag matches the slug of the page, it should show up.

Cleaner archive pages

That’s all I’ve got. Good night.