Ukulele #4

Ukulele #4 went home tonight! This is the first of my ukulele builds that has gone to someone outside our household and it’s an exciting day. Am I happy with the build? Overall, I am and on its faults I’m going to refer to Leonard Cohen “Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

1, 2, 3, 4 all in a row

What’s next? I’m going to build a simpler instrument for the next one. It’s called a ‘pack-a-lele.’ It’s another of Jake’s very cool ideas and uses one piece of thick timber for the neck and the body. Jake cut the pieces for me quite a while ago and I’m going to take apart the first instrument I ever built (a mountain dulcimer that never was in tune) and hope I can use the top and back for the top and back of the pack-a-lele.

Back, make of deck offcuts

#4 headstock detail

#4 rosette detail

After that, I hope to build another ukulele with the intention of taking very careful notes and writing up every stage of the process so it can be turned into a book. Knowing how long it has taken me to build each instrument so far, this could be a multi-year project, and I don’t mind that at all!

Interesting and Unimportant

When we looked out the window this morning we saw a car hauler parked in front of the house. This was quite exciting because we don’t get out much and are working on the official designation of ‘nosy neighbours.’ There was one SUV parked on the top deck of the hauler and a couple of vehicles we didn’t recognize were parked on the street. We watched from inside for a few minutes and then Richard, coffee in hand, went out to talk to the guy working around the rig.

He said he was from Cape Breton and when Richard replied that he was born in Newfoundland, the guy said that the Cape Bretoners and the Newfoundlanders used to throw grenades at each other. The Newfoundlanders would toss the grenades and the Cape Bretoners would pick them up, pull the pins, and throw them back. They both laughed. The guy said he did a lot of single deliveries of vehicles and was kept quite busy.

As we watched he attached the ramps that led from the trailer to the ground. Then he took off the chains that secured the wheels of the SUV to the trailer. With that done he got into the vehicle and started to back it up off the trailer. I was quite alarmed when I saw the vehicle lurch and thought, at first, that one of the wheels had slipped off the tracks. When I looked more closely I saw that the wheels had settled into a kind of a sling made of chain. From there with another lurch they moved out of the sling and onto the lower track. Richard told me it had something to do with getting the right clearance for various types of vehicles.

The hauler has a separate motor to control the hydraulic arms that raise and lower the various parts of the trailer allowing vehicles to be parked above each other for transport. As the driver manipulated the various arms it reminded me of a grasshopper stretching first one leg and then the other. We thought he was delivering the SUV to someone in the neighbourhood but when we looked out later, the SUV had moved from the top of the trailer to the bottom and two other vehicles that were parked on the street were now on the top deck. The last vehicle to be loaded was a tundra buggy of some sort. The whole process took several hours and when we looked out in the middle of the afternoon the car hauler and its cargo was gone. Why, we wondered, had the driver chosen our street to shuffle the positions of the vehicles. Where were they headed and wasn’t it possible to pick them up in a last-on-first-off order? We will never know but for a while today our front street was more interesting than YouTube. As I said, we don’t get out much.

The second interesting thing today has to do with the current ukulele build. Because of the stage I am at in the build I have three different kinds of epoxy on hand. Mostly I use the 5 minute variety and when my old stuff expired i.e. became rock hard in the bottles, I bought a hardware store version before I got to one of the tool stores in town to buy a brand I like better. In addition to replacing my regular 5 minute epoxy, I also needed epoxy with a set-up time of more than 5 minutes. I tried Lowe’s and Canadian Tire and found only a marine epoxy. I almost bought it and then realized that it would dry white. Nope, that wasn't going to work. Using good old Google, I tracked down a local source for slow cure epoxy that dries clear but, according to their website, they were sold out so I resorted to Amazon. Once the long cure epoxy came, I happily went about the repairs that required an open time of more than 5 minutes.

Today I was chasing a few minor imperfections and picked up the resin and the hardener bottles of epoxy. I mixed up the two parts and applied it. I went into the kitchen to get a cup of tea expecting to find the epoxy had hardened when I went back to the shop minutes later. Back in the shop I found it was still tacky. I stood puzzled for a moment; then the light dawned.  I had picked up the slow cure variety so instead of waiting 5 minutes I had to wait 60 to 80 minutes. Oh well, better to pick up the slow cure when you expected the quick cure than the other way around. I did, however, take the opportunity to label the slow cure bottles with red tape so that the next time I’m too lazy to read the containers I’ll have a clear reference.

I think it should be cured by now so I’ll head into the shop to see what other imperfections I need to find and fix before I can proceed to sand the instrument and put finish on it. I didn’t used to like the process of finishing wood because it takes so much time and patience. Now I’m looking forward to seeing the wood grain pop as I progress through successive coats of finish. I haven’t made enough instruments at this point to have a finish perfectly dialled in so it will be a bit of an adventure.

Stay tuned.

Involved in a scam

It started at church this morning. Richard got a notification on his phone that someone was at our front door. We wondered about it but it wasn’t until later when we replayed the footage and heard part of a conversation that we realized someone had given our address in an ad for a TV on Facebook Marketplace.

One guy came to the door, left and returned in about an hour. He was joined by a second guy. Turns out that the first guy had paid $250 as a deposit on a TV. They decided, when they realized we weren’t home, that it was probably a scam and they left. Someone was out $250. I think there was one other visitor to our door before we got home.

At lunch time a young guy with an English accent also came about a TV for sale. Luckily he hadn’t transferred any money. We thought he would probably be the last person because people who wanted the phantom TV would have been on it early in the day. A few moments ago, when we were out filling the bird feeder, three guys pulled up in a truck also wanting to buy the TV. They had come from Marlborough across the city. We encouraged them to go to the police and to contact their bank because, they too, had paid a deposit. From this latest group we learned that the scammers used the photo of an older woman in the ad. One of the guys told us he had cautioned his friend to be wary but when they saw the photo of the woman they thought that the ad must be legit.

All of the people we chatted with were really nice and apologized for bothering us. I know many people use Facebook Marketplace all the time and have had no trouble. I’m angry with whoever hatched this scam, not because having people show up at the door was particularly bothersome, but because the scammer at the least, had people driving all over they city wasting their time. At worst, people were out  hard-earned money.

We all know that there are scammers out there and we do our best not to be tricked. I guess I’m very fortunate in that I don’t come across something like this very often. I have been scammed once and came close to being scammed a second time. I feel for the folks whose day became much less than they expected because of this scammer. I hope the remainder of their day went better and that they are able to somehow recoup their money. I also admit to hoping that this scam comes back to bite the scammer in the butt!

Memories of spring break

Today is the end of spring break for teachers and students herein the public system. It’s been a long time since that mattered to me but this year I find myself thinking back on how much I looked forward to spring break and how the few years that we travelled to the coast to cycle now loom large in the catalogue of holiday memories.

I remember staying later than I meant to at school so a couple of students could finish a project. I remember the growing anticipation as the break approached. I don’t remember exactly how many years we made the trip west with the Elbow Valley Cycle Club but on one of the first trips I remember being in our hotel room in Washington where a few people were playing cards. I was lying back on the bed and I drifted off in the midst of the fun and laughter only to awaken when Richard closed the door as the last of the visitors left. I was always tired when holidays came around.

We did our fair share of cycling in the rain and some trips were wetter than others. Some trips were entirely in Canada and some ventured into the San Juan Islands and onto the Olympic Peninsula in the US. Our starting place was usually Sydney on Vancouver Island. The hotel we stayed in overlooked the sea and many of the rides went along the sea wall. It was always a treat to go to the coast in March, to leave the mounds of snow in Calgary, or if not snow the brown left over from winter, and land in the warm moist air where there were carpets of green. Often the flowers were starting to bloom and sometimes the cherry trees were a riot of blossoms.

We took ferries between various islands and travelled on the lowest level with huge transport trucks for company. We were generally the first off the ferries which gave us a chance to get through the narrow exits and up the hills before the flood of traffic. It is always uphill from a ferry dock and we quickly learned to put our bikes into a low gear on the way down to the ferry so we would be prepared for the climb on the other side.

We ate smoked salmon and Dungeness crab and as much clam chowder as we could hold. I certainly wasn’t going to come from the prairies to the sea coast and eat beef. Often there were grocery stores within walking distance from our hotels and we bought supplies for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes we chose to buy food for dinner as well and stay in our room with an urban picnic rather than eat in a restaurant.

I don’t know what year it was or where we were exactly the day we sat in the sun against the wall of our motel, ate coleslaw, bread, cheese and ham and were entirely content. At home it was snowing but in the fading coastal light we were warm.

Of course memory is a great editor and looking back it all seems idyllic. I have conveniently edited out the times we got soaked through and squelched our way into a shop or fast food joint in order to get warm before going back out to cycle more miles in the rain. I have almost forgotten about the time I caught a cold and felt miserable for most of the trip. Chances are, I will not take trips like these again but when spring break rolls around I can pull up the memories and, in my imagination, sit against that wall in the sun eating bread and cheese and being content with the world.

Urban sketching and patience

As many of you know, I have written before about my fascination with drawing and my rather large collection of ‘how to draw’ books. It wasn’t a book that set me off down the current rabbit hole and even though it was only a few days ago, I don’t remember what did but here I am, firmly in the middle of all the information I can find on urban sketching.

This is a bit of a strange departure because I’ve been focusing on drawing things in my immediate environment, a small and relatively confined space, and I have often found that overwhelming. Why then would anyone in their right mind start looking at drawing/ sketching (I’m still not sure of the difference between those two terms) something as complex as a street scene? The first answer is that I really like some of the works I’m seeing in people’s sketch books and I’d like to be able to do that.

Odie in the dining room

A bit of a side-track here but it is relevant. I was chatting the other day with one of my longest-standing friends who often says that she has no patience. Lately she has begun to refurbish old pieces of furniture and has found herself lost in the process and enjoying it. ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting,’ she mused, ‘if at my age I finally developed patience?’ We talked a bit more and as I thought outloud, I realized that a good determiner of whether I have patience with a certain activity or not involves whether I love it enough to put up with the necessary frustration that comes with learning how to do it or getting better at it if I already have some skill. If the activity itself, beyond the outcome, is sufficiently rewarding I’ll keep at it and go as slowly as I need to in order to get infinitesimally closer to my goal. The other part of that is if the goal is engaging enough it provides motivation for me to stay with the process.

Now, back to the current rabbit hole. As I looked at urban sketchbooks I was struck by the use of line and the way in which many of the sketchers used a limited number of colours of wash to create their sketches. When I started looking at the videos I found many people urging the newbie to simplify and giving permission for things not to be 100% visually accurate. What you want, they said, is the sense of the place and you can leave things out, add things in, or move things around to get the result you want. Seems to me that’s the way I used to explain the process of revising writing to students. That made me feel a little less anxious about making an attempt.

Gave up on the fountain pen

Then I came across one person who said that he had come to sketching late at the age of 19. Well, if that’s late I’m hooped! His next remark hit home though. He said he had been afraid to start because he knew he wasn’t good at drawing and didn’t want to commit pencil to paper until he knew that he could do a good job. Then he realized that unless he put pencil to paper he wouldn’t have the chance to get good at it. That’s obvious but I often find that what I know in my head is quite different from my willingness to move out of my comfort zone to attempt something new.

Learning to draw isn’t new to me but it’s something I move away from and then get pulled back to. If written before about the F grade I got in a drawing course at university. Since then I’ve taken a couple of drawing courses and then let it go. Most recentlyI have filled one sketch book. The first of those drawings are from 2016. Then there’s a break and I started up again in 2020. There are only a handful of drawings in the second sketchbook for 2021 and 2022 but I have filled a sketchbook with neurographic drawings in that time. Now I’m pulled again in the direction of more representational work.

Some urban sketchers recommend working directly in ink with markers; some work first by blocking in the rough shapes with pencil; others swear by fountain pens for the initial line work. I went scurrying through boxes and came up with four fountain pens I had forgotten about that date back to my university days. I unearthed some prehistoric ink and found that chunks of it had solidified. I scooped out the chunks and loaded up the one fountain pen that has a mechanism to pull ink from a bottle.

That experiment was not a great success. Even though I cleaned the pen thoroughly, it alternated between not making any kind of a mark and dumping blobs of ink onto the paper. Ah yes, the joys of pen and ink. I made a drawing of part of my study and one of Odie’s cage against the window. Then I decided to work from a photo and actually put some water colour into the sketch. I started by blocking out shapes in pencil and then using a marker over them. Heeding the advice of the internet artists, I didn’t worry about correcting all of the lines that turned out to be in the wrong place.

It’s a start and thoughtful practice will help. I’m finding that sketching is a bit like building an instrument: you have to be aware of all of the parts and the whole at the same time. That’s a tall order and just as I think I’ve got one shape nailed I realize that the proportion or the vanishing point is off. I’m pleased that I didn’t give in to the temptation to endlessly chase my tail over it though.

Although I was hesitant to actually use watercolour paints in the sketch, I enjoyed mixing the colours. Some of them were surprisingly intense when they hit the paper. Oh well, make a mental note for next time. The resulting sketch is out of proportion and I clearly have very little control over the medium of water colours. I used to be better when I studied stage design in university so maybe I can dredge up some of that previous knowledge.

You have to start somewhere

Anyway, at this point, it’s an intriguing pass time. I have no idea how long I’ll keep working at it or if I’ll abandon it completely at some point. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what level of patience this will require and whether or not I’m up to the challenge.

Urban water stories

Today I’m thinking about water, sometimes too much, sometimes too little. In December of last year it got really cold which is not surprising for this part of the country. Our house is old and, despite new triple-pane windows, it’s still leaky. We have to turn down the humidity in the winter so we don’t get frost on the windows that haven’t been replaced. What was surprising this year is that we noticed condensation on the inside of the light tubes that we have in the kitchen and bathroom. Why condensation now when there had never been any before?

We were puzzled but wiped the condensation off and waited to see what would happen. We didn’t think of looking in the attic until I got hit by a couple drips from the bathroom fan. Ok, we have a problem. I got the ladder, lifted the hatch to the attic and had a look around with a flashlight. There was a layer of ice on the inside of the roof and, instead of being distributed evenly, the insulation was in mounds in some places and non-existent in others.

We considered getting up into the attic and evening it out but we didn’t really want to be crawling around up there in the cold. Richard to the rescue. He got online and found a company called Attic Rain. Yup, that’s what we’d be in for if we didn’t do something before the temperature warmed up and all the ice on the inside of the roof melted.

Sucking out old insulation

They came quite quickly. The guy thought, when he looked at the house from the outside,  it would be a straightforward job. Then he got into the house and had a look in the attic. We have renovated this house so many times I’ve lost count but I think the most recent one was #5. In the course of these renos we have drastically changed the roofline and there are some spots so tight that only a small person can crawl from one part of the house to another in the attic.

The good news was that the problem was fixable. The bad news was that it would be expensive. Apparently when we had the pot lights (all 25 of them) put in they weren’t properly sealed. Perhaps the electrician thought the contractor was going to do that and the contractor thought the electrician was going to do it but, whatever the cause, it didn’t get done. We were in for rain not only in the attic but in all the rooms where condensation could drip from the pot lights.

When we told friends about the situation they advised us to go back to the contractor and negotiate to get it fixed. That was a good idea but we were more concerned with getting the job done quickly so we decided to go with Attic Rain. They came the next week. It took a day but they sucked out as much of the old insulation as they could. Some of it was wood chips, sealed the pot lights and then blew in new cellulose. For the last week or so temperatures have again been in the deepfreeze and the only indoor showers we have had are the ones we have taken intentionally which brings me to the next story.

Old insulation waiting for pick-up

In the early hours of Tuesday morning a fire in the next block to us burned a garage to the ground. We didn’t know anything about it until we were texting with a neighbour who was walking her dog and saw the sheet of ice made by water from the fire hydrant at the end of our block. Apparently the hydrant didn’t shut off properly and Wednesday we got a notice saying that our water would be shut off but that there would be water trailers available so that we could get water. 

That morning I was running the hot water for some reason when I thought that I was probably wasting water and I could have used less if I’d heated the kettle. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘I know how to conserve water if I have too and this once won’t hurt.’ Then in the afternoon we got notice that the water would be shut off.

We ran around and got the various coolers, jugs and thermoses we use for camping and filled them with water. I intended to have a shower after I had finished in the shop for the day but by supper time other things had interfered. Luckily we still had water so I managed to take a quick shower before the water went off. We were pleasantly surprised when the water was back on by the next morning. 'Well,' we thought. 'that wasn't too bad.' The fact that the water trailers hadn't moved should have been a clue.

When Richard was coming home that afternoon he saw some guys from the city on the neighbour’s property trying to find the water shut off. He talked to them and found that the water was going to be shut off again, this time for several days. Meanwhile all sorts of equipment started to show up near our house. There was a truck with a load of plywood and other bits and pieces used to shore up a trench while guys are working in it. A backhoe was parked at the other end of the street and both ends of the block now sported No Through Traffic signs.

We hadn’t yet finished using the water we collected on the first go round so we filled everything up again and, sure enough, part way through the afternoon the water was turned off. We aren’t sure how long the water will be off and we’ll probably have to get more water from the trailer sometime today. It’s a bit inconvenient but we are used to conserving water when we go camping and can take a shower using a bike bottle. We are being careful with how many dishes we use and can manage to wash them using a minimum amount of water for washing and rinsing. We have a dedicated jug that we set on the picnic table and use for hand washing when we’re camping. We got by with that during the latest renovation when, for a month, our only source of water was the shop sink. At that time we had a working toilet. This time we need to fill the tank manually and that is the thing that takes the most water.

It’s much warmer today so fetching water won’t be such a chore. All of this has made me acutely aware of how much we depend on the technology and infrastructure that surrounds us in cities. I know that when the water comes back on, using the dishwasher and having a shower will be pure delight, for a while until I fall back into complacency. In the meantime, I’m going to hold off on that shower in the hope that the water will be back on soon. Just because I know how to take a shower by heating water and using a bike bottle doesn't mean I really want to.

In praise of kale chips

It’s been a while since my last blog post. I’ve had a few ideas but haven’t applied the butt to the chair to get them down and I’m now behind at least two posts according to my self-imposed schedule.

Things have been chugging along pretty well and I thought I’d bring folks up to date on the eating plan. I have a few sources of very tasty recipes. The food is satisfying and I’m having difficulty getting in all the different types of foods that are recommended in a day. I’m very glad I didn’t give away some of the pants that used to fit me because I can now get back into them.

I’m not really a person who needs a lot of snacks but unless I eat something between meals I can’t get all the food types in. I’m okay with fruit, veggies, and beans in general. The issue comes when I try to get 3 servings of beans, 1 serving of cruciferous vegetables, and 2 servings of greens each day. I can usually manage 2 out of 3 types of food. I like smoothies which are a good way to get the greens, although I don’t want a smoothie every day. In the last few days I’ve gone back to making kale chips. Although some people think kale is the worst vegetable ever, I don’t mind it in salads, soups, or pasta sauce. Still, kale comes in huge bunches and it’s hard to use it all up before it wilts.

Most of the recipes for kale chips use the oven. I’m not fond of anything that needs babysitting while it cooks and you have to watch kale chips closely so that they don’t burn when you do them in the oven. There is another option: the dehydrator. We have one which hasn’t had all that much use lately so when I found a recipe for kale chips that used it, I dragged a chair over to the cupboard so I could retrieve it from the very top shelf. I had to wash a bit of dust off the top before I could use the dehydrator but it works like a charm.

Wash the kale; take out the tough centre ribs; wash the leaves and break them into smaller pieces; drizzle a bit of olive oil on them; mix them around so they get coated and add spices. It takes very little oil to make the spices stick. I’m a huge fan of freshly ground black pepper and my favourite so far is a bit of salt and freshly ground pepper. I’ve also used chilli powder and smoked paprika. I liked the chilli but I was a bit too stingy with the smoked paprika and I can only taste the merest hint of it on some of the chips.

Once the leaves are all spiced up I put them on the trays and turn the dehydrator on for an hour and 15 minutes; set it and forget it. These chips are such a hit with me that I made a special trip to the grocery store yesterday for two bunches of kale. I made one batch of chips when I got home and another batch this morning. Extra salt and oil isn’t the best thing for this eating plan although I’m not using very much of either on the chips and, if it solves part of the problem of being able to get enough variety of veggies in a day, I think the compromise will be worth it.

Another idea I have is to make batches of roasted chickpeas. Fruit has been my go-to snack if I want something around 4 p.m. While there is nothing wrong with fruit, having a legume or a green snack will add variety. I will have to babysit the chickpeas in the oven though.

Another good find is popcorn. Of course it works as a snack and I’ve found that putting a bit of balsamic vinegar in a spray bottle and spritzing the popped kernels allows spices to stick to it. As with the kale chips, salt and pepper is my favourite. I’ve also found that popcorn works as a garnish for soups. It does go soggy but so do soda crackers and I don’t mind them in soup. In this application the popcorn gets no enhancements of any kind. Air pop it and toss it into the soup bowl. I know that sounds weird and it might not be to everyone’s taste. It works for me.

As I was reading this over prior to posting it, I finished my half of the latest batch of kale chips. Looks like I’m going to need to go back to the store either today or tomorrow. Stay tuned.