Merry Christmas (2021)

It’s a perfect day. It is Christmas Eve but days like this happen every once in a while for no apparent reason. In some ways today is nothing special. We are hanging out with Odie who happens to be semi-quiet at the moment. The temperature is going between -19 and -20 C, and the sky is a brilliant blue. It’s actually pleasant in the sun.

    We had a dump of snow last night and when we went out to shovel this morning Richard got warm enough to take off his parka. The snow was powdery so it wasn’t terribly heavy work although my Fitbit did tell me I got 23 minutes of cardio out of the activity. We don’t often shovel snow together, but today, as I was walking down the hall I saw Richard putting his keys in his pocket. I asked him if he was going to shovel the snow. He was and I was just on my way to the back door for my coat and boots. We decided to do it together. It goes much faster that way. We did the front walk, then the deck. I don’t know why I want to shovel the deck. Maybe it’s because I love to see the warm rich colours of the wood as I look out the window. Maybe it’s because I imagine taking a chair and a cup of tea to sip in the snowy landscape. I haven’t actually gotten the chair or the tea but if the deck is clear the possibility is there.

    I have wonderfully warm clothes. I wore the down ‘duvet’ that is slime green and that I got years ago for half price at MEC. I hate the colour, although I have friends who love it and I’ve had compliments on it while I’ve been shopping. There’s no accounting for taste, mine or anyone else’s. I wore the sealskin mitts that I bought from a hunter in Pond Inlet, and I topped the outfit off with a toque I crocheted just the other day. The pattern said you could finish it in an hour. Um, not in my universe! I pulled the thing down at least 6 times but ended up with a result I’m happy with. Oh, and I wore my new boots. They are actually a Christmas present but Richard wanted me to try them on to make sure they fit and once I knew what they were, I saw no point in having him wrap them up and put them under the tree even though he offered.
    

    They are Wind River X-ice and the only boots that CBC Marketplace found to really be anti-slip. (This is not a commercial.) I won’t say I can’t slip in them but if I don’t push off too hard with my toe they are amazingly steady on ice. I’m still careful crossing slippery streets but it’s nice not to have to do the ‘senior shuffle’ quite so much.

First coat of poly on the uke

   

 
 Another reason today is perfect is that I’m done making Christmas presents and have been for about a week. This has never happened before and I found myself a bit at loose ends because I had time to spare. I’ve been able to concentrate on getting ‘Lilred’ my current ukulele ready for finish. Every time I thought I was ready to go and get the finish, I found another flaw that I needed to take care of. This could go on forever, of course, so today I finally dunked the cotton pad into the polyurethane and wiped on the first coat. Because we’re not going anywhere for Christmas I’ll be able to babysit the finish which takes about 3 hours to dry between coats. I should be able to get another coat on shortly and then keep building up coats over the next few days. I haven’t worked enough with this finish to know exactly how to handle it to get the best results so it will be kind of fun figuring it out. The nice thing is that it’s a thin finish and I can always sand it down and start again if I need to. I don’t think it will come to that.


    Tonight we will head off to the Christmas Eve service, masked and triple-vaccinated. I’ve only missed one Christmas Eve service in this church since I was about 14. In 2019 we had the privilege of visiting family in Vancouver and attended a late service there. Last year we had shower curtains up to make individual booths for the singers and there were no people other than those involved in the service in the sanctuary. This year we have a cap on numbers. People signed up ahead of time and vaccine status will be checked at the door.

    Two years ago we had barely heard of Covid 19 and last year there were no vaccines by this time. This year we thought we might be getting out of the woods when Delta and then Omicron descended. We had just started to invite people, one or two at a time, to see our newly renovated house. That’s on hold again. With all the changes I’m becoming a bit more used to plans being cancelled and I think I’m calmer when things don’t work out the way I want them to. There are still days when I’m just plain mad at all the upheaval in the world in general and my world in particular but then I have days like today when I’m both happy and content.

    I have a house that is now a delight to live in. We have heat and running water, sunshine, snow, and sparrows in bushes loudly expressing their opinions. Odie looks at me, blinks his eyes, makes purring noises, and laughs whenever we do. Most importantly, though, I have kind and generous people in my life. Although we won’t be gathering in person again this year, it doesn’t matter so much. Christmas Day will be slow and casual and there are many ways I can contact those who enrich my life. I may not be able to hug them but I hope that will come. So Merry Christmas. I hope 2022 will bring good things to each of you each day and if, like me, you have days when you’re just plain cross at the whole world, may the memories of perfect days when there is really nothing special going on, lighten your mood if only for an instant.

Ukulele #3 update

  

'Lilred' the current uke under construction

     A photo turned up in my ‘memories’ on my phone the other day. It was a year ago and the photo was of Richard’s ukulele. I'm about at the same point on my current build, maybe a bit farther along. Time for the bridge. On the other two ukuleles Jake has made the bridges for me. A bridge comes out of a small piece of wood and the idea of getting a piece that size near a router bit or even a drill press makes me quite nervous.
    It’s not that I’m against power tools or woodworking machines but I am very nervous around them. They get things done much much faster than I can with hand tools but things can also go wrong much much faster. I always feel I lack control around them, even the ones I use fairly often like the band saw and the spindle sander. But it’s not even that that makes me hesitant to flip the switch on the machines. It’s the maintenance.
    I may be sounding like a broken record here. If my car doesn’t work I can take it to a mechanic. If my bandsaw isn’t in top condition, which at the moment neither of the two I own is, it’s up to me or me and Richard-the-Long-Suffering to figure out what the problem is and to fix it. I find the prospect overwhelming and tend to throw up my hands and walk away allowing the machine to collect dust, or I keep using it in less than optimal condition until it completely balks. Richard is good at troubleshooting. Even if he doesn’t use the machines, he can see how they are put together and figure out how they ought to operate. Working on shop machinery is not his idea of a good time so I hesitate to ask him for help.
    But back to the bridge. I’ve been thinking hard about whether I could learn now to make a bridge using only hand tools, not because I’m a purist but because I’m a chicken. I could learn to use the router table using guide blocks so that the operation would be as safe as possible but I wouldn’t enjoy it. I’m in the truly wonderful position of not having to do any kind of woodwork in order to put food on the table so enjoying the process is my first priority.
    I’ve been experimenting with various tools for the past month or so and, over the course of nine practice bridges, I developed a method of working that left me confident enough to actually cut into the piece of wood designated as the bridge for the current ukulele. As I was cleaning up the walls of the small mortise that holds the piece of bone I pressed a bit too hard and split the whole block of wood lengthwise. I got out the glue. (No I'm not going to point out the split in the photo.)
    I’ve seen tests on YouTube and read articles that say that modern wood glues, when properly applied and cured, are stronger than the wood they bond and certainly when joints I’ve made have broken it’s the surrounding wood that has failed and not the glue joint.
    I glued and clamped, applying sawdust to the wet glue as a filler and to hide the join. I did this several times and then picked up the work where I left off. In an ideal world the bridge of the uke needs to be of one piece of wood because it takes the most strain and is essential to the proper intonation of the instrument. Since I didn’t have another piece of rosewood and I wanted the bridge done, I took a chance.
    When Jake checked it, he thought I would need to build another one because the repair wouldn’t be strong enough. He asked my permission to try to break it. Might as well find out now rather than get it on the instrument and have it fail at that point. He wasn’t able to break it so we decided it was probably strong enough to withstand the stresses of the strings as the instrument is played. I still have some work left to do on it before it will be ready to install and I’ll see how it holds up as I work it. Jake has some more rosewood that I can use if I need to, or choose to, make another bridge. Regardless of whether I make another bridge for this instrument or not, I intend to keep building instruments and I will be quite content to build my bridges using hand tools.
    Jake can build a bridge in about half an hour. It takes me probably three to five hours to build one but I listen to my audio books, take my time and am perfectly content. Because the band saw is not cutting accurately enough when I’m ripping stock, I’ve even taken to ripping the blanks for the bridges with a hand saw. It’s a challenge and the more I do it, the more accurate I’ll get. I understand hand tools. The tool has a sharp edge that you push or pull through the wood. Period. If I keep my tools sharp and keep working to develop my skills I will have a system that I can manage comfortably.
    I’m not ruling out a time when I’ll choose to have the machines do the work, and I’m not going to sell off the ones I have in the shop. For now I’m content to poke away at my woodworking tasks sharpening as I go. As I putter, I tip my hat to my grandfather and great uncle who were trained on hand tools even as they embraced the speed and accuracy of machines.

Richard's ukulele under construction a year ago