Melissa the Plastering Princess

Melissa has been tackling the outside plastering job, and doing very well:

 These are photos of the west side of the house. You can see the dark spots are the latest additions

 it makes the place look quite finished.  We're not sure yet if we'll even do another coat. (we were originally thinking white like Greece, but we like the tan look a lot)

 and you can see by her hat and jacket that it's been cold out again.  Hard work to deal with cold, wet mud in the foggy rain.

Knife and Kit

Something that had been on my personal desire list for a long time was making a knife. I've made some handles, well, replaced handles for knives before, and certainly continue to replace hatchet and hammer handles all the time, but I'd never done the blade and handle together. 

I had set aside a piece of logging bandsaw blade 5 or 6 years ago, and finally got it out and cut it up with m y hack saw. then filed down the edges, drilled the handle rivet holes and carved a madrone handle.  After a batch of times with the sharpening stone, a bit of oil for the wood, it's a pretty solid tool.  It's not for kitchen use, but future outside butchering.  Thus, I asked Melissa to make me a carrying kit for all my 'outside' knives.

 She used some denim from some old jeans (I have tons of jeans that people give me for filters for the veg oil) and I think it turned out great.

views and times

Jack takes in his morning view, overlooking our fruit tree meadow

 While Melissa and I prepare a typical breakfast of dried persimmon, apple, yogurt and granola... and don't forget my strong coffee. (notice the baked bread there on the side)

 Later, coming in from the rain, I'm ranting about how they can't seem to make a poncho long enough to cover your legs!  I had high rubber boots on, but since about 5 inches of my legs were exposed, the water started soaking downward and filling up my boots! I'm not that tall that a poncho should reach past the top of my boots! arrgh!

A Tree in the Forest

One of the tops of the redwoods that got cut off to provide more light to our house was just lying there in the woods while I cleaned up around it... so I decided we needed to drag it out.  Melissa drove the truck while I managed the rope:

We got it up on the mill and cut it open.  Revealing the inside of a log is an amazing thing:

Because this was a tree top, there were lots of knots, making for difficult milling and interesting wood:

 After an afternoon of milling, I got 5 or 6 planks from it, ready to be made into the laundry deck.

Car Parts Update

So, since I don't have much to show for my days of organizing the forest, here's a couple new pieces:

the plastic pull handle for the truck's emergency brake came off, so I whittled a new one.

I felt good about this idea because my hand made (Oak) drivers side door handle has been working well for a couple years now:

As each interior piece breaks, I'll just keep whittling new ones.

Even More Tree Work

With the holidays and all the clean up necessary, there's not a lot of other stuff to show off... but this is a dramatic thing going on. Check out the tree guy way up in the tree in this photo:

and this one was one Steve, the tree guy, wanted me to take.  He's been cutting trees in these mountains for 15 years, and he was impressed by the size of this old redwood on our property.  the point of the picture is to see the diameter of the trunk compared to the guy.