Peach update

We were able to counter-ripen all but about 20 peaches.  The ones we could save were either consumed (by themselves or as ingredients in frozen rum drinks) or peeled and frozen for later use.  Meanwhile, all the other peaches on the tree have been ripening, so we've actually eaten or frozen far more than just the 82 survivors of the 2012 Peach Tree Suicide.

Disaster in the garden

There was a bit of disaster in the garden.  And by disaster, I actually mean tragedy of epic proportions.  Remember how beautiful our peach tree was? How gloriously full of fruit?  Well, evidently, it was too full.  The largest, heaviest branch snapped.  And, because it was also a selfish branch that did not want to end up in the compost barrel alone, it took the second largest branch with it.

The two branches together held 102 not-yet-ripe peaches.

And thus, we learned the importance of culling fruit before it becomes too much for a small tree to bear.

Summer Harvest

All in a day's harvest:

The Garden, two months later

In March I wrote a post describing this year's garden.  Since then we've had some successes and some tragic losses.  Here's the update:

1. Cassie: She's actually producing!!!!! There were a lot of flowers that actually set, and we haven't lost any of them yet - as opposed to last year when there were tons of flowers, they all appeared to set, and then over a two week period, all dropped off. Last year's harvest was one sad and slightly deformed pomegranate.  Two of the three watermelons planted from seed in her base are still alive, but small.

2. Jill:  I don't know what's going on with her.  Some of her branches have lost all their leaves, but there is no evidence of leaf cutter ants.  The leaf cutters stripped half of Wendy the first year we had her, and since then we have vigilantly patrolled the yard with poison and torches.

3.  Peachy:  She's great, she's covered in small peaches.  The basil at her base is dead, possibly drowned.  Her strawberries produced about four fruits, all of which were consumed by our toddler, so I don't know how they tasted.  It looks like one of them is about to put out a few more flowers, so we may get more strawberries, but I doubt it.  This heat burns them.

4.  Quinto: She's heavily laden.  Actually, no, one grafted section is heavily laden.  The others have leaves, but didn't flower this year.  I don't know if any of the species are fall fruits or if we'll just get nothing from them.  The dwarf annas are almost ripe.  We've eaten about four half apples, because there were bird attacks, and we certainly weren't going to waste the non-pecked parts.  The damage to the apples all occurred while we were on vacation. We haven't had any new losses since Ryan hung his 'Shiny Flashy Bird Frightener Thingees' all over the place.

5. Wendy:  Covered in pomegranates and CD reflectors.  Even if we lose some to the birds, I don't care.  Last year she produced so many that we literally just finished them last week.  They keep really well in the refrigerator drawer.  So well, in fact, that it is possible to completely forget that they're there until your toddler opens the drawer, brings you one, and you have to think for a minute to figure out why she's carrying around a pomegranate in the middle of May.  Not that I've had that experience.  I'd post a picture, but for some reason when I sent Ryan to take updated garden pics, he failed to get Wendy. 

6.  The Moving Herb Garden:  It now consists of Rosemary.  That's it.  The dill went to seed, the cilantro and oregano just up and died.  The peppermint, that's a tragic story.  I recently discovered Watermelon Mojitos, which are fabulous refreshing drinks and an excellent use for garden peppermint.  However, when you go away for a week and ask your father-in-law to water the garden, it's entirely possible that if you don't point out the pot of peppermint in the shade of the tomatillo, he won't notice and you'll come back dreaming of Watermelon Mojitos (and the juice waiting in the freezer leftover from your last batch) only to discover that the peppermint leaves are dead and gone.  Well, not gone, but not good for anything but peppermint tea.  Ryan thinks it might come back, but I'm not so sure.  ETA: Also, toddlers love to eat dried peppermint leaves. So much that if you take them away, they'll scream.

7. Potato Bags: Another tragedy.  Maybe we planted too late in the season.  I just know that this happened:

8. Paulo's Circle: Holy crap, summer squash really produce.  So far we've had a couple of loaves of zucchini bread, Zucchini Quinoa Rice Enchilada Casserole, some kind of weird zucchini stew with pickles in it (Ryan made that one), and grilled zucchini.  Plus we've given some away, and we have more in the fridge and we'll be harvesting more tomorrow. The most recent picture is two weeks old - they've grown in the interim.  Note that we used bush varieties this year.  We didn't want to lose too much of the yard to vining squash like we did last year.

9. East Plot: This is another one that's really taken off.  We have Early Girl, Black Cherry, and Sungold Tomatoes.  On the center-left is a pretty large basil.  On the center-right is a nasturtium which we planted as aphid deterrent, but later found out that it is also edible.  In the front you can see two rows of carrots.  We planted a third row, but it never came up.  I don't know how to tell when carrots are ready, so I don't really know what to do with them now.

10. Central Plot: This is a mad jungle of tomatillos, which have taken over everything and produced exactly nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  I don't think we'll be planting tomatillos again next year.  There's also a basil and nasturtium in there that are doing pretty well, and two pepper plants (my last garden update says three, but I can only find two. The other one must have been eaten by the tomatillos) that are being overwhelmed. 

11. West Plot: This has been a nice surprise - the Romas actually produced.  We've tried them a couple of times and have never had any luck.  Perhaps the difference this year is that this particular plant was a freebie, and we killed our only Roma seedling after we acquired it.  I can only assume that this Roma is now afraid, knows that we are ruthless tomato plant killers, and will keep producing fruits in the hopes of staving off its own death and destruction. 
     Note the absence of spinach: it is now too hot.  We'll have another crop this fall, but for now, it's gone (which sucks because we have so much basil and I have an awesome recipe for spinach-basil pesto orzo).  

Shiny Flashy Bird Frightener Thingees

OK, so we have a lot of things growing in our garden/yard that produce fruits of some sort or another, including tomatoes, strawberries, a peach tree, several pomegranates, and an apple tree that we planted last fall.  The apple is five different apples all grafted together, and one of them was apparently a spring bloomer, and has a fair number of apples on it.  We have lots of tomatoes and peaches as well.

Turns out, humans are not the only critters that like to eat fruit!  I know, right?  I'll wait patiently while you compose yourself.  We lost several of our Early Girl tomatoes and five or six apples to the depredations of those dastardly flying free-loaders known as birds.  Apparently the feral cats are now utterly without redeeming qualities and are now only good at crapping in my yard and pissing on my doors.  They'll get their turn on the vengeance rotisserie at another date.

After some research I determined that birds are afraid of two general categories of things:  things that might eat them and things that they think might eat them.   Surprisingly enough, they are apparently convinced that light might eat them, as they are apparently afraid of shiny flashy things (except ravens and crows, those curious crafty buggers).

Where to get shiny flashy things... where to get shiny flashy things... ah what's this I see before me?  Is that a giant box of CDs that Sara and I no longer want and not even Bookman's will take?  Sure looks to be.  Wait a minute... CDs are shiny on at least one side, and some are so hideous on the other that surely it will frighten even crows and ravens (those crafty buggers).

I have made several versions of shiny flashy bird frightener thingees (pat.pend and copyright) of increasing complexity and pleasing geometry.  The first was just a CD tied to a branch.  I chose the shiny-on-both-sides versions to increase effectiveness.  I figured the wind would blow them about and they would spin and shine and flash.  I did not include a picture here because it's pretty easy to imagine, unless you're a bird, in which case it would simply be a picture of <fly away fly away> and not very illuminating.

Second, I tried the basic tetrahedron, which is four identical equilateral triangles.  I dredged up my ancient geometry skills and used a compass and ruler to divide the perimeter of a CD into six equal pieces, and then chose three as the place where I would drill holes to attach them together.  But wait, you ask: a CD is a circle, not a triangle!  Correct.  The point where I drill the holes is equivalent to the line where the two triangles meet, and the vertices are imaginary (not mathematically, just physically).

Third, I tried an icosahedron (D&D fans know what this is), or a 20-sided polyhedron composed of 20 identical equilateral triangles. This was overly ambitious, so I knocked it back to an octahedron, which was very cool.  I have not calculated how big an icosahedron would be made of CDs would be, but impractically-gigantical-for-a-garden-shiny-flashy-bird-frightener-thingee springs to mind.

Last, I tried to make an off-set hexahedron.  Basically, the idea was to make two tetrahedrons and place them together so there were six sides, but instead of lining up the axes of the base triangles, I was going to twist them 60 degrees.  Turns out that's not really practical for a few reasons, but basically, I would have been better making a cube and hanging it from one point.  So, I made the regular hexahedron, and it works well as a shiny flashy thingee but it's not that aesthetically pleasing.

More cooking

I've been doing a lot of knitting and crocheting lately, but haven't had the chance to take pictures of the finished objects.  Ryan has completed another reflector for the garden, but I'm going to let him post about that. A lot of our current projects are hibernating right now, as we've been dealing with car repairs (Ryan usually does them himself, but lacks the time, space, and equipment to repair a leaking head gasket), plus we're getting ready for a vacation.  So why am I posting at all?  Just to give an update on some cooking successes and failures.

First, the failure.  It turns out that if you want to make black sugar to give sugar cookies a kind of goth look, you need a lot more food coloring (and a higher tolerance for the smell of food coloring) than I have.  So when I volunteered to bring dessert over to a friend's house for dinner, then didn't have time to make the Watermelon Mojito Sorbet, then decided to go for my fallback option of sugar cookies (dusted with homemade vanilla sugar), I probably shouldn't have attempted to dye that sugar black.  I made it to dark brown before giving up. The cookies now deceptively appear to have been coated in regular brown sugar rather than my fancy vanilla sugar.

Successes (there are two):

1.  Avocado cream sauce.  I had never heard of it, never thought of it, but I saw a recipe, decided it looked delicious, and was right.  We made homemade spaghetti noodles (I love my kitchenaid mixer), poached and shredded some chicken (again, love my kitchenaid mixer) and tossed it with avocado cream sauce.  Fantastic meal! Not a quick meal, since we made the pasta from scratch, but definitely worth the effort.

Here's how I made the sauce (I won't write this up as a recipe, because I can't be bothered to actually measure): Place the flesh of two ripe avocados, a couple of tablespoons of cream, a couple of tablespoons of lime juice, and a little bit of salt in a food processor.  Process till smooth.  That's it.

2. Zucchini Quinoa Rice Enchilada Casserole. This one was a little more complicated, but also involved using canned food, and was pretty fast to assemble. It involved corn torillas, refried beans (two cans, since in my four previous attempts at making them myself I discovered that it is damn near impossible to make them taste good and have a decent texture), rice, quinoa, zucchini, sour cream, cheddar cheese, enchilada sauce.

Without measurements, here are the steps:

1. Cook up a big pot of rice and quinoa.  They cook together really well, and cook exactly the same way.  If you've never tried it, next time you make white rice, replace about a quarter cup or so with the equivalent amount of quinoa.  We usually use about a 2:1 ratio.
2. Go out to the garden and harvest zucchini. I used two from a bush baby plant. Or you could just buy zucchini.  I just wanted to say that so I could link back to the post about the garden. Note to self: do another garden update before it becomes so hot all the plants die.
3. Shred zucchini and sautee with olive oil.  
4. Shred up a bunch of cheddar cheese (or whatever cheese you like).
5. When rice/quinoa is done, add the sauteed zucchini, cheddar cheese, and some sour cream.
6. Open a can of enchilada sauce, put some in the bottom of a baking dish.  
7. Layering time. Here's how I did it: Corn torillas, refried beans, rice mixture, enchilada sauce, corn tortillas, beans, rice mixture, corn totillas, enchilada sauce, more shredded cheese.
8. Bake at 375 for a half hour, or until it all looks really bubbly and you can't stand to wait anymore.

Purging the unnecessary

Several years ago, I can remember thinking that it wouldn't be too bad if my house burned down and I lost everything.  I'd be able to start over, and only acquire what I needed, meanwhile shedding all the excess crap that I can't ever seem to willingly part with.  Of course, I'm glad I've never actually had a house fire.  I think it was just something I was imagining because I couldn't imagine actually having the strength to really give up all the meaningless possessions that I've somehow become attached to.  Every so often, I go through a closet or a drawer or a room and pile up a stack of items which then get sold or donated.  And that's what we did this weekend (also, Ryan would like me to add that he re-coated the roof).

The first step was the bookshelves. We went through and cleared out all the books we were sure we wouldn't want to read again. There were some that I think we've been keeping as reminders of who we once were, like ten-year-old books from grad school, or travel guides that are nearly a decade out of date. We just don't need those anymore. We ended up with a pretty big stack of books, which won't be replaced anytime soon either - I've re-discovered the joy of the library, now that I go there 3-4 times a week for various story times.

Then we hit the three boxes of CDs that were in the storage shed.  Now, some of you may not be familiar with those.  It stands for 'compact disc,' and you should think of them as sort of a data storage device.  Back in college, they're what we used to use to listen to music.  I no longer have a CD player (besides the computer) and haven't for years.  So as you can imagine, those CDs no longer have much use to us.  We kept some, transferring them to a cd portfolio, which takes up a lot less space.  The remainder joined the books in a pile in the living room.

Next on the chopping block: DVDs.  We stream Netflix, so we haven't watched a DVD in months, except for Game of Thrones, which we have to watch on disc since we don't have HBO (I'm a huge fan of the books, I have them all in English and Spanish, and they survived the purge).  Almost all of the DVDs were added to the pile.  If there's something we desperately want to watch again, I'm sure we can find it on Netflix.

We ended up filling several boxes and bags, which we then took to Bookmans, which is an awesome used bookstore.  They took slightly more than half of what we brought in, and gave us over $200 in store credit for it.  Pretty good deal, though I'm pretty sure I heard the employees who were going through it mocking some of our music choices.  Ryan can't help loving Roxette.  It's embarrassing, but let's not judge him for it.

After the Bookman's trip, we went through the CDs one more time, this time to determine which of the remaining CDs had a chance at being useful as thrift store donations, and which ones would be better off as garden reflectors to protect the fruit trees.  It was about a 50/50 split. Once we get a working camera (note: Do not let toddler throw camera on tile floor), I'll post some pics of the new garden art/bird repellent.

Now the trunk of the car is full of the leftover books and discs, as well as a large portion of the contents of the front hall closet (another successful purge this weekend).  There is also a box of magnets left over from our photography business that I rediscovered recently.  We sold them for $3 each at shows, and sometimes they really made the difference between a horribly crappy show and just a mildly crappy show.  But now that we don't have a business, what the hell do we do with a couple hundred magnets?  Same as we're doing with everything else.  At some point tomorrow, I'm taking them to my favorite thrift store and saying good-bye.  It's going to feel so good!

I always love cleaning things out.  I love opening up the space, both physically and emotionally.  Too much clutter makes it hard for me to focus.

Painting and doors

Our latest big project: replacing all of the crappy 1970's scratched up fake wood closet doors with new, nicer ones.  I know we usually try to reuse and repair everything, but in this case, due to ugliness, we had to make an exception. Maybe we could have tolerated them longer, but when we built the Arizona room, we put nice six panel wooden doors on that closet.  The AZ room closet is about two feet away from the laundry closet, and being able to see the old and the new at the same time just highlighted how terrible the original doors were.

I know it may seem like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not.  These doors were so terrible that even the Habistore rejected them, and told us they don't accept those doors because nobody will buy them.  However, they did tell us to stack them outside by the dumpster and promised that someone would come along and take them eventually.  It felt a little weird abandoning the doors rather than donating them, but apparently that's what they do there (plus an employee told us that a couple of days earlier someone had picked up about 20 closet doors from that spot, so there is hope that they really will be taken and used).

The new doors are all six panel folding wooden doors that we purchased at Lowe's.  One for the pantry, two each for the laundry closet, back bedroom, and front bedroom/playroom.  They are now all painted and installed, except for the one in the playroom.  That one is installed but unpainted, because we're still debating repainting the walls.  It's amazing what a difference it makes - the rooms look so much lighter and brighter.

There was some difficulty with the paint, namely that we were out of the light blue kitchen wall paint that we needed for both the pantry and the laundry closet - and apparently that brand of paint no longer exists.  Well, maybe it exists, since it does still have a website, but the store locator on it tells me that no stores within a hundred miles carries it.  Furthermore, just for fun I checked and no stores within a hundred miles of Phoenix, Chicago, New York or Los Angeles carry it either.  Luckily, Ace Hardware has a color matching service - and it was almost perfect.  Plus, that allowed us to get the paint in the Benjamin Moore Natura that we used in the bedrooms (it's a no VOC paint that didn't exist when we painted the kitchen, so we used a different and apparently unsuccessful low-VOC brand from another store).

It's kind of amazing to me how one little change can make things look better - and highlight what still looks bad.  Here, the chain of events was getting nice closet doors in one room, leading to needing nice ones in the other rooms, which then led to the current project of painting the dark brown door that divided the kitchen and AZ room. We were able to live with that particular brand of ugliness for years, until we had nice closets on each side of it.  Once that's done, who knows? Perhaps we'll realize how ugly our countertops are and decide to replace those (just kidding, we already know they're ugly).

Non-accomplishments

A few weeks ago, I posted a list of my sewing projects and stated a goal of getting them done within two weeks.  Here's what actually happened:

1. Lining the baby blanket for J&H  Didn't happen.  Decided not to line it, because I didn't have the patience to hand stitch the lining.  Ryan convinced me lining wasn't necessary.  Here's what the blanket looks like: Star Illusion Blanket
2. A pillowcase for my toddler, so she stops stealing other people's pillows in the middle of the night. Done. Will do a post about it later.  Sadly, though, she won't sleep on it and still steals other people's pillows.
3. Finishing the hem on the last two bedroom curtains.Didn't happen. My excuse is that I couldn't remember the measurements on the hems of the other curtains, and every time I remembered to check, I couldn't do so because the toddler was sleeping, and if there's one thing I know not to do, it's interrupt her nap.
4. Fixing the unevenness of the living room curtains by adding an edging. Didn't happen. No excuses but laziness.
5. Making beanbags. Done! Though I don't know why I decided the toddler needed 14 beanbags.
6. Repairing some of Ryan's pants. Didn't happen. I blame Ryan.
7. Finally making babylegs out of the pair of socks that has been sitting on the shelf next to the sewing machine for months. Didn't happen. Probably because the weather warmed up and she doesn't need babylegs. Or because one of the socks fell down behind the shelf and I didn't feel like moving everything to get it out.  

So not the most successful task list.  However, other projects are in process, and will likely be successfully completed.  I'll update about them later.

Past Projects: Rope Rug

Ryan and I are both rock climbers (or at least we were pre-baby and hope to be again one day).  The ropes we use have a finite lifespan. Some people use their ropes until they snap and the climber falls to a tragic early death.  Others, like ourselves, know when to retire them (hint: it's before the tragic early death part).  And then what do you do with a retired rope?

Behold, the rope rug, made with Ryan's beloved 60m Sterling 10.2 and about $3 worth of caulk:

See that dirty spot? That's the halfway mark. So it's not really a dirty spot.
Quit judging my housekeeping skills.

This was a very simple project.

Step 1: Wash the rope.  We just soaked it in a bucket with detergent and hot water then rinsed it in the bath tub. You can skip this step if you don't mind a rope that's full of dirt and climber blood.

Step 2: Sewing.  In order to get the rug started, you have to sew the first few rounds together.  After that, it doesn't matter, you can lay the rug out and it will stay in place. It doesn't matter what color thread you use either, since when the rug is done you can just snip it off.

It's difficult to get a needle through the rope, and I actually had to use pliers to pull it through a couple of times.

Step 3: Lay the rug out on the floor, simply coiling it around itself in a circle (or you could do an oval, which is what I'm going to try with an old static rope that's been in our shed for awhile).  You really should put it on a dropcloth or tarp or something.  I didn't do that, which is why there's an arc of caulk still on the tile in the baby's playroom.  Learn from my mistake.

Step 4: Caulk it up.  We bought a bunch of caulk for $1 each at Habistore.  I don't think it really matters what kind you use or what color it is - it's just to hold the rug together and to keep it from sliding on the floor.  I just globbed a bunch on and spread it with a 6" taping knife.

Step 5: Let it dry.

That's it.  Pretty simple, and it makes a durable rug.  

State of the Garden Address

What? Why, thanks for asking, yes the garden did survive last week's hailstorms.  Came through them quite well actually, though we did end up putting tarps over everything to prevent freezing at night.  And, as a bonus, the storms filled the rain barrels - we were almost to full capacity.

Yesterday we transplanted the seedlings that I so lovingly started (using LED lights hanging on a drying rack over seeds planted in egg cartons).  Less than half of the spinach came up, and only one basil, but both patty pan squashes looked pretty good.  None of the watermelons started, and the one tomato that came out didn't end up transplanted, because we got a free huge tomato of the same variety two weeks ago at Magic Garden.

The garden now contains:

1) Cassie, the pomegranate bush, who has produced exactly one fruit in the two years we've had her. There are watermelon seeds planted in her basin, as well as a large unidentified wild flower.

2) Jill, the baby pomegranate, now in a half-barrel. She has produced more fruit than Cassie.

3) Peachy, the peach tree (obviously), who is covered in new baby peaches.  We hope to get another excellent harvest from her.  She has a few spinach, a tiny basil, and a couple of strawberry plants in her basin.

4) Quinto, the apple tree (five varieties grafted onto one base). The dwarf anna is the one that is covered in future apples right now.  This will be the first year that this one has borne fruit.  There is a pea planted at its base, which will hopefully climb up the bomb shelter vent behind it.  There were garlic chives, but Quinto killed them off in one day.  This is also the site of last years Compost Butternut Squash Revolution, which attempted (and mostly succeeded) taking over the yard.

5) Wendy, the largest pomegranate, which provides us with almost more than we can eat.  There is some garlic planted in her basin.

6) The Moving Herb Garden.  These pots change location and will probably spend most of the summer on the porch.  We have cilantro, dill, oregano, peppermint, and rosemary.

7) Potato Bags.  Nothing to report here.

8) Paulo's Circle.  There used to be a lemon tree, but he died tragically in what can only be described as a negligent arboricide, when Ryan failed to properly secure plastic sheeting during last year's sudden deep freeze.  Now, in beloved Paulo's memory, we have multiple varieties of summer squash and one pea.

R.I.P. Paulo.  You were loved.

9) East Plot: Three varieties of tomato (sungold, black cherry, and early girl), one basil, and two rows of carrots.  This is our first attempt at carrots, so we don't know what to expect.

10) Central Plot: Ancho peppers, bell peppers, Ring of Fire peppers, one basil, and three tomatillos. Ignore the litter - that's the remains of the egg cartons from the seeds that didn't start.  Ryan decided to use it as mulch.

11) West Plot: Roma tomatoes, spinach, and strawberries.

The Wonders of Carbon Fiber

Far a long time, I have harbored the burning desire to build my own mountain biking helmet light.  Commercial lights are very expensive, and are always behind the curve when it comes to the best,  brightest, and most efficient LEDs and drivers.  They often have sub-optimal thermal management, which further reduces the efficiency of the LEDs, and their beam patterns don't always seem the most sensible (which may admittedly be a function of my eyes and riding style... can't please everyone).

Well, I am now embarking on my adventure!

The core of any light is, obviously, the light source.  I picked up some Cree XM-L LEDs that are rated at about 850 lumens at 2800 mA, which is very bright.  Advertised 1000 lm at 3A, but the response curve from the manufacturer doesn't match that claim.  Whatever, they're freakin' bright.  They're on copper stars, which is great because I can solder them to a copper heatsink to maximize heat dissipation while in operation.  Getting those LEDs was quite the ordeal, due entirely to my inattention the the address that I had logged with PayPal... my old Houston one.  So, the order shipped to Houston.  I mailed postage to the address in the hopes that the kind person living there would ship it to me rather than toss it.  It seems that it could not be delivered, so was returned to the shipper and I got another chance to get my address right.  Which I did, and finally (2 months?) got my LEDs.  They went from Hong Kong to Houston to Hong Kong to Tucson.  Fun times.

I decided that I wanted to make the body structure as light and strong as possible, mainly to offset the added weight of the copper heatsink.  Copper is awesome at distributing heat, but is a lot denser than aluminum... it's a trade-off.  I decided on ensuring proper heat dissipation over weight savings.  So, that means that I need something really lightweight and strong for the body.

Enter:  Carbon Fiber!  Sweet!  It's strong, lightweight, and stiff.  The downside is that it is generally sold in flat sheets, which are (due to the stiffness) not real bendable.  That means that I have to learn how to form carbon fiber fabric into carbon fiber composite by the judicious use of scissors, a form,  and epoxy.

After a lot of research online, and on particular site where the guy made his road bike frame himself, I settled on the following materials:  5.5oz 3x4 harness weave satin carbon fiber fabric (it's a neat pattern of cross-bundles of carbon fiber (called tows) that's looser and more conformable to complex shapes than a standard 2x2 twill), West Systems 105 resin and 207 hardener (makes a clear rather than a slightly translucent epoxy), and a kick-ass high tech toughening agent.

My first layup was 3 layers wrapped around a wooden form.  I then wrapped that in sticky-side out electrical tape, as it was mentioned that the epoxy doesn't stick to the vinyl.  This served to compress the carbon fibers together and squeeze out excess resin.  The optimal ratio is about 50:50 by weight, which is about what you get if you squeeze out all the resin except what fits between the fibers in the fabric.  I let it set up for ten hours, and discovered that my clever plan to simply slide the composite off the mold was thwarted by mold irregularities and the extreme stiffness of the piece.  I ended up cutting the mold/composite into sections and knocking the shorter bits of wood out of the composite hoops.

At the top right you can see two hoops epoxied together.  The top has been coated with more epoxy for a glossy coat, and the insides are the texture of saran wrap.  The outer fabric weave looks wavy because... it is.  Thus, a lesson in how important it is to be careful of the weave to avoid distortion.

Bottom right shows the cross-section, and the consequence of more pressure at the curve than the flat, which is exactly what you'd expect if you wrapped elastic tape around a solid wood block.  It is not, however, what I wanted.

So, a little more research lead me to the concept of vacuum-bagging, wherein a composite piece is sealed into an elastic bag and then subjected to vacuum throughout the cure process.  This has the effect of applying even pressure on all surfaces of the piece and avoiding the elastic tape effect.

Vacuum-bagging will be the subject of my next post.

Lots of sewing to do

I have some a giant stack of sewing to do. In no particular order, this consists of:

1. Lining the baby blanket for J&H (ok, this is probably the most important)
2. A pillowcase for my toddler, so she stops stealing other people's pillows in the middle of the night
3. Finishing the hem on the last two bedroom curtains
4. Fixing the unevenness of the living room curtains by adding an edging
5. Making beanbags
6. Repairing some of Ryan's pants
7. Finally making babylegs out of the pair of socks that has been sitting on the shelf next to the sewing machine for months

My goal (barring any damage to the sewing machine that would prevent this) is to get all of it done in the next two weeks.  Since I don't have a great big knitting project going on anymore (the baby blanket that was taking up all of my evenings is now complete, except for the edging and the lining mentioned above), I should have some evenings free to work on them. 

Past Projects: Book Slings

Every once in awhile, we plan to post projects that we've already done.  They'll be titled and tagged 'Past Projects.' Here's the first: 

I made these book slings for the playroom, following this tutorial.

They were easy, even for someone like me who can barely sew a straight line.  I love them, but someone likes to take all the books out and pile them on the floor.  Of course, that same someone does that in the living room too (then she stands on the pile), so I don't think it has anything to do with the slings.

Prettying up the bomb shelter

Our backyard has a unique feature - a bomb shelter.  Yes, a real bomb shelter.  Interesting fact: it is several years older than our house, and this is the only house that has ever been on this lot.

When we purchased the house, this is what the bomb shelter lid looked like:

The lid is made of sheet metal that has been nailed to the wooden lid underneath.  In the years since it was built it has done a great job, but is starting to rust in places... generally where the nails poke through.  There is now a small apple tree blocking the view of the ventilator shaft from the patio.  Last summer, this whole area was covered in squash vines that came up from the apple tree's compost, so it made getting to the lid at all a little difficult. This year, we decided to make a more permanent fix to the rust issue before any squash came up.

First, Ryan had to remove the old nails and replace them with screws.  Ordinarily, this wouldn't be necessary, but several of them jutted up.  Rowan actually got stuck sitting on it once, because her pants were caught.  Ryan wondered why she was sitting so quietly, until he noticed she kept trying to get up and couldn't.  So, in the interests of not imprisoning our baby (at least, not on top of the bomb shelter), the nails had to go.

Next, he sprayed the lid with a coating to stop the spread of rust.  He's asleep right now, so I don't know what it was called, but he'll edit this post later).  (Ryan: It's called "Rust Reformer," and actually converts the rust into something not rust plus a black paintable surface... like rust primer.)  When he was done, it looked like this:

Also, notice how much nicer the ground around it looks with gravel.

Silicone time.  In order to protect the wood (you can't see it, but the metal covers a very very heavy wooden lid), he siliconed the holes around the screws and remaining nails (I used a paintable silicone).

He primered it next.  (Ryan: I used Elastek's High Tech Base Coat for applying elastomeric roof coatings... I figured, if it was good for roofs, it'd be great for the bomb-shelter lid.)  I forgot to take a picture, so imagine the whole lid white.

And then we broke out the spray paint, and, two cans later, it was done:

Now we have the prettiest bomb shelter in the neighborhood.

The gravel is much pinker than it looks in this picture, so it actually looks really nice.  It just isn't obvious in the picture because the gravel is really dusty and there wasn't great light.

Organization: The Playroom Edition

I should have taken before and after pictures of Rowan's playroom.  I suppose I could still take the 'after' shots, but it would lack impact if you don't know what a messy disaster the room was first.

Yes, tonight I organized Rowan's room, and we cleaned up her area in the living room.  It's part of my overall plan of finding a place for everything and getting the house in semi-decent shape.

To get started, I went to Target and purchased four cloth bins.  I could have made some, and in fact had looked up tutorials to do so, but I decided this was one of those cases where my time could be better served elsewhere.  Those bins are now on the old book shelf that previously stood empty against her wall (because she always took everything off of it and we got too lazy to put it back).  One holds all her little plastic animals, one holds her wooden blocks, one holds all her balls, and the other just has a couple of wooden toys.  She has three toyboxes in addition to these bins.  One now holds all her blankets (because I don't know where else to put them and the linen closet is full), the big bench box is stuffed animals, and the small bench box is everything else.  I'm hoping that now that everything has a specific place, it will be returned there.

It looks really cluttered, but trust me, it is so much better.

I also reorganized her dresser drawers.  I read recently that you should roll clothes and store them in rows rather than in stacks.  As it turns out, that's pretty good advice.  Everything looks much neater, we don't have to dig through to find anything, and maybe now Ryan will finally start putting clothes in the appropriate drawers (seriously, how hard is it? There are only three drawers - short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, pants & skirts. You'd think he could handle that.)  Also, this will help Rowan.  She's at the stage where she likes to help pick out her clothes, but her method was just reaching into the drawer and pulling out whatever was on top. Now that everything is tucked in rows, she'll have to actually look at it and make a little bit of effort.  I have a feeling she'll be wearing her monkey shirt a lot more often.

Play kitchen: Costs

Since Ryan was kind enough to write up an explanation of how we made the play kitchen, I thought I would add a post about the cost.  I'm going to leave labor costs out of it though, because I assume my time is billable at about $250/hour (or at least, it should be), and nobody wants a $5000 play kitchen made out of recycled parts. 

Here's the breakdown:

Used Parts (note additional benefit of shopping at charity thrift shops - no sales tax):

• Cabinet, with one door.  Habistore, $20.00
• Faucet. Habistore, $9.00
• Handles for cabinet and oven. Habistore, $1.50
• Hinges. Habistore, $0.75
• Coasters for oven burners. Casa de los Ninos Thrift Store, $1.25
• Bowl for sink. Casa de los Ninos, $1.50

 Total: $34.00

 New parts:

•  Locking casters (2).  Home Depot, $3.96/each + tax  = $8.64
• Casters (2). Home Depot, $3.47/each + tax = $7.57
• Magnetic closures (2), Ace Hardware, $3.99/each + tax = $6.54 
• Acrylic for oven door. Lowe's, $11.97 + tax = $13.06
• Assorted screws. Ace Hardware, $1.36 + tax = $1.48
• Spray paint for counter top. Ace Hardware, $7.99 + tax =  $8.72
• Screw eye (to attach bungee to oven door). Ace Hardware, $2.49 + tax = $2.72

 Total: $48.73

Already had (scraps from other projects):

• Wood for counter, backsplash, divider and base (from remodeling)
• Cabinet door (removed from kitchen when we installed the microwave)
• Primer paint
• Wood putty
• Grey kitchen paint
• Old baking rack for oven
• Bungee cord for oven door
• Polyurethane

 Overall Cost: $82.73

Obviously, this would have cost more if we hadn't already had a lot of stuff on hand.  However, I think if we hadn't had certain scraps available, we would have figured something else out, and still been able to keep the costs for this project relatively low.  Ryan is actually quite an expert on making things suit his needs, and I am always able to modify my designs (that's right, I'm claiming design credit on this one).

Organization

One of my big goals right now is organization.  Our house doesn't have a lot of storage space (that big shed in the backyard is meant to be a workshop, not a repository for all our stuff), and the space we do have is being used inefficiently. Last weekend I went through the bedroom closet and pulled out five bags worth of clothing to get rid of, plus we cleared out some random crap from other areas of the house.  It felt good to clean all that stuff out, but just getting rid of stuff isn't enough though - we also need to organize the things we plan to keep.

I've come up with two plans towards improving our organization:

1) The Put-it-away-or-get-rid-of-it-box.
     This is simple: we have a box, and everyday we have to pull a couple of things out of it and either find a place for them, or add them to the donation pile (or trash, depending on the condition of the item).  The way I see it, if we pull something out of the box and can't figure out a designated place for it, then we just don't need it.  I don't want to specify how many items we have to take out of the box everyday, because I know Ryan too well.  If I say "put away 5 things," he'll pull out 5 nails and put them in his toolbox and consider his task complete.  I know this from experience.
    We already have a box started - I pulled it out of the shed to see what it was, and discovered that it was a box of things we haven't touched since we moved in.  Better organizers than me would have just chucked the whole box; I can't do that.  I have to look at it all first, just in case.
   Tonight, to get moving on this, I'm adding everything currently on the breakfast bar to that box.  Also, Ryan doesn't know it yet, but tomorrow when he's at work, 95% of the stuff on top of his dresser will end up in the box as well.

2) The Five-Minute-Project-List
    This list does not exist in physical form yet, but it might soon.  Even without an actual list, we'll still be able to get stuff done.
     The theory is that there are always little mini-projects that take less than five minutes to do, but they just don't get done, possibly because they are too small to worry about.  So the goal is to finally tackle these and do a mini-project everyday, and eventually, the whole house will be neat and organized.
    Today, for example, I am in the process of fixing the mirror that hangs next to the front door.  It's been there for about two years, and for that entire time it has angled toward the floor, because of the width of the hook and the fact that there are no bumpers on the bottom to compensate for the hanger.  I just cut up an old winecork and painted it black, and when the paint dries, I will glue the pieces to the back of the mirror.  This has taken me less than five minutes, and it will make the house look marginally better.
    I may even do two five-minute-projects tonight.  I might go to the Arizona room and scrub the two dirty baby handprints off the tile.  They've been there for months, and have survived other floor washings.  Really. We do mop.
     Ryan doesn't know it, but after he finally gets the baby to sleep (she's been fighting him for an hour and a half) he has a five-minute-project of his own.  I need him to finally install the baby safety lock on the bathroom drawer - it's the only way to prevent a poltergeist who gets everything out and drops it on the floor every morning while I'm brushing my teeth.
 
In non-organization news, the vanilla sugar was a success.  I used some to make sugar cookies, and I guess they were good because the whole batch lasted less than 48 hours.

UPDATE: Actual conversation with Ryan regarding my mirror-fixing project:

Me: Where's your gorilla glue?
Ryan: Here. Do you want me to glue the mirror for you?
Me: No, I can do it.
Ryan: You can't just use it like regular glue. You have to read the instructions.
Me: Nevermind. You do it. It sounds too complicated.
Ryan: That's what I expected.

So I guess that doesn't count as my project and I do have to go scrub the handprints off the floor.

Rowan's Play Kitchen

It has taken many months and a little blood, but Rowan's play kitchen is finally finished.

It started off as a used recycled kitchen cabinet from The HabiStore (a really cool recycled/reused home-goods store that benefits Habitat for Humanity). The front frame and door (one was missing) was actually wood, so that made modifying that part easier. The rest of the body of the cabinet was particle board, so that made some of the modifications tricky and delicate.

We started off by sanding the whole thing down as best we could. The trusty Milwaukee random orbital sander was perfect for the job. Since the kitchen would need an oven and an under-sink cabinet as two separate spaces, a divider had to be installed. This was made of sanded and primed plywood from some scraps I had lying around.

As this was a hanging kitchen cabinet in its previous life, there were already some holes in various places for things like lighting etc. This was not a problem for me, because I was going to install another countertop on top of the cabinet anyway. Note the handy label to remind me of which side was up.

What was a problem was the case of the precisely misaligned holes that I drilled to mount the sink-oven divider. Sometimes even measuring twice doesn't help.

This is the view of the installed divider. One note on using screws in plywood: try to avoid putting the screws between the plys versus though the plys... even with nice pilot holes they have a highly predictable tendancy towards splitting and making a nasty mess that requires wood putty and hope to repair. So I hear.

Another complication of the play kitchen's hanging cabinet origin lay in the distance between the floor and the inside bottom of the cabinet... virtually zero. So, I built a 2x4 frame that fit inside the rim of the cabinet which raised the whole thing about 3 inches. Onto the 2x4s I attached casters, so we could roll the whole thing about.  That way Rowan can cook in any room of the house.

I attached the base by shooting screws through the floor on the inside of the cabinet.  An oversize pilot hole through the floor and a slight countersink allowed me to cinch the base up tight to the floor and to use wood putty (my new favorite wood-working tool) to cover up the screws on the inside.


Now, particle board has all the holding power of soggy toilet paper when you put a screw unto it lengthwise, as I would have to do to mount the countertop.  So, I built up a few hardpoints out of a few layers of spare plywood that I could screw the countertop onto.  The countertop was also made of sanded spare plywood I had hanging around from either the shed or the Arizona room remodel (both coming attractions to this blog).

Here I am drilling holes for the countertop.  I waited until after I had added the backsplash (more left-over wood) and sanded, primed, and painted the countertop before actually mounting it.  You can see the faucet (9$ at HabiStore... score!) and the sink-bowl (1.5$ at Casa del los Ninos, a great thrift shop) on the left.  The bowl originally had handles and a bottom flange that were spot welded on... I ground off the spot welds with the ever-useful flexible shaft tool and snapped them off.

Once all the requisite holes and hardpoints and whatnot were drilled and installed, the whole cabinet needed a serious priming.  Although the front piece and the door were real wood, the rest was particle board clad with plastic wood-esque veneer stuff.  So, it got roughed up quite a bit with the random orbital sander and then thoroughly primed with Zinnser Bulls Eye primer (also left over  from another project... it was getting rather thick so I thinned it with a little water).

OK, there's quite a bit of stuff that happened between the last photo and this one.  The backsplash was installed and the countertop mounted. As you can see, the cabinet has been painted grey on one side (matches the grey in our kitchen), and white for the stove.  I used a hinge from The HabiStore to attach the oven door.  The oven door was made out of the original cabinet door with the center panel cut out and replaced with a square of acrylic (purchased from the Home Depot... one of the few things not repurposed).  I found a really slick method of cutting the acrylic online: score the line you want to cut with a  utility knife and snap it like glass.  Made a really clean break, with none of the noise, mess, and melting that you'd get with a saber saw.  The rack inside was originally a damaged baking rack that I repaired.  

 All of the screws and unwanted dents, holes, and features were wood puttied over, sanded down and painted.  The countertop was sprayed with a gritty spraypaint for some texture, and then the whole thing was polyurethaned for durability.  The texture is still easily felt beneath the polyurethane.  To that point, eventually every surface of this play kitchen was polyurethaned.

This is a view from in front of the sink-side cupboard, looking up.  You can clearly see the nut and washer that hold the faucet down onto the countertop.



Here's an intermediate view.  The faucet, oven door, and the sink cupboard door have been installed.  The sink cupboard door is actually one of our old kitchen doors that we removed from a cupboard during the microwave installation.  It did have to be cut down and fitted to the opening, but it is a perfect match for the rest of our kitchen.  What has yet to come is the sink bowl, the burners, and the stove knobs.  The burners, that are epoxyed to the surface, were made from three wooden coasters and one larger stone coaster, all painted black with some left-over high-temp flat black paint.  The high temp protection was obviously not necessary, since Rowan won't actually be cooking here.  It just happened to be the type of paint that was left over from when I repaired a broken glass plate in our fireplace.  We searched forever for just the right coasters, and finally found some at Casa de los Ninos.

To your right you can see the humble beginnings of the knobs to Rowan's kitchen stove.  We searched for a very long time to find some sort of something that could be re-purposed for knobs, but really never found anything that really shouted "Use me!" so we went with DIY knobs from tree limbs.  I grabbed a couple of branches from the firewood pile and used my trusty (and slightly rusty) bowsaw.  I cut four discs of one size for the burner controls and one slightly larger for the oven control knob.  They had to be shaped and sanded individually, at great risk to my tender fingertip flesh.  Then I primered them and Sara painted them to look like real stove knobs.  To attach them, I drilled a hole that was slightly larger than the screws that I was using, so that they spun freely.  I then piloted a hole into the cupboard surface, slid two washers on so there was a bit of a standoff between the knob and the countertop, and tightened the screw until the knobs just spun freely.

 To the left we have the finished kitchen with the doors opened.  You can see the shelf on the sink side and the pan already cooking in the oven.  To the right is the kitchen with the doors closed.  Compare the sink cupboard door to the cupboard door behind it, which is our actual kitchen.  See, they match!  We used handles from The HabiStore... turns out someone had painted them the exact color that we were looking for, but we did not notice that they had been painted until after we got them home.  Bonus points to us!

UPDATE: We added a post giving the cost breakdown.