Sunday is Halloween so I feel morally obligated to offer you these insights about things that go bump in the night (or stop by your house to get candy). Well, I hope it doesn’t rain on Halloween – that would dampen a lot of spirits.
Ghouls like demons because demons are a ghoul’s best friend.
I’ve heard that ghosts like to go to bars for the Boos.
I heard that the headless horseman decided to go into business. He said he just wanted to get ahead …
The mummy wasn’t allowed to go to school with the witches because he couldn’t spell.
I was told that being kissed by a vampire is a pain in the neck.
Did you hear about the vampire who was having trouble with his house? It’s a grave problem.
Do you know why skeletons are so calm? Nothing gets under their skin.
Werewolves hate flea markets.
A skeleton walked into a restaurant and asked for an order of spare ribs.
Who won the skeleton beauty contest? Nobody.
The vampire got a bad case of heart burn after he had a stake sandwich.
They had to put a fence around the graveyard because everyone was dying to get in.
My son asked me to fix his broken Jack-o-lantern so first we got some pumpkin patch …
A witch just asked me to build her a garage. Well, really it was more of a broom closet.
It’s been about 18 months since I’ve done any serious scroll saw or marquetry work. I’ve been itching to get back to it so even though I’m not 100% done with setting up my workshops, I went ahead and started working on a project. I have to say, it just feels good to be making something, just to make it. The workshop is setup enough for me to do a small project and there are still some choices I have to make about storage and work surfaces so doing some work out there gives me an idea of what I’ll really need.
Since we’re moving into the Christmas season, it makes sense to do some tree ornaments. Years ago I did an intarsia bird project that Heather really loved so her request was that I do some kind of bird ornaments. I looked through my stash of patterns and didn’t really find what I wanted so I went on-line and found some nice simple birds to make this year:
Bought this pattern set for bird ornaments.
At least one of you should recognize the name. Sheila is among the top scroll saw pattern designers around and this set really fit the kind of project I wanted to do. There are eight birds in this set and there is a second set with another 8 for 16 birds all together. Haven’t decided if I’m going to do all 16 or just a selection – depends how much scroll sawing I want to do before building more fixtures for the shop.
The process starts with cutting out the paper pattern and gluing down to a pice of wood. I’m not doing anything fancy on the wood here, just using some of the excess flooring underlayment I’ve got. Heather wants to paint these so the kind of wood didn’t really matter. Here’s one of the birds in process (it’s cut from a 4 inch by 4 inch square):
Starting with the cardinal.
Each ornament has a back ring for the bird to sit on and I’ve finish a few of those:
The back ring. Needs a touch of sanding.
That green mat is really this:
My third hand for cutting veneer. Yes, that’s a rotatory cutting mat I bought from the quilt shop. Works for knife cutting.
Normally I use it for cutting marquetry stuff but it comes in handy for lots of things. My scroll saw is currently setup under a window in the shed:
The scroll saw in its new home. I like it in front of the window, nice natural light and a view of our backyard
In my last shop, I didn’t have a window to look out of and this is so nice to have a window with natural light and a view of our backyard.
Don’t want you to think I’ve stopped working on shop setup – here’s what I just had delivered for my big tool shop:
Kitchen cabinets for the workshop so I don’t have to build them.
Yes, cheap kitchen cabinets for shop storage. I’ll be putting a counter top on the base units and the two tall cabinets are sold as pantry cupboards. In between those cabinets I’ll be putting up some pegboard for hand tools and things. I had thought about building cabinets for this shop, but that would take time I’d rather spend at the scroll saw or sewing machine so big box store to the rescue. Not the greatest quality cabinets, but they’ll be fine for tools, blades and bits.
Well, that’s it for this week, if you need me – I’ll be at the scroll saw.
This week I had some cabinets delivered for my workshop so here’s a few cabinet thoughts:
Early in my career I had a job selling file cabinets, labels makers, file folders and rolodexes to mafia offices – yeah, I was involved in organized crime.
Be very careful when opening up your medicine cabinet – you don’t want to wake the sleeping pills.
Did you hear about the man who died after his trophy cabinet fell on him? He was a victim of his own success.
Do you know why police departments have so many file cabinets? They’re for organized crime.
I found some fake noodles in a kitchen cupboard – it was an impasta.
My father used to say, “when one door closes, another will open.” Yes, he was terrible at making cabinets.
I will say that I had my doubts about buying a big metal cabinet with locking doors, but it proved to be a safe purchase.
I just saw a broken cabinet at the library looking for shelf-help books.
A buddy of mine use to install kitchen work surfaces, but he got arrested for counter fitting.
Did you hear that the PM meeting with the cabinet? Later he spoke to a bookcase and had an argument with a desk.
The CEO of IKEA was just elected president in Sweden – he said he’ll have his cabinet assembled by the end of the week.
Yeah, it’s really Thursday but when you’re retired the months kind of merge together. Currently my time keeping is more like: breakfast time, tea time, dinner time, and not a good time to be out driving to the store time.
Last Friday Heather and I attended the church’s quilting group. It’s not a formal kind of group, they just get together once a month in the social hall and everyone brings a project along to work on. I was able to take advantage of the large tables to do the pinning on my quilt. This step pins the batting, top and backing together. Next step will be doing the actual machine quilting to sew all three layers together. I didn’t do much on the quilt over the summer as there was a lot of work to do outside, but now that winter is settling it, there will be more indoor time to work on things like quilts.
The pinned up quilt. Next step is the quilting process. Coffee is a necessary supply for quilt pinning – in fact I should have bought the larger size.Close up of the pinning for the quilt. My fingers hurt just thinking about putting those all in.
On the woodworking shop shed, I finished installing the floor and baseboards in the shed shop and have started moving stuff in. I also started unboxing tools and projects. I’m hoping to get a couple of Christmas decoration projects done on the scroll saw and get started on some projects for my sewing room.
Here’s the current progress (still a mess):
Moving in. Two racks setup, some projects unboxed and for those concerned about safety, that’s one of two fire extinguishers I have for the shed. Now the idea is to never need them, but I do have two just in case.
The shed shop is for small projects – mostly scroll saw and marquetry work so the real workhorse in here is the scroll saw:
The scroll saw and marquetry bench in place and almost ready to work. Yes, that’s a frying pan on a hot plate. It’s not for lunches – the pan is filled with sand and is used for sand shading veneer.
I set these up so I’ll have a view of the garden when I’m working. This space is heated so I can work in here over the winter.
In the garage shop, or what I’m starting to call my heavy tool shop, I’ve moved enough stuff out to the shed so I have room to move:
Here’s the progress on the garage workshop. There is now real room to move around. The table saw asked for the hat, it said it liked the hat and thought it would look good wearing it … I never argue with table saws …
This space will have my larger, duster machines like the table saw, planner, jointer, sanders and router table. I’ve got dust collection in here. It’s harder to heat this space so I expect there will be winter days I can’t work out here. This is where I’ll be doing larger work like cabinets or anything that needs the table saw. The idea is that most of my machines will be on carts so I can pull out the machine I’m working with to the center area. It’s a long narrow space so it’s a bit of a challenge to figure out where to store things and how to get the machines setup. Now that I’ve freed up some space, I can really get started on setting this up.
That’s it for this week – if you need me, I’ll be in the shop(s).
Andrew's View of the Week 