It's time

I’m looking through photo albums from 35 years ago. They are full of photos Mum took on her various trips. This morning I’ve been looking at a trip she took to Britain. The labels are neatly typed and beside some of the photos are details like the photo of the donkey trained to walk on a wheel to pull a bucket up from a well. Mum tells me in her comments that the donkey’s name is Jenny and when Jeny sees the top of the bucket above the top of the well she steps off the wheel. There is a photo of “Oliver, a chocolate point Siamese who came out immediately to share Dorothy’s prawn sandwich.” These photos and their captions make me smile.

Oliver the lunch-sharing cat

There are photos of Mum, only a few years older than I am now. She wasn’t much for photos of herself. I can imagine the fun she had selecting the photos, typing the captions and putting them into albums. She, like me, relived moments of the trip as the albums went together.

Mum middle, her cousin Berta right

Perhaps that is the reason I’ve been so hesitant to get rid of the albums. I know they meant something to her and that she relished every trip she took and the memories of each one. In her later years she was fond of saying, “Well, I did it when I could,” and she did a lot!

I’m going carefully through each album, taking out the photos of Mum and the ones that will be good for drawing practice. The first album I did I took all of the pages out and salvaged the cardboard pages with sticky strips on them. I thought they might be good for book covers. I’ve used a few of them but they warp more than other types of cardboard and I don’t think it’s worth my time to scrape the captions off. So I’ll take out the photos I want to keep and the rest will go out. If I have seen the places she photographed, I have my own photos and memories and if I haven’t, they really don’t mean anything to me. It’s a bit sad to be disposing of all the hours of work she put into them; however she would have been the first one to advise me to get rid of them if they have served their purpose.

She spent years cleaning out my dad’s stuff and was determined not to leave me with the same task. By the time she died she had very few possessions and enjoyed the ones she did have. I know I have way too much stuff and I’m starting to go through what I have. I’m not at the point of being absolutely ruthless yet but I am making a start by sorting through the albums. After all, ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

What now? Scotland to Iceland 6

When I last wrote about our Scotland to Iceland trip, we were in Greenock port with a hole in the hull of the ship. Adventure Canada is extremely good at changing plans on the fly so they got busy and arranged a couple of tours of the local area for us.

On Thursday June 15 we boarded buses and headed for Stirling Castle. It was another scorcher and the heat radiated off the cobblestones inside the courtyard of the castle. I didn’t feel like taking a tour so I wandered around on my own, did a couple of drawings and tried to stay relatively cool. There were many interesting exhibits but the one at which I spent the most time was one on musical instruments of the time. There were various mock-ups of instruments that you could play and buttons to push that gave brief snippets of music played on the historical instruments. There were several young kids there and we politely took turns at the various stations.

I wandered the gardens and climbed up to the top of the castle for a view of the surrounding countryside. Not being much of a history buff I’ll leave it to you if you’d like to learn more about the history of the castle. https://www.stirlingcastle.scot/discover/about-the-castle/

We returned to the ship, cooled off a bit and then watched some delightful Scottish dancers. The dancers ranged in age from 5 or 6 to teenagers. I enjoyed watching the younger ones who were simultaneously having fun and regarding their performance as a very important occasion. We were hoping to be able to sail that night but it was to be another day of land based adventures before we actually cast off.

Seeking shade

Musical exhibit

Shaft of sunlight underground

Rose in the castle gardens

View from the top of the castle

Never say never

Well, 2023 has come and gone and here we are in 2024. It was a good year for us with travel and new and old things to keep us entertained. We are fortunate in our friendships and we just returned from a wonderful visit with relatives in Vancouver.

While I was there I made an interesting discovery. There aren’t many foods that I don’t like but brussel sprouts is pretty high up on the list. I’ve always found them bitter and I ate them if I could completely cover the taste with something else. Since folks generally serve brussel sprouts with turkey dinners, I found gravy and cranberry sauce did a good job of masking the taste. When my cousin suggested we have brussel sprouts one night for dinner I said they weren’t really my favourite. She told me she hadn’t liked them either if they were boiled but they were good roasted and I should try some.

I was willing to give them another try. Turns out she was right. I enjoyed them and even went back for a second helping. I’m always on the lookout for ways to increase the cruciferous veggies in my diet and I was pleased to have found a way to cook the sprouts that were not only palatable but delicious. When we got home and Richard did the first grocery shopping of the year, he bought a bag of brussel sprouts. He cooked them up as instructed and again, they were delicious. From now on I’ll be looking for them in the grocery store and whenever I see them, I’ll buy them. I’m not sure why adding brussel sprouts to my diet delights me but it does. Maybe it’s knowing that long standing tastes can change for the better or maybe it’s one of those very small things that I’ll be looking for and savouring in 2024.

The second thing that falls under the ‘never say never’ category isn’t quite as positive. I remember when I first taught high school we went cross country skiing almost every weekend during the winter. We also skied after school in the parks and golf courses around Calgary. There was always abundant snow and it was easy to get out for an hour or two. I haven’t had the motivation to get out on snowshoes or cross country skis for years now but that’s a different issue.

We flew home from Vancouver on New Year’s Eve and drove directly to our friends’ house for snacks and fireworks. They very kindly invited us to share the evening with them understanding that we would have very little food in the house. They live in a lake community on the south side of town and the community puts on a fireworks display on New Year’s Eve. We thought about going to the lake to watch but then decided to stay inside and watch the fireworks from the kitchen window instead. The fireworks display was short and beautiful. We didn’t have to go anywhere; we simply stood at the window with the lights off in the warm kitchen and watched. Now, that’s my kind of fireworks!

Not being as young as we used to be, and feeling no compulsion to stay around until the stroke of midnight, we left for home around 10:30. We walked out of the house and into the rain. Yes, RAIN! This is Calgary. It’s December 31 and, regardless of how lovely warmer temperatures feel, it just shouldn’t rain in the winter here! It wasn’t just a case of ‘can’t make up my mind to rain or snow’ either: it was a hard pounding rain. It should be cold and snowy at this time of year. Cold kills pine beetles and other creatures that we haven’t had to worry about at this latitude before. Snow lands on the glaciers and in the mountains and fills up our rivers in the spring. While I don’t particularly enjoy freezing my butt off, I don’t have to go to work and can get what I need when the weather warms slightly or when it’s not dumping snow. I couldn’t help but think that this coming summer we will, again, have a serious and prolonged forest fire season. Our snowiest month is usually March so there’s still time to replenish some of that ice and water in the mountains. I wouldn’t mind getting some of that snow now.

Anyway, the world bumbles along as do I. The sun is shining in an almost cloudless sky and the temperature is slightly below freezing. Odie is sitting beside me on his perch, head tucked into his back feathers having a nap and my tea cup is empty. Odie probably deserves his own post but that’s for later. Right now it’s time to make another cup of tea and smile at the memory of brussel sprouts and fireworks. In 2024 I’ll be savouring little nuggets such as these. May you also find small things each day that make you smile.

An early Christmas gift

A few weeks before Christmas I was doing my usual blitz of ornament making. This year I chose to use the scroll saw which I’ve neglected for the last couple of years. Turns out there was a reason for the neglect.

I’ve had difficulty for the last few years with blades pulling out of the holder when I was half way through the cut. A few people have looked at it and others have suggested solutions. I’ve bought and replaced parts and thought, in the end, my problems were due to operator error. So I’d try again.

Then I couldn’t even get two centimetres of a cut made before the blade would pop out of the bottom holder. I’d put it back in, try again and out it would pop. In addition the saw was making a rather unpleasant noise that scroll saws shouldn’t make. Fed up, I got out my jeweller’s saw and cut several of the ornaments by hand. It took longer than it would have with a co-operative scroll saw, but I didn’t have one of those.

Richard wanted to help me so he volunteered to take the saw apart to see if he could figure out what the problem was. He got the saw apart and determined that there was a bearing that was completely seized. That wasn’t necessarily the reason the blades kept pulling out but it probably accounted for the noise. We found the number of the bearing on the parts page of the instruction manual but weren’t sure where to go from there. Since the part was fairly small, and Jake is very good at figuring out how to fix things I took it to him. He did a bit of searching but wasn’t able to find anyone in Didsbury who had bearings small enough. He said if I could find a bearing I could use the drill press to press it out and press the new one in. I wasn’t too keen on that solution but I did start looking on websites of Calgary companies to see if I could find the proper replacement bearing. I found one place that had it in stock.

To the rescue!

As soon as I could, I headed off to get a new bearing. The person I talked to said he didn’t think they had anything that small but he looked in the computer and found what I needed. First problem solved. I asked if he knew where I could get the bearing replaced and he suggested I’d need a machine shop. I got on my phone and searched for machine shops in the area. I picked one that had been in business for quite a while and advertised that it was a family run company. I called, explained my problem and asked if they could help. He suggested that I bring the part in and he would look at it.

The door into the shop opened onto a dark hallway with a concrete floor and a sign pointing to a door down the hall to the right. I opened that door and saw a small room with a desk, a computer and various parts of machines on the desk and on the window sill. From the office I could see part of the shop itself with welding tanks, a drill press and other machines I didn’t recognize.

I waited for a few minutes until a short stocky man came around the corner. I explained what I needed and he took the scroll saw part and the new bearing out of the bag. He asked if I had a new bushing and when I said no, he turned the part over carefully in his hand and declared, “We make this work. We use the old one.” He asked me when I wanted the job finished and I told him I’d like it in the next couple of days. “I try my best. I do it as soon as I can,” he said. I wrote down my phone number on a pad of paper and he said he would call me when it was done.

I was a bit surprised when I got a call the next day saying the part was ready. It was late in the day and I told him I couldn’t pick it up then, but I’d be by the next day. When I arrived at his shop the next day I saw the part in a plastic bag sitting on the desk on top of the pad on which I had written my name and number. He came out of the back room and explained to me that he had found a new bushing and replaced the old one. He put the new bearing in and showed me the old one he took out. He also explained that he looked at the other bearing in the part and found it wasn’t seated properly so he pressed it back into the middle where it should be. I thanked him and asked how much I owed him. “No, no,” he said, “nothing.” I protested that it had cost him time and asked if I couldn’t pay him something. Again he said no but suggested that I write a Google review if I was happy with his work. I thanked him again and said I would write the review as soon as I got home. I also told him I would recommend his shop to anyone who needed a machine shop. He wished me a Merry Christmas and we were both smiling broadly when I left the shop.

I wrote the review when I got home and have had occasion to recommend him to one person so far. Getting the part fixed was a wonderful Christmas gift. I cleaned up the scroll saw, Richard was able to put the saw back together. I was then able to finish the ornaments much more quickly than I could have done with my jeweller’s saw.

Cleaning up the saw for reassembly

Sometimes when I watch too much of the news I’m convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket but then I meet someone like the machinist who, right in the middle of a busy time, was willing to spend his time to fix a niggly little part for me. He did more than I asked because he takes pride in his work and wanted the saw to work for me. It might not have taken him very long, I don’t know. What I do know is that he was generous with his time and skill and added something special to my preparations for Christmas. There is a story behind all of the objects I make and at the heart of this story is a man whose name I don’t know but whose smile I will always remember.

Back in business

Another rabbit hole

One of the things I love about being retired is the ability to investigate whatever strikes my fancy. We had friends over for dinner the other day and the talk turned to book binding. Craig makes lovely books and I bought one of his journals for Richard for his birthday. As we chatted it sounded more and more interesting so the next day I spent way too much time on YouTube looking at bookbinding videos.

I discovered that I have all the materials I need to bind books and there are a number of videos for beginners. Most of the videos suggest that linen thread is the best for binding. Off I went to Amazon but most of the thread there is expensive and already waxed. The video I was watching at the time recommended that you wax your own thread. I don’t remember the reason but it made sense at the time. The preferred wax is bee’s wax. It just so happens that I have a couple of pieces of bee’s wax courtesy of Mum’s sewing cabinet. She, too, used to sometimes wax her sewing thread.

So, where to find linen thread? Of course the videos give other possibilities of types of thread but finding linen thread became a challenge. At my lutherie lesson the next Tuesday I mentioned to Jake that I was on the lookout for linen thread. He thought for a moment and then said, “I think I might know where you can get some for free. Let me make a phone call.”

Later that day we headed to Bowden to visit a saddle maker Jake knew. He had been given a number of spools of linen thread at the dispersal of an estate. He couldn’t use them and hadn’t been able to sell them so he was giving them away. I came away with two spools with enough thread to last me and Craig forever. Being the curious sort, I also came away with an appreciation of how western saddles are made and the impeccable craftsmanship of Ocean Front Saddlery.

I couldn’t wait to try out some of the newly acquired linen thread so the next day I started looking up more complex ways of binding. I learned that the sections of pages folded together and then stitched to other sections to make a book are called signatures. Many of the sites talked about book cloth so I went on a search for that. Of course, you can buy it but you can also make your own. The easiest way is to use iron-on facing material used in garment construction. There’s also a product that has glue on both sides that you iron onto the fabric and then iron onto some kind of paper backing. Neither of those appealed to me and besides, part of the fun had become to find things I already had that would serve as bookmaking materials. Some people used white glue and others used wheat paste.

That one took me back to my childhood so I started looking up recipes for wheat paste. Turns out there are a few minor variations in the recipes and methods but all are pretty simple. I haven’t made any yet but it’s on the list.

A while ago one of my favourite shirts sprouted a hole and the material is so thin that there was no point in patching it. I took it into the shop to use for rags. As I was looking at book cloth information I thought of the shirt and went to retrieve it. Mostly book cloth is used for the spines of books but you can also use it on the covers. I’ve decided that I’m going to make the shirt into book cloth and make myself a journal / sketchbook. Add that to the list.

Another track led me to look up paper marbling. I’ve always admired the swirly patterns on the endpapers of old books and there are videos on how to do your own. You need a medium to slightly thicken water which you put in a tray and then spatter or drop ink or paint onto the surface. The colour spreads out and then you can manipulate it with the end of a paintbrush or special tools called rakes and combs which you can make fairly simply. This is another thing that is on my list to try. I have a bit of experience in making this kind of print because when I was in high school my long-suffering mother allowed me to put a layer of water in the bathtub and then drop oil-based inks onto the water and take prints from the oil. I remember making a number of cards and papers using that method. I also remember that I cleaned up after myself.

Part of what I find so attractive about bookmaking is that I can use up a bunch of the art and craft supplies that I have very carefully kept over the years. Sketch books are a good source of paper and I have already used one up in the dozen or so books I have made so far. I also have most of a ream of legal sized paper that I hardly ever use. Most of the videos on bookmaking suggest that you start out with ordinary printer or copy paper, which the legal sized paper is. Because I have framed a number of my coloured pencil pieces I have a small stock of matt board that will well for covers.

Of course all of this begs the question of what to do with the books when I get them made. I’ll use some of them and give some of them as gifts although not to friends that Craig and I have in common. He was there first after all. I will likely end up with more books than I know what to do with but at least some of the raw material in the house will have been transformed and I will have had a heck of a good time in the process. In case you are wondering, this will not replace my woodworking: it will complement it. I love working with wood but don’t get the chance to play much with colour. Books will give me a chance to use my coloured pencils to make things other than cards and framed pieces. I’m also experimenting with using old calendar pages pasted to file folders as cover material. So far this isn’t a huge success because the file folders curl despite pressing them between two boards.

All in all, there are enough materials and possibilities to keep me entertained for quite a while.

A 3 foot X 4 foot oops (Scotland to Iceland 5)

 We certainly didn’t expect such hot weather in Glasgow. It was up to +30 some days and that is way too hot for me. Plus, we were on the fourth floor of the hotel, and I can say with absolute certainty that heat rises. In order to try to keep the guests from melting into puddles, the hotel purchased a bunch of swamp coolers. Ours didn’t work and when one of the young women from the front desk came up to help with it, she ended up with a free physics lesson. I sat back and observed as she and Richard tried to trouble-shoot the problem. In the end we got another cooler that worked - sort of.

View from our top floor room

If you put tap water in it you didn’t get a cooler room: what you did get was a very muggy hot room. The solution to this was to make several trips to the ice machine with the ice bucket, fill the cooler with ice and then top it off with water. This operation made sitting and doing nothing just about bearable. We looked forward to getting on the ship because the AC there works, sometimes too well, but it works.

While in Glasgow we mainly focused on staying cool. We took a walk over to the hotel where we were to meet the Adventure Canada group. We wanted to see how long it took us and make sure we knew where we were going.  The last day in the hotel we found an air- conditioned tea shop in a mall. I wanted to pick up some fruit tea to make iced tea on the ship. We were met by a lovely lady named Annie. On hearing our accents she wanted to know all about our trip. She told us it was her birthday so we sang “Happy Birthday” to her in the middle of the shop. She let me try several of the fruit teas and I ordered a chai latte. On the ship tea and coffee is available almost any hour of the day or night but the selection is limited. I found out that they had a chili chai, one of my favourites. Annie asked me if I wanted to try it. I told her I didn’t need to: I knew I would like it. I bought fruit tea, chili chai, tea filters because the chai was loose rather than in bags. Then we headed back to our hotel.

Adventure Canada check in

On Wednesday June 14 we walked to the Adventure Canada hotel and joined those milling around in the lobby. We picked up our various bits of identification and headed out for lunch. On the Adventure Canada trips much of the people moving is done by means of colour groups.This year we were in the blue group and were one of the later groups to board buses to take us to the port of Greenock, a 40 minute drive from Glasgow. I hadn’t done my geography homework and expected us to leave from the city of Glasgow itself.

Emirates air crew

As we sat outside in the bus waiting to leave we saw an air crew from Emirates airlines and were quite interested in the uniforms the women were wearing, very different from the airlines we are used to travelling on. The bus ride was hot and when we got to the ship a couple of disappointments awaited us. There is a particular configuration of cabin that we like and we had asked for it in our pre-tip emails. This cabin has a bit of a sitting room, a bedroom and, most importantly, two bathrooms. It’s a luxury but it makes things so much easier when we both have to be somewhere at a given time. The cabin we were assigned to had only one bathroom. Richard allowed time for everyone to get onboard and then went to chat with the Adventure Canada  staff. They apologized and didn’t know if they would be able to change our cabin for the first trip but, since we were on back to back trips, they said they would rectify the situation on the second half of our voyage. We weren’t delighted but knew we could make it work.

The second disappointment came when we attended the first information session. The plan was to set sail that night. MJ, our expedition leader, informed us as gently as he could that the ship had docked in a strong wind which had pushed it onto and dragged it along the pilings on the side of  the dock. The dock is sized for huge container ships and the pilings acted as a very efficient can opener on our relatively small vessel. The result was a 3X4 foot hole in the bow on the starboard side. We weren’t going anywhere until the hole was patched. The patch job was complicated by the ship’s ice hardened hullwhich consists of a double layer of steel. There was a boundary fence set up on the dock beside the ship. This allowed welders to work safely and discouraged us from taking photos. The next day we ate dinner with a local woman who was volunteering as an interpreter for tourists. Before she retired she had been a marine insurance adjuster. She told us that the insurance companies would be fighting it out for years to determine who was liable for the hole in the hull. There was a licensed pilot onboard at the time. I managed to get a photo later in the trip when the hole was patched but the painting hadn’t been finished. It was quite a spectacular patch.

The patch

So what do you do with a boatload of people who expect to be sailing in the Scottish Islands but are stuck on a boat in port for an unknown length of time? Luckily Adventure Canada is well practiced at responding to such situations and they quickly concocted an alternate plan. Stay tuned for the next instalment to find out what we did while living on that ship in Greenock.

And, and, and

Okay. This is going to be a bit of a whine but also a bit of an explanation as to why the posts about the summer in Scotland and Iceland have been so slow in coming.

I said in the post I just uploaded that I’ve been in the shop having a good time, and that’s true. The part I didn’t tell you is that I’ve been procrastinating. That will be no surprise to some of you. There are a bunch of annoying little things, mostly to do with technology, that have dampened my enthusiasm for getting on with the posts about the summer.

There’s always the issue of how to handle photos, not necessarily which ones to put into the blog, but where to store them, how to access them, and how to coax them from wherever they happen to be hiding into the blog. I’ll spare you the details except to say that I work on a Mac and it wants to have absolute control of where I store my photos and how I handle them. The blogging software I use is a Google product and Google wants to have absolute control over where I store my photos and how I access them. I use my Android phone a good deal and Google is happy with that. The Mac? Not so much. I also used a regular camera on the trip and have two sets of photos to wrestle into some sort of order. I know: it’s a first world problem and I could solve it by using one device to take pictures and sticking with one platform or the other. Only one problem: I don’t want to! I like the Mac and the Android phone. I don’t want to change the software I use to publish the blog partly because I’ve been using it for 15 years.

I don’t seem to think in the same way as the folks who are responsible for photo and blogging software do. I set out to do something that seems like it should be simple and it turns out not to be. I want to be able to search for a photo by date and not lose it. To do this I need to download the photo and then upload it. The thumbnails are so small I have to guess at which photo I want or write down the number. Once I figure out where a photo is and manage to get it into the post, why can’t I drag and drop it where I want it? It’s way easier to write and post a blog entry within a couple of days of when I take the photos on my phone. I’m a bit late for that on the Scotland to Iceland story.

Another thing that drives me bats is how to notify you when there’s a new post. I could solve this one by just setting up a regular schedule for writing and posting and sticking to it. Then everyone would know what to expect. Again, I don’t want to. I enjoy writing the blog, mostly, and I don’t want it to become a job. I tend to write when I want to say something and that’s not always predictable. If anyone is going to read the blog I figure it’s only fair to let you know that there’s something new to look at.

When I do send an email notice some of you get it and some of you don’t. I’ve tried several different ways to notify you. Some providers seem to think I belong in the spam folder. I’m okay with that but I’d like you to have the chance to decide rather than having them decide for you. Some of the methods I’ve tried result in my messages bouncing back. I don’t even make it to the spam folder. I’m looking into another way of notifying people but that isn’t without its own issues and it’s another thing that gets in the way when I think of writing a blog post.

So there you have it. I’m hoping that by acknowledging all these little irritations I’ll feel less like running and hiding whenever I think of producing content for my few loyal followers. In my ideal world the technology would be easy to use and would be at my service. I feel as though I’m at the service of technology. At this point I’m tempted to forget about the rest of the Scotland to Iceland trip but I know some of you want to read about it and I promised I’d cover it in the blog. There are some good stories to be told from that trip so stay tuned. I appreciate your support.