staying occupied

 Year 20, Week 49, Day one (week 1092) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 12-24-20 Thursday 76 degrees low, 82 high, early morning clouds tinkled, then mostly cloudy the rest of the day. This weekend is predicted to be an arctic blast where the temps will get well below the South Florida 56 degree frost temperatures. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism. I had stopped at Jo-Anne’s Cloth World and went through all the craft sections of the stores. I find that the fabric section is pretty but I am avoiding learning how to sew. It could be a future hobby but not now, not even close. I got a whole bunch of ideas while wandering through the store. I guess I need to retire to be able to get involved in some of those ideas. Of course, I learned from my dad, that there is never enough time for all your projects. He spend most of his time, from dawn to dusk, carving or working clay. He still did not have enough time for a...

 Year 20, Week 48, Day one (week 1091) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 12-19-20 Saturday 70 degrees, light breeze, no humidity. Blue-sky rimmed clouds meandering across the sky, with only an occasional glimpse of sunshine. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Department Of Tourism.  I finished my cards. Today was all pen work. I outlined the sails, skipping where the dots of color of the Christmas lights were in the way. I also outlined the ship above the waterline. This all made things stand out more.  I then signed the back of the cards with my card logo and “Another Card Painted by Roger Stegman.” Finally, I wrote on the inside of the cards.  There was one card I had accidentally swapped the colors of the water and the sky. When I painted the cards, I never noticed the card in the stack. I did skip adding the lights to one card for some reason. Well when I was lettering the cards, I found that the one I messed up on t...

 Year 20, Week 47, Day one (week 1090) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 12-12-20 Saturday 68 early AM, 81 as the high. Sunny with herds of clouds grazing across the sky. A little bit of showers before I got outside, and showers to the south, but dry all day. Earlier in the week we had a torrential downpour that allowed some freighters to sail up into the city and unload half their cargo directly at the doors of the warehouses. They had to stop half way through and head back to the ocean before the water levels got too low. Later in the week, the temps got down to 48, well below our 56 degree frost temps several days. I was able to take short cuts on the frozen canals on the way to work. I did not chance the large canals, figuring they did not have enough time to freeze solid enough to hold a car. The small ones were all right, though. We had a light breeze all day that helped. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism. ...

 Year 20, Week 46, Day one (week 1089) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 12-05-20 Saturday High around 82, no humidity, light breeze, well spaced clouds crossing the sky. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism. I had the idea to try to make some foil roses. I’ve collected aluminum seals from coffee cans. They are still flexible but heavier than foil. I had an idea of how to do it but the various versions I tried failed miserably. Later I went on line and saw four different methods and none the way I was doing it. I had already given up for the day. Last week I did repairs on the box the holds my mini metal lathe. The plywood in many places were seriously decayed. I still had one spot to fix and that was on the lathe. The wood had decayed and left a jagged gap. What I did was to check to see if the thin plywood I had would work there. I then marked the hole square, and used the dremmel with a cutting disk to cut the space ...

 Year 20, Week 45, Day one (week 1087) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 11-26-20 Thursday ThanksGiving Weekend Last week I finished my ornaments for the year. I have two kinds of boats, Orca and Dolphin, pianos, two kinds of guitars, two kinds of drum sets, and Banjos. I tried many more designs and they were either not satisfying or were going to be a serious amount of work I did not want to do.  Now I have to work out what artwork will be in my Christmas cards. I have plenty of snowmen, lighted trees inside and out, fire places and windows. I have to find a design that is easy to do in great numbers, but something different than what I have done so far.  Because it was Thanksgiving, I was involved in indoor projects in the morning. We had decided that our three families will have our Thanksgiving dinner individually. Mom cooked the turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes and had someone deliver the food to the other two families.  I took a nice nap ...

 Year 20, Week 43, Day one (week 1086) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 11-14-20 Saturday Some early morning sprinkles, nice the rest of the day. This weather report was brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism. Last week I finished my drums, guitars and banjos. I let someone take a guitar and gift it to someone else. There is satisfaction in finishing something.  Today, I decided to do the guitars and drums, but use a different design. For the guitars, I decided to make electric guitars. For the drums, I decided to make a base drum with small drum and symbol.  I was going to use the mystery wood I got from work, but decided that would be too heavy. Instead I dug out an old 3x3 and turned that round. I cut the drums a little thinner than they should have but they will do. I had some small drums from a previous experiment and decided to make use of them. I drilled and added dowels for them to be mounted on the base drum.  My symbol...

 Year 20, Week 43, Day Two (week 1083) (January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.) 08-23-20 Sunday 90 degrees, 68% humidity, stiff breeze off the ocean helps, when in shade, to handle the heat. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach department Of Tourism. We had a storm pass through a few weeks ago. I had warning so I moved the big stuff from mom’s house to the neighbor’s house over a few evenings. I had the lathe as the last thing to bring in. That Saturday morning, move the last big stuff and Mom and I were just picking up the small stuff, when my brother and my nephew came to take down the awning. Quickly, it was all done. I relaxed the rest of the day. And did nothing that Sunday also. The weekend after the storm passed, which was not bad, we put everything back that Saturday so everything was back to normal. I meant to take a before and after picture but forgot. The are was swept of the big stuff by the wind, and mom cleaned up the remaining sawd...