Wow! What a summer it has been… And, technically, there’s still a month to go! Yippee!
We have been having one of the sunniest summers in the past 15 to 20 years. So much so that at times we were actually wishing for rain. We know, we know… Wishing for rain, how bizarre! This beautiful weather has, of course, led to very little shop time.
As you have no doubt noted, we have not been as active here for the past couple of months as we usually are. However, we have been very busy… yes, we have… really… well, maybe not so much. 😉
Here’s what we’ve been up to all summer:
We started the summer early with a late May vacation in Alberta and British Columbia. We flew into Calgary, spent a night in Banff, drove up to Jasper for a few days. Then we took a couple of days to drive down through the Columbia Valley, staying in Invermere. From there we headed to our son’s home and spent a fabulous week with him. In addition to helping him to put in a cool fire pit area we had a chance to spend a relaxing day with local woodturner, Ted Crosfield.
We bought a used utility trailer and spent several weeks upgrading it with new lights, tires, bearings and paint. We call it the Wood Wagon and we’re very quick to hitch it up, especially for all the great free wood finds we can now take advantage of. 😉
One of the first uses of the trailer was when a friend gave us a bunch of tree trunk woodcarvings which we happily added to our backyard ‘Fantasy Forest’ . They are awesome!
We did several outings including a couple of wood sales, a revisit to the Nova Scotia Folk Art Festival in Lunenburg, local civic events, walks along the waterfront, walks along the beaches, listened to music in the park, countless visits to art and craft galleries, a day in Mahone Bay and camping in Keji (Kejimkujik National Park) with our daughter and her boyfriend where we hiked several trails including one with an awe inspiring stand of Hemlocks!
We also hosted the Nova Woodturners Guild Annual Barbeque and Field Day again this summer. It was a great time with 28 members and guests attending.
One of the biggest time consumers this summer and possibly the most enjoyable has been our garden. We spent a lot of time in it this year and we have been enjoying the bounty for the past several weeks. After a hiatus of several years we got back into gardening last season and haven’t looked back. We built ten raised garden beds beginning in the fall of last year and finished them in late spring. We have also been putting down beans and beets and making jams. Mmm, mmm, good!
In the midst of all this we did get some woodworking done… we turned a set of 9 spindles for a friend of ours that will be used in a ship wheel for his sail boat . We turned several small pieces so that we could play with some new dyes and paints. We spent a day with a couple of friends making one of them a Priddle Vaporizer. We also made five pen blank drilling jigs that day. We also finished another small Garden God wood spirit for the patio/garden along with a Birch planter stand made from a log end. We have also finished our street number sign. Oh yeah, we also did a major clean up and reorganization of the shop that included the completion of storage shelve doors.
Busy? You bet! Now it’s time to get back to work. 🙂 We have a bunch of articles coming soon that will give more info on a lot of the items above, plus some items of the past that we missed, some humor, some tips and of course, there’s a lot of planned projects coming.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Back to the shop… maybe 😉