Autumn is here! The first part of Autumn till around Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year. Spring is pretty good, too! The weather is casually gliding into the season now, with forecasts promising us perfect outdoor working temperatures all the wat through the next ten days! That’s what I love about the two seasons between the extremes here in Cache Valley.
Missus found a table loom on the local classified site with a floor stand included. She was happy with the price, and I certainly was not one to question it, with my only superficial knowledge of their costs. So when she did, I called on it and thinking it was at the south end of the valley began to negotiate picking it up before I realized it was more than two hours away! Luckily the lady selling it was instantly willing to meet me half way the other evening, and so I grabbed the girls and we jumped into the truck and headed out to Ogden, Utah.
So, Missus has now added a four shaft loom to her growing collection, and she stays busy learning what she needs to know before she puts a warp on it. In the meantime she has put a warp on her little loom (about a foot wide) and is using up scraps on it, and has begun a fantastic looking project on it that admittedly may end up a dish cloth. I am just thrilled to see her getting into a hobby that she is enjoying, that will produce results from our llamas, and that she is getting fully tooled up for to work end to end. She has the llamas, the shears and the tools to prepare roving, spin it, and now weave it into something. That’s a long haul, and requires a lot! She has waited a long time to get set up to this point.
I have a couple of tools coming in the mail myself, one of which will be delivered today and will allow me to properly finish a dovetail joint made by hand. I do need to get a tool to let me properly copy and set up an angle on the dovetail, or even a dovetail set-up marker. Those will be soon, I’m sure. But for now, I have enough to at least practice some cuts, and with the results I got the other day, with inadequate tools and doing it my first time, I am confident I will be knocking out dovetails in no time. I’ll also be able to make box joints, too! I have the router setup to do all this, but it feels like a cheat, and there is a lot of setup which can go all wrong before I realize it has. I found I would rather do them by hand for now.
I want to make a pie safe. It won’t leave my mind. It is sitting in there, teasing me, and it wants me to include the elements of our convenience cabinet in it. That is to say, we would be able to hold foil, butcher paper, and cling film in the top and distribute it out from there as needed. I am also thinking of a pull out surface under the top to give extra workspace as needed in the kitchen. So, it would be a take on an old style piece of furniture, with some new twists.
The cabinet the oven mounted in is nearly done in the kitchen. I just need to make a drawer, and finish the trim work. I have today’s tool arrival to help with that, and one coming on Wednesday to finish it. We have used the oven once to make cookies, and they came out baked well, and evenly, which is about all we really want an oven to do, so that’s great. Moving the microwave up two inches to accommodate the space for a new drawer in that space has not caused any trouble for anyone in the family since I put it there, so that is good.
The only question for today is, will I work outside in the yard, or inside the shop? There are things to do in both!
