Chuck Grimmett

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  • Repost from Amanda. Happy Valentine’s Day!

  • A friend asked:

    I was wondering what your go-to recommendation for a book for a beginning spoon carver would be? Also what beginner level knife set (if any) is the most preferable?

    My answer:

    For beginner knives: You need a Sloyd knife and a hook. I recommend a Mora 106 for the sloyd and probably the BeaverCraft Open Curve Spoon Knive for the hook.

    Both are roughly $20-$30 each and unless you do carving to sell things on a daily basis, you might not outgrow them. As long as you keep them sharp they’ll serve you well.

    I can’t remember if you are left or right handed, but know that most hook knives can come left or right handed. It looks like the specific one I recommended from BeaverCraft is right hand only, but Robin Wood has a similar open curve style that comes left or right. (In fact, it is his design originally)

    For sharpening, get some sandpaper in various grits from 120-3000 and use that on a flat block to sharpen your sloyd and on a round dowel to sharpen the hook.

    This is a great video on sharpening from Emmet van Driesche:

    For books: The one I want to recommend isn’t available yet. My friend Emmet van Driesche is writing one now. So I think I’ll recommend Barn the Spoon’s Spoon book.

    I think that is along the lines of what you are looking for: Primary greenwood carving with knives and axes, not bandsaws and sanders. Though if that assumption is wrong, I can recommend others.

  • Driving across a bridge while out running errands, I looked out to the river and saw a friend rowing a Guideboat we made together! I’d recognize that boat anywhere. Made my day.

  • Creative way to paper windows in a closed shop. Tarrytown, NY.

  • Are spambots now using GPT3 to create spam comments? I’m seeing an uptick of comments that look like a real person wrote them, but with email addresses and author links that make me think they are spam.
  • Pinecone!

  • Testing posting an image with micropub via shortcuts. These are cornmeal griddle cakes.

  • Bookmarked https://punchdrink.com/recipes/angostura-colada/.
  • In reply to https://indieweb.org/Micropub#New_Reply.
    Testing micropub reply from Shortcuts

  • Went to Peekskill Brewery for dinner and had a tasty sour brewed with black currants and spruce tips. “River Currant” – Would drink again.

  • In reply to https://cagrimmett.com/micro/34622c96eb/.

    Finished product.

  • Charlie and I went on a walk in the woods and noticed the Skunk Cabbages starting to pop up. Last year we noticed them on February 10.

  • Making Paul Clarke’s Falernum number 10: https://thelosttikilounge.com/ingredients/falernum-guide/

  • I put in a PR to update the Authentication section of the WordPress.org REST API docs that was approved and merged: https://github.com/WP-API/docs/pull/149

    Here is a link to the new section: https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/using-the-rest-api/authentication/#basic-authentication-with-application-passwords

  • Initial thoughts on upgrading to an M2 Pro MacBook:

    • It looks a lot like my old 2008 MacBook Pro
    • The Migration Assistant is much better than the Migration Assistants of Yore (I think I first used one in ~2004), but it still failed on the first try, just like it did on my iPhone last month.
    • Using a Thunderbolt cable connected to both machines was the right move. Very fast migration.
    • This machine is stunningly fast. I can’t believe how much faster it is than my 2019 Intel i7. UI changes are instantaneous.
    • My Google Chrome Extensions didn’t transfer. Also, no surprise here, Chrome didn’t respect any of my previous preferences.
    • I miss the Touch Bar.
    • Keyboard is better.
    • Booting up from sleep is instant.
    • It drives two external screens much better than my 2019 machine.

  • Wow, the new Apple MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip looks and feels like the MacBook Pro I had in 2008, right down to the body and MagSafe connector.

  • There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.

    Octavia Butler

  • I don’t know who needs to hear this: You don’t need to measure with any kind of precision in most types of cooking. Some blogger just made that recipe up. Eyeballing is totally fine.

    Baking, other than fine pastry, doesn’t need precision, either. But you aren’t ready to hear that yet.

  • Bookmarked https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/books/review/hobart-book-village.html.

    This little town with 8 indie bookshops is only 2.5 hours away from us in the Catskills. Seems like a great summer weekend getaway destination.

  • Testing posting a micropub note from Shortcuts.app!