More Little Projects

Life is not all Mighty Mouse Projects and routine house cleaning tasks.   Here’s a few of the little projects I’ve done of late.

This lantern was bought from a Blanket Trader at OVPR in March.  Its been cleaned, the 2 loose cross bars epoxied back in place & re=painted in flat black. 

I bought 3 of these 6 inch high lanterns from Crazy Crow Trader through the mail.  One arrived sans its candle insert.  Crazy Crow is sending me another lantern but didn’t want the defective one back.  So I made an insert for the defective lantern.

The OEM insert is on the left.  My insert made of a plumbing pipe wall guard, 2 flat washers & some wire is on the right.  I’ve got a screw top jar lid to hold the candle for the home made insert, I’ll glue it in place once I’ve emptied the jar.  The tea lights I use come with little aluminum cups so the insert is usable as it stands.    It will be nice to have half a dozen lanterns for my lodge – one small brass lantern was fine for a 7x7x5 tent with no fly but a 9x9x7 tent with a 8x16 fly needs more light after dark.  Otherwise the camp becomes a series of booby traps awaiting the unwary.

OK, this isn’t exactly a project.  It’s the Chatham Hall Memorial Azalia in full bloom in the back yard.

The Yard–Tis Spring & Time for Yard Work

Last October when I came home from the OVPR a section of one of my choke cherry trees had fallen. I got the smaller limbs cut up before winter hit but really needed a chain saw to finish up the job.  My friend Lew Wenger loaned me an electric chain saw but winter kept me from working on cutting the tree up.

  The tree section downed by wind in October.

Well the spring rain & flooding Palm Sunday weekend plus some fearsome winds brought down the other 2 sections of tree.  So now I’ve got quite a lot of tree work on my hands.

The larger part of the tree downed this April.

The smallest section of tree hung up as a Widow Maker

Of course before I can attack the tree I needed to attack the jungle that the rains had made of my yard. And before I could mow I had to finish stacking the pine log sections I got from Zeus & Hera (their blog names) when they moved from the Valley to southern Florida last summer. So I recycled the old pine log pile to the woods – the logs had become too rotten for hawk & knife targets – and built the new target pile. Its 5 foot at its tallest point.   Ufda.

The New Hawk & Knife Target in my yard

Four hours later I managed to finish cutting the green growing Wunder Weeds the rains had fostered in my back yard.  Its truly amazing what 3 days of rain will do to my yard.  It went from I-Need-To-Mow-It-Soon to I-Should-Have-Mowed-It-Already in just 3 days !  Major muscle groups were angered  by all this Mighty Mouse work.

Freshly Mowed Back Yard

Two days later I mowed it again and started trimming out the smaller limbs on the 2nd section of tree.  Now I can at least see what I’m cutting with the chain saw and the Wunder Weeds won’t take over the yard again as easily.  Several ticks were removed after all this umphing.   If I mow frequently I can keep my muscles from making ugly comments about my ancestors. 

Gypsy Jane’s Yard Swing

The front yard got mowed too and I installed the yard swing Gypsy Jane brought to use here.  The spot between the front bedroom windows is shaded by a maple tree & there’s usually a nice breeze there.   I finished the weekend out by having my first evening fire in the backyard fire ring.  The peepers, frogs & toads were in full chorus, the evening was pleasantly cool & the heavens provided a thunderstorm light show along the Blue Ridge skyline. 

I do so enjoy Spring.  Even if it always involves a great deal of Mighty Mouse work. 

A Wonderful Weekend

I was off this weekend, and weekends are my time to see my friends & family.  So it was time for some Quality Time with the Urchin.  Yeah, I know, I was just with her for a whole day – a whole day of moving during which moving occurred.   Fun in its own way but not quality fun,eh ?

So Friday afternoon & evening I got the routine housework done, you know the laundry, dishes et all.  Then I finished getting the 10 gal aquarium stand ready for the Urchin’s 10 gal. aquarium.  I’d already cleaned it, wire brushed all the loose paint & rust off & primed it with flat black rust inhibitor paint.  So I finished the painting with a 2nd coat of flat black paint and proceeded to cut the pine board I had into a shelf for it.  To do that I had to cut the boards to fit, which was easy & then rip one of them lengthwise, which was not.  Crosscut saws do not do the job of a rip saw anywhere as nicely as a true rip saw can.  But in the end the boards were cut & then painted flat black to match the frame.

It was more work than I thought it would be but it came out really nice so it was time well spent.

Saturday I headed to the Urchin’s with the stand, her mail & a Blu-Ray of Cutthroat Island as a present.  We wandered around Clifton, checked out several of the stores, read most of the Historic Village signs & generally had way more fun than the gray skies & damp chill would have forecast.  When it started to spit a bit of rain, we headed back to her place & watched Tangled, which is very funny, as well as Matrix, which is cool but a bit confusing.  The day ended with a steamer dinner at a crab house that was just plain awesome tasty.

Sunday afternoon was house & yard time.  I put the utility trailer back in the far side yard, no easy task given its weight, and cleaned up the winter debris in the front & side yards.  I cut the ropes & got the steel rings needed to pitch my camp fly in poor weather mode & set the fly up that way for cleaning.

I also cut down some spare 2x2 poles to 4 ft. lengths & painted them.  Once I drill & insert shortened gutter nails into one end of each pole I’ll have a short set of poles for the fly shown above.  This will allow me 3 pitching heights for either side for a total of 6 ways to setup the fly.  Whatever the weather, I can change the fly pitch to best deal with it.  I also cut the ropes so the center poles can be staked down on their own but I haven’t gotten the steel rings or wood rope adjusters made for these yet.  The center pole is oak wall rod, the stuff that’s used for wall mounted stair handrails, & the uprights are 2x3s.  The wall rod allows for a flat surface to flat surface bearing area where the ridge pole bears on the uprights.

All in all a very very satisfying 3 days.

Spring & Spring Business Has Arrived

OK, so I have spent 3 of the last 4 work breaks running all over the place.  First I visited my daughter in Ashburn to help her pack (which she didn’t need as it turned out) and to coordinate her planned moving day.  My truck and utility trailer were to be involved as well as JR and Eric so some advance planning was needed, at least on my end.  She had her end nicely organized and on track.

Wicket in the all packed up bedroom

The second work break was dedicated to some serious shinning times at the OVPR Rendezvous near Surry Va.  This Vous is usually the 1st one of the season for me so there’s more packing and planning involved than usual.  Plus I could leave here as early as Tuesday this spring, although post work exhaustion and packing reality pushed the departure back to early Wednesday morning.

My Lodge at OVPR

The  third work break was moving time for the Urchin.  It took some serious Mighty Mouse work to get the utility trailer swung around & hooked up to the truck – low tire pressure + heavy trailer = much sweat & umphing.  But hooked up it got & moving went smoothly.

Urchin Packing the Shower Curtain

So this last work break found me catching up.  I’d cleaned my Vous clothes Sunday after the event, but I hadn’t time to do more than unload the rest of my gear into my kitchen.  This break I cleaned all my Vous cookware, put away the Vous clothes and gave my cold iron items a new coat of flat black anti-rust paint.

So now the 4 lantern stands, 3 cooking tripod pieces, 2 blow pokes, utensil stand, flag pole stand and tent stake puller are all nice and black.  While I was at it I also wire brushed and painted the aquarium stand that will soon be at my Urchin’s new digs.

While the wind died down of an afternoon so I could do all that spray painting, it picked back up that evening.  Thus I could sit out back for the first time this year and watch the woods grow dark but a fire in my fire ring just wasn’t a sound idea.   The tree frog chorus was magnificent.

Moving Day

Urchin is moving out of the apartment she was sharing with Amber and into the lower level of a friends house (Amber got married & got a new place with her new husband).   So Urchin bribed me with food & gas money to be her truck-company-for-a-day & got JR & Eric to come help in the muscle department.  (Yours truly is too old to be hufting boxes down 2 flights of stairs out & 1 flight in.)

Packed up and ready to go

Wicket surveys the packing

Last of the kitchen stuff

Here’s hoping its not raining hard when we move this – it will only fit in my open truck bed

Gigi & Wicket were finding all this activity rather confusing

The actual move went well.  Urchin & I took Kore in her cage & the 2 Kittahs in their carriers to the new place along with litter boxes, food etc.  Once they were set up, we went back & met JR & Eric for the actual move.  Everything pretty much fit in the 4x4x8 trailer.  The electronic things went in Urchin’s car, the 2 tall bookshelves went in JR’s SUV & the queen size mattress & boxsprings fit in my truck bed with the tailgate down.  It was misting some but the real rain held off until everything was moved.

Spring OVPR–March 24 to 27

Last fall I gave my faithful Blog readers the Women of OVPR – well a few of them anyway.  So this Spring I figured to even the score & give ya all some pics of the men. 

The smiling man on the far right is the potter whose wares are on display.  I’ve got a couple of his pieces at my house.  The other shiftless fellows around him are just typical ner-do-wells.

Two more hard working gents – Tom the Traders on the left & a yoke maker on the right

Another traveling trader who frequent these doings.  He also sells shooting supplies, some tinware & the like

Hootie & his lady – Hootie is a bit of a rogue & runs the local Barking Spider Tavern

Another trader enjoying a fine March day in the sun

This fine lad from Williamsburg has knives, shooting bags & firelocks for sale.  No he’s not cooking, just warming his trotters.

A landlubber & a seaman on the left, a Virginia colonist & western fur trapper on the right.

Of course it wouldn’t be a Vous without music.  This guitar player is making great music on his new guitar.

Dulcimer Dave  & the Preacher with the Young Sonner

Here we have some refugees playing alone with Dave et al

All in all a good time was had by all & sundry.  It did get a bit cold Saturday evening.  Gypsy Jane & I had loaded the Ford mule already & slept at her daughter’s place near Richmond Saturday night, so we missed packing up wet canvas in a light dusting of snow.