Arts and Crafts, March 2016
Did have a nice one come together, #42, curves and circles.
Although I only collected a small amount, it was enough to keep this large pan busy for several hours on this hot plate outside. It never actually came to a boil, but there certainly was a lot of steam coming off the surface, and the liquid level did fall.
When the outside heating had reduced the amount of liquid to about two cups, I brought it inside and ran it through a filter into a smaller pan and cooked it some more. The temp hung around at 214 or so for a long time and then began to climb. When it hit 217 I poured it into a heated glass container. The book said not to stir, but I missed that and stirred vigorously those last few mintues on the stove, feeling how it was thickening.
Maybe a half cup of very nice syrup
Very nice tasting syrup.
There's a fair amount of nice copper wire that used to run down to the old well pump that was replaced with the new one. To use it in my mobiles, I need to strip the insulation off. Burning is out of the question, first due to fumes and second due to it melting on to the wire and then being even harder to get off. Found a couple of jigs suggested on youtube, and tried to make one. Finally ended up with this makeshift arrangement that works great as long as the wire isn't kinked. Takes some effort though, have to hold both ends tight and pull it against the blade. Blade will chew into the copper and nick it...
Me and the caulk guns simply don't get along. I don't have the hand strength to get a bead to come out. Or perhaps the tubes that Allen gave me were old. Some had been opened and used a bit already. These two tubes did have an easy to work with mud, unlike the previous three, which had lots of lumps of arlready solidified silicone. So lacking the gun, I simply cut the end off with a hack saw, and then shaped a couple pieces of wood to use as the aplicator tools. Worked ok. However, Allen did day to cover all the way up to under the lower bar, using a spreader. Maybe tomorrow or the next nice day.
This is the one I had hanging under the south deck porch. Eye screw came out. Discovered several more were loose and am reconditioing it. One of the horizontal pieces broke when I tested it, so replacing that. Have replaced the main hook with copper going all the way through.
Rebuilt, but still weights 8KG.
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Microwave was destroyed when I'd put in a pyrex bowl with some peanut butter and chocolate to melt and set it to 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds. It exploded and caught fire. Disassembled for parts to clear surface for working on plants.
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Made in spring 2015, it was knocked down during the winds of February this year and I repaired and redid the connections and had to replace a couple of the pieces. This dancing mobile was originally number 11, and does have what kinda looks like 11 next to my mark on top. (That white mark is from a bird visitor)
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Third incarnation seems to be working much better than the first two version, each of which broke under strong winds.
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mounting brackets for shelf in Sam's room
wish I'd had some darker stain of some sort to make the pine look more like the oak shelf.
grape vine debarked, cleaned up, two coats of water based spar urethane
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