Did some Milling

I took the time to get the last big piece of the Oak tree we took down to have room for the yurt onto the sawmill the other day. (that only took half the day). This is the main big tree Surfer Mike helped me take down back in the day when I was afraid of my chainsaw.















the photo above is after a few passes, squaring it up, to get the thing ready to really make lumber.















check out how I now have the mill set correctly, and it actually cuts darn square!

















Making boards!

and some of the results. I'm hoping to make our front door out of these.

The First House Model!

We actually made a model of the 'big house' out of clay from the garden. By simply adding water and breaking up the lumps, we made some great modeling clay, and using Melissa's detailed plans, built a scale model of the cob portions of the future home.

It's just a 'first draft', so not everything is in place, and hey, come on, it's just a clay model. but it's sort of cute. the little guy is supposed to be almost 6ft tall. Like me.

looking down from the 'southeast'

















from the top:
















that's a loft on the left (west) side,over a part of the kitchen.

The Ever-present carpenter's project, the spice rack.

I was looking to save shelf space, and came up with this idea. Took an old chunk of cast off lumber to my friend Greg's drill press, brought it back and shined it up.

A little more carpentry in the kitchen:


As regular readers will know, the yurt is round, and the fridge and other appliances aren't. In our kitchen then, we have spaces between things. I thought about building a continuous countertop, but then it would be much harder in later years to remodel the yurt by taking out the kitchen. When it's a guest house, it probably won't need a full kitchen.

So, I wanted to deal with the gaps. I built a little triangle cabinet. Redwood again:



















it has a shelf in it, and a hinged top, for extra storage. works pretty well.

Table is done.


Finally, after much gnashing of teeth and trying to scrounge up a suitable base, I was driving along in San Jose and saw a table out on the curb with a crappy particle board top and a beautiful chrome base. I grabbed it, took off the top, and came home to work on a redwood top. I realize we're getting a bit of 'redwood overload' but hey, it's what I got. Looks good with a tung oil finish too.

Nature takes a shot a Melissa's work.



Melissa was setting up to do the next batch of mosaic for the bathroom floor, and had created a really great picture out of broken (free) tiles.


















she had it sitting up on a piece of plywood, near where the truck is parked. Then, during the holidays, while we were in the city, there was a wind storm that brought down a few trees. One of which was a madrone, right on top of the mosaic!! We forgot to take a picture of the tree as a whole, but here's the resulting mix up of tile:


















I did however, feel some sense of revenge, as we created another nice firewood pile. This picture shows about half of it:

A little colder...

We've been having a cold spell lately. I thought we were at about 36 degrees this morning, but we found a touch of ice on a water bucket. Then I noticed my cooking olive oil, after sitting out on the counter all night. Yow! that's cold!

Coffee in the morning....


We were having some trouble with our battery system, so we were keeping the power off once we went to bed, until we needed it the next day. I got out my mother's old coffee grinder, one of the few things I knew I'd want here in CA after cleaning out the house in WI (of course, there are many other things, but this was a priority)

and now I'm using it every day to grind the morning batch. I love it. I love how it looks, how it works, and how it doesn't take electricity.

Solstice Cookie Day!

We once again geared up and made the big batch of Great-Grandmother Annie McTavish's date-filled oatmeal cookies... well, Melissa actually did most of the work.

We actually had to put a piece of plywood on the bed for the cooling. Maybe next year we'll have a table.





















I did most of the quality checking... Scout tried as well.

Hail Hail, on the Yurt!

wow, we thought rain made a lot of noise on the yurt roof.

This is the hail piling up on the deck. Not a great photo, but you can see a leaf on the side of the picture, for comparison.

Getting ready for the holidays


Now that the rains are coming more often, and we're spending more time indoors; well, getting in earlier now that it gets dark so soon, we've managed to put up a handful of evergreen cuttings with a nice ribbon and some red berries from the Andres' pepper tree. We've got them up around the yurt, and they look pretty festive. Here's the one closest to where we're hanging the holiday cards we receive.



you can also see the Central American (?) native cloth hanging that we have up, which we took from my father's art studio when we were packing up the house. I can remember that mask thing being up in his studio from when I was just a little kid. We still have all his paintings we had in SF packed up at Melissa's parents house... as well as the dozens stored in WI.

man, that's going to be a trip to go get all that stuff... after the 'real' house is built.