random outbursts from my inner five-year-old about craftsmanship, books, family, bikes, wilderness, cookies, bees, building furniture, my dogs, travel, adventure, life, & all the rest…
Just to reiterate, I don’t collect comic books or coins or baseball cards or vintage motorcycles – I collect KLM Dutch houses. It is not a widely held hobby, is full of esoterica, and REAL nerdy folk. If you want a favor from me or to tug at my heart strings, a KLM house will just about do it. If it is a special edition… Well, that will get you favors!
I just scored an ashtray version of KLM house #20 – the Edam Museum. It is one of the non-gin filled houses made for the middle-eastern routes and are much less common than their corked counterparts. My new house was produced by Royal Goedewaagen in Gouda in 1970 and is only one of the 15 types of houses made in the ashtray version – the others being: 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 14, 15, 17, 21, 22, 23 ,25, 26, 27.
It is in great condition. I bought it from an individual and did not pay retail/collector’s price for it, which is rare for me. I seem to always pay retail for stuff… I am stoked. It will live beside my standard 1980’s version that is still full of gin. STOKED!!
Some people collect comic books, baseball cards, coins, or made in Occupied-Japan figurines. I have a friend that collects National Geographic magazines and another buddy that collects historical table gaming military figures. I collect KLM blue and white canal houses. An odd choice for a middle aged married Engineer with a woodshop, forge, and machine/fabrication shop, but it is what I nerd-out on. I am pretty far down the rabbit hole of this little pastime and am currently building a series of shelves in our kitchen breakfast nook, complete with lighting, to hold and display my little collection. It is fairly harmless though and I don’t think that my wife will leave me for spending our 401Ks on a specific miniature or for selling my sweet dad-bod at the airport to a KLM flight attendant that is my hook-up, my pusher. Neither is likely to happen.
A little history about the houses:
Once upon a time, when you could still smoke on airplanes and people got dressed up to travel, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) regulated all manner of aviation-related policies/laws in the US and before the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act everything from ticket prices to routes and schedules were subject to government approval. It applied to US carriers, foreign carriers operating within the US and US/Foreign airlines flying into and out of the US. The general idea for all the regulations was to ensure an equal playing field among airlines.
There were a number of rules that prohibited airlines
from incentivizing passengers, say offering a free hotel or free drinks to
passenger so that would choose one carrier over another as all carriers had to
charge the exact regulated price for any given route. Since and gifts or freebies or incentives
could be construed to have a monetary value, changing the customer’s overall
cost for a flight, they were not allowed by CAB rules.
All the Airlines of the day tried to bend, bypass, or ignore
these regulations in some way and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines was no
exception. Starting in 1952, flight attendants
began presenting World Business and Royal Class passengers
small blue and white ceramic Delft houses, which paid tribute to the Dutch
canal houses. The miniature houses were/are hollow, and filled with Dutch gin (known as Jenever). This was obviously against the rules, or was
it…
KLM responded to the then criticism with: “Is there a law that tells us drinks have to
be served in a glass?” What the customer did with the bottle after
their sip of gin was up to them. The tradition
continues to this day and I am one of a small group of folks that are always on
the lookout for a new house, an older version of one I already own, or planning
travel specifically so that my trip will include the presentation of a new
house.
Today, the gin comes from the famous Dutch BOLS distillery, but before the 1980s, the houses were filled with liqueur from Dutch distilleries Rynbende and Henkes. Most of the miniatures depicts a real house in the Netherlands (with a couple of exceptions), with a new model being introduced on October 7 of each year.
Production
was random until 1994, with spurts of houses sometimes being produced in rapid secession,
then none produced for several of years.
Then in 1994, 15 houses were produced in honor of KLM’s 75th
anniversary. This brought the number to exactly 75 – Marketing…. The number
of houses in the series has kept
pace with KLM’s age ever since. The houses themselves were produced by
the Royal Goedewaagen in Gouda until 1995, but their manufacture was moved to Asia early that year. This year 2019,
will be the 100th year and I am currently chomping at the bit for
#100.
More
than 800,000 KLM-houses are produced each year and around 725,000 Genever-filled
and 79,000 unfilled KLM Houses are loaded onto KLM aircraft yearly. The
unfilled ones are provided for destinations in the Middle East due to alcohol
regulations in that area of the world. My very first house was an un-filled one from
a flight between Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi in 2003. In the past, KLM gave the Middle-Eastern
bound passengers miniature houses that served as ashtrays. When putting the
cigarette in the hole at the back of the house, the smoke would come out of the
house’s chimney. Houses: 1, 3, 4, 5, 8,
14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, and 27 all came in ashtray form. I would commit a serious misdemeanor to own a
complete set of the ashtray versions.
Seriously…
Apart from the standard series of houses, a
few miniatures have been issued without a number. The Royal Palace Amsterdam,
Goudse Waag cheese weigh house in Gouda, Paleis het Loo in Apeldoorn,
Koninklijk Theater Carré in Amsterdam, and the Hall of Knights in The Hague all
have a limited-edition, KLM
version of themselves. The only house so
far that was produced, but not based in the Netherlands is House No. 85. This
is a model of the Penha building, the most famous house on Curaçao, which is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
There is also an ‘unofficial’ miniature house, the Curaçao Cottage, issued by the government of the Netherlands
Antilles to commemorate 75 years of service. The house was filled with a local
drink instead of the customary Dutch gin. In contrast to the typically Dutch
and generally rectangular canal-side houses that make up most of the set,
Cunucu House has a rounded, thatched roof form.
This is not a super hard or expensive collection or hobby to get into. Friends and family know about my “little collection” and I have had friends pick them up for me on trips abroad. A friend and colleague once brought me one with two commemorative matching KLM coffee cups back from a visit to the Netherlands. He has since started collecting the houses himself, has began taunting me with his finds, and is now dead to me. We will not speak his villainous name.
If you get bitten by the tiny house bug you can, like me, hope for a flight upgrade or pick them up here and there at antique stores or Craigslist or flea markets. You could also go “all in” and get a 1-99 respectable set for around $1600 and then start hunting the edges of the internet for the hard to find, unique, and old versions of houses and buildings. Regardless of how you start or where you are in your decent into tiny Dutch house madness (I have the KLM Delft house app loaded on my phone…), all the collectors I have ever met in real life (a total of 6 people) and internet collectors have a hit-list of houses. The houses on my list are:
The above mentioned ashtray versions
The Cunucu Cottage
Early versions of houses: 47, 48, 87
Any version of houses: 95, 97, 99, and the #100 that will come out this year.
Royal Palace on Dam Square in Amsterdam, which is the jewel of any KLM house nerd’s collection. It was made to scale in Delft Blue by Bols, the creator of Jenever. In the 1970s and 1980s, all newlywed couples who flew on KLM received one as a gift. The series was limited to several thousand.
Goudse Waag (Cheese Weigh House) in Gouda, which was given to newlyweds flying KLM on their honeymoon between 1995 and 2005. These houses are no longer in production and I want one.
Frans Hals Museum, which formed part of a special edition that didn’t actually belong to the set. It is also not numbered. In 1962, the ‘Museum’ house was only awarded to tourists from Japan. On the flight from Japan to Amsterdam, they were given a special voucher granting them entry to the Museum. When/If they arrived at the museum and presented the voucher, these tourists received the complimentary miniature. There are therefore only a small number of these KLM miniature houses in circulation around the globe.
House of Bols
Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights), Only 300 were produced and were gifts to the KLM Management Board. I saw one for e-bay once that went for over $1700.
The Hotel New York
Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum (National Maritime Museum)
Huis ter Kleef – “Blue Delfts exclusively made for Huis ter Kleef by KLM and BOLS. Not issued on board of KLM flights. HKDNP” is written on the bottom of the house.
Concertgebouw
Carré Theatre
Het Loo Palace
Then there are special issues like new a flight route commemorative house (1988 Vancouver to Calgery), The Las Vegas Sales Conference 2001, etc…
Links that help with the descent into Tiny House Madness:
Quick Note: The title of this post was a joke AT MY OWN EXPENSE! I have had lots of hate mail from folks (two from the same guy…) writing to tell me how stupid I am and how successful they are with their ink. These folks, it would seem, did not read the post and only looked at the title. I am an aerospace engineer. A well paid one and I 100% get that tattoos are NOT for losers, that is why the title seemed funny to me…
So, I have been getting tattooed since I was 17 years old. My very first bit of ink was a small infantry crossed rifles tattoo on my left shoulder. I paid $25 for it at Fast Freddie’s Tattoo Parlor just outside the gates of Ft. Benning, GA on Victory Blvd. It was amazing (Not Really) and I loved it, until I didn’t (in about 6 months). A few years later, I had it covered with some Celtic knot work and have had that shoulder and the other added to over the years. I have had a couple of OK tattoos, but never a bad one and have never had any sort of infection or issue with aftercare. No misspelled words, flesh rotting, weird placement, zero ladies names, etc… My experience with having ink is has been strait forward.
My eventual want was/is to have two full sleeves, but life and finances sometimes get in the way of “wants” when they live in the same house as “needs” and it has been 15 years since I have sat for a local scab vendor. Late last year, my wife paid for a consultation with a highly regarded Irazumi (Japanese tattoo style ) artist in our area to discuss having my right sleeve finished. I liked the artist, his portfolio was very good, very professional, and started saving for the sleeve as they are not a quick or cheap endeavor.
My first sitting took 4.5 hours and was the design and outline. The artist worked really hard and had amazing vision to incorporate a neo-traditional Japanese Hokusai-themed should cap into the overall design of the sleeve with an octopus, a peony elbow cap, 13 cherry blossoms scattered all the way from wrist to the top of my shoulder, and a large mistudomoe to anchor my forearm. all of it was drawn on free hand and then tattooed. It was impressive.
The second sitting was all about putting in the thick black lines of the octopus and doing all the black background shading. No Color for the this sitting, just blasting in a bunch of black. It took 5.5 hours this time and it was not a tickling experience – It fucking hurt the whole time. I have at least two more sittings and they will feel about as good as the second I am afraid. The end product will hopefully justify the cost/pain.
A couple of days after the second sitting, I felt bad most of the afternoon, maybe a low grade fever and my shoulder ached in the joint a good bit. I had showered and washed my arm that morning and was happy with the overall look, even at the incomplete stage. As I was getting ready for bed I took off my long sleeve shirt to wash and lightly moisturize the arm and things had taken a turn: my whole arm was swollen, everywhere the shader had been was puffy and bright red. Most concerning of all, I was starting to develop tiny blisters in the puffy spots. Oh hell no!! I know what infection looks like and there was no way I was letting that happen without a serious fight!
My wife and I hopped in the car and headed to Urgent Care. I figured it was just the beginning of an infection so I would need an inter-muscular antibiotic, 5 days of antibiotics by mouth, and a sweet tube of steroid lotion. The Dr. more or less agreed with my diagnosis and treatment plan, except no inter-muscular shot and a 10 day pill regimen. We were in and out in less than an hour. It actually took us more time at the pharmacy that it took to be taken care of by a Doctor. 24 hours later, there is still a little redness, but the swelling is gone and there are no more blisters.
Update: it has been 6 months and I have had three more sittings and the sleeve is done. I am VERY happy with the work and the artist. There was never any issue with additional sittings, not a bit. I will fill the other sleeve, but with “bangers” (one tattoo at a time) instead of a single collated image.
Tattoo PSA:
Listen to your aftercare instructions and ask questions.
Keep it clean. Wash it gently with real soap everyday.
Do not gob on too much lotion trying to keep it wet.
If you think you tattoo might be infected, go to urgent care right then, do not wait until in the morning. Scarring, ink fade, and Sepsis are no one’s friend.
Take ALL of your meds until the bottle is empty.
Talk to your tattoo artist if you have an issue – in person, calmly, not via hate mail or social media – a real conversation. 99% chance it is not their issue. You might have done something wrong or you might be the 3rd person that had an issue recently and the artist might use the information to look at their supplies or process.
I am working on a recording a few songs and clips – mostly for background music on my own YouTube vids. It is going OK as I feel that I am set up pretty well – I have Apple Logic Pro X and Garage Band, a focite audio interface, 3 mics, a couple of amps, and 7-8 instruments that I can sort of get by on. I have no delusions of even adequacy as a musician, but recording the songs has made me take a few momentary flight of fantasy: What if I were a recording artist…….
Artist name: Snugnutz, which is double entendre that references my life as a working enginerd AND is mildly, yet socially acceptable, provocative. It will always be displayed in a proper Tag Font.
Genre: I will call it thrash hillbilly trance EDM nerdcore. With a focus on clog dancing goths in any and all supporting music video projects.
Album titles:
Yes, there IS rum in my coffee cup
Don’t Tell my Wife about the New Motorcycle
Just Nerdy Enough
You can do anything you want on your last muther fuckin’ day!
I am way behind on posting. My J-O-B, video making, house remodeling, class I am taking, and general nerdiness has me swamped. But…. I flew out of Seattle a little while ago and made a little film that has a fantastic view of Mt. Rainier. Enjoy.
President’s Day is here and it is time to prune the fruit trees, roses, and lavender. Or at least that was my plan for yesterday. Instead, I spent WAY TOO MUCH time on Twitter – ranting about sensible gun laws and the current US administration. I also spent a couple of hours cleaning the house, washing dishes, working on 2 videos, walking the puppies, and working in the shop. So the entire day was not wasted on-line.
In the shop, I am building a Screen Printers Workbench for a local artist, Amy M. Douglas. She does some pretty amazing prints and oil/acrylic work. We are trading my time for art, so it is a win/win for both of us. Below are a couple of shots taken during the build and I will have a whole YouTube video about the build in a week or so.
I will spend an afternoon this coming weekend pruning, re-stacking firewood, and cleaning the yard – I see a dump run in my future.
So, I am going to rant for just a bit, bear with me…
-Mounts Soapbox –
“Ahem… I set a goal to be a better filmmaker, content provider, and maker five months ago. Part of that goal was to reach the 10,000 view threshold to monetize my YouTube account. I did not plan to quit my J-O-B, or be internet famous, I just wanted to use it as a milestone for progress toward the goal and I nailed it on January 4th! 10,000 views!! I was so stoked that I woke my wife up way too late one night to tell her. My account was under review for 2 weeks and I was finally officially monetized for two days – two WHOLE days – before BAM!! I was demonetized with a huge group of small and smaller content providers. Son of a…
While this was a while in coming, it looks like the process/decision was sped up when a guy with 15+ million subscribers named Logan Paul posted a video of a suicide victim. 1st, what a fucking privileged asshat. WTF is wrong with people?! He should be forever ashamed, and spend a great deal of his YouTube revenue on suicide prevention and advocacy. What should’ve happened following the public and advertiser outrage was YouTube suspending or deleting his channel, but that dude generates SERIOUS ad revenue, so… What happened instead was that YouTube took him off the top-tier ad group and YouTube punished the SHIT out of the small folks by demonetizing channels with less than 4000 hours of watch-time AND less than1000 subscribers to ‘protect their core values’? Makes zero sense and this guy will continue to post and earn $$$ even at the lower tier.
OK, fine, fuck’em. I was not doing this for some mythical pot of gold. This setback is just going to make me dig deeper. I am 10% to the new threshold and I will keep slogging on. Keep making and doing. Post better and better content. This will make me leaner, stronger, bigger, better, more… A better speaker, better filmmaker, I will get lighting and sound for my videos dialed, have awesome content, and be a better person from it all. Success doesn’t teach half as much as adversity.
To all effected by the YouTube demonetization BS: Don’t quit! Keep slogging on. Keep making and doing. You too will be all the better for it. Send me your channel and I will follow you and help with the watch hour threshold. As I said, I had just hit the monetization before all of this and we will get there again. It will take some hard work but, we can all help each other out.”
I had a found (fly-away issue) DJI Phantom 3Pro sent to me as a gift by an awesome buddy – a SERIOUSLY awesome friend! I took a look and decided to rebuild the thing and see if I could get it back in the air. Here is that process:
From my second You Tube Channel – the one I use to share vacation videos and miscellaneous stuff – I present for your viewing pleasure: Snowboarding at Loveland and Winterpark in Colorado with great friends on MLK weekend 2018
As always, PLEASE hit the subscribe button if you like my content on YouTube. Thank you!
A year ago, to the day, I said that I would do a bunch of stuff in 2017. I did OK, but not great. I could blame it on my old man hip, the surgery, or the recovery time, but mostly not getting stuff on the list done was all me. All my own laziness, stuborness, or my A+ skill level of procrastination. These are the promises I made to myself that I kept:
Take a pottery class Take a Blacksmithing class at the Pratt Read 1 book every 2 weeks – minimum Play my uke, banjo, and guitar with others Give lots of $$ to Heifer and MFS Make movies and post: Adventure, craftsmanship, and family. Make Stuff!! Ride my skateboard because I am not too old or too fat Road trip in WA more Take my wife on vacation Plant a spring garden Fix up the front and back yards
The following is what I am committing myself to do in 2018:
Organize my chaos in the shop and basement.
Sell, donate, recycle, or throw away shit that I do not use.
Use my planner and notebooks as tools not as something that I “have” to use.
Eat my veggies. Seriously. Salads in my future.
Take my desk at home back and make it a conducive writing space.
Cut WAY back on sugar and carb intake!
Lose weight – back to 175! and put on 5-7lbs of muscle
Go to the gym 3-4 time a week – minimum.
Box more at the gym and at home
Write more: Blog posts, REAL letters, Thank you notes, fiction, and non-fiction
Take more great pictures
Fly my drones more
Take at least a 45 minute lunch at least 4 days a week at work
Show up to yoga at least once a week
Take another pottery class
Finish my CJ-7 Jeep restoration
Look into getting back into the judo dojo
Sign up and compete in the Gambler 500 car race
Sign up for a letterpress class at SVC Downtown
Take another blacksmithing class at The Pratt
Read 1 book every 2 weeks!
Learn how to play the mandolin and banjo better!
Play my uke, banjo, and guitar with others
Build a skin-on-frame canoe for two
Road and mountain bike
Take the puppies to Lincoln Park for a walk at least once a week
Ride the living shit out of my Single -Speed
Bike to work at least 5 times this year (12 miles each way)
Volunteer more at the Center for Wooden Boats
Pay off all credit cards
Go sailing in Puget Sound
Turn some amazing and useful stuff on my lathe
Give lots of $$ to Heifer and MFS
Make at least 1 movie a week for YouTube and post: Adventure and craftsmanship
Monetize my YouTube account and increase my presence and standing in that community
Lessen my Twitter and social media activity…
See my kids and grandchildren more
Be involved in politics more: financally and with a time commitment
Work on my Genealogy database and organize all my info.
Finish the house remodel – even if I have to pay a contractor to do it (…shudder…)
Finish the garage/shop/GROP build
Make.More.Stuff!!
Ride my snowboard and skateboard because I am not too old or too fat
Road trip in WA and on West Coast more
Have two hives of healthy, happy bees
Kayak lots!
See my friends more
Take my wife on vacation
Plant a spring garden and have a really bountiful fall harvest
Have an awesome Griswald-like Christmas light display!
I am printing this list out and pasting copies in my notebook, work planner, in the shop, at my desk at work, on the fridge, and in the basement above my warranty voiding workbench.
As the weather has cooled down, there are some welding and fabrication projects that I need/want to take care of during the short, cold, dark days of winter. This short video details the fabrication of a steel votive candle or offering candle stand that I am built for my wife/our house. It is made to fit on top of the Prie-dieu that we brought back from France. The stand is made from 1/8″ steel channel and plate, though looking back at the video the plate might have been more like 5/16″ ish…
I am a novice smith and that is being generous. I do like to forge though and it is awesome when I get a little time to make things for myself. This short film details a couple of the different type of hold fasts (metal work and word work) that I recently made at the Pratt Center for Fine Arts forge in Seattle. If you live in Seattle, have a single maker bone in your body, and haven’t checked them out – do so immediately and sign up for a class or two.
I can do and make bunches of stuff: Everything from joinery to electronics, from wood turning to machining, from bookbinding to electrical, from carving to heavy machine operation, but there are certain things that I have never really been able to do in the world of hand-craft, mostly due to lack of exposure or instruction. Chiefly among these things are/were forging/blacksmithing and metal shaping. The latter composed of shaping and bending sheet metal into forms and objects.
I decided this year to work on those deficits and have been taking some forging and fabrication classes at The Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle. A couple nights a week, I leave work and hammer, shape, weld, grind, and make stuff out of steel. I have been at it for 5 weeks and am really please with both The Pratt and all that I am learning. I have also learned that while I have dipped my toe in these waters, that there is a ocean of knowledge out there. I do not have any want to be a full-time blacksmith or fabricator, but I want to keep learning, so I can add some of the techniques and pieces to stuff that I already build and add to my repertoire of ability and understanding. Below are some of the pieces that I have made, tools I am using, and some stuff that I am working on. I am putting together a little video as well.
So, I have a One Year Plan to make my site and web content better and at the very least self-supporting. I have had this site for 16 years and it is not free. I would like for it to at least generate enough income to pay for the software updates, registration fees, equipment, and hosting costs. A Great Leap Forward without the Maoist philosophy, mass-starvation, mass-migration, and such. It is multi-pronged and here it is:
Shop:
Stop eschewing progress for perfection.
Get it set and start working and building and doing!
Finish current Jeep projects
Website:
More regular updates
Split my personal BLOG/website and my “commercial” one
More video content for this site and commercial site (trying REALLY hard to buy Matt of Many Trades from its current owner – see blurb below)
Use as a funnel to increase my YouTube traffic
YouTube:
Monetize Account
Branding
Change the page name
Focus on specific content – craft and making stuff
Split art, travel, family, cycling and kayaking videos onto second YouTube channel
Become a better filmmaker
Spend time in front of the camera
Use better tools
Lenses
Lighting!
Microphones
Drones/software
Camera Mounts
Make better videos
Make some of my own music for videos
To kick this off right and so to as not to make plans without follow through, I have now re-branded my YouTube Channel from “matt talley” to “Matt of Many Trades” to match my Instagram User Name. I have used the name for about 25 years and even considered it for a company name (I was building decks, doing some trim carpentry, concrete forming, wiring HVAC systems, residential electrical, welding on red steel, and doing some light remodeling) while in college to pay tuition/groceries/rent. I even have an OLD shirt I had silk screened with a hammer and cutting torch crossed with the name in an arch above. It is about accurate branding and I do/make/build/fix/break a bunch of random crap 🙂 and it is time to embrace accurate branding.
I read about a supposedly gem of a kayak museum in Portland maybe 18 months ago. Hmmm… Skin on frame kayaks… A museum… Huge collection… Quirky hours… Hmmm….
After a little inter-web research, I found that the Lincoln Street Kayak and Canoe Museum is the work of one man, Harvey Golden, and the collection is made up mostly of boats that he has hand built after surveying traditional native boats all over the world. I was in!
Mr. Golden uses the museum as a repository for his boat collection and as the home of his publishing house, White House Grocery Press. The museum is open to the public here and there as he is in the office and has set hours from 5-7 on Wednesdays. Knowing all that, I was almost vibrating to get a peek at his boats and paddles. I had stopped by the museum a couple of times when visiting Portland, but the timing was always off and I was never in town during the posted open time Wednesday afternoons. I was going going to be in The Rose City for a long holiday weekend and sent Mr. Golden an e-mail asking if he might, by chance, be around when I was in the city and to my great surprise, he got right back to me and agreed to let me stop by one Tuesday morning – I brought him a coffee when I showed up at the planned 10:00 on the dot.
His collection of boats, paddles, gear, accessories, and models is amazing – as are his books on the subject of kayaks. Here is the kicker though and why I am spending some time discussing a specific museum visit: he was amazingly generous with his time and spent over an hour and a half with me to explain the collection, bits & bobs, details, accessories, etc… I really, really appreciated it. His generosity of time is not something I see a lot of these days.
If you are into kayaks or boats in general, stop by the free museum and take a look at his books as well. I am about 70 pages into the super-detailed and annotated Kayaks of Alaska and want to build them ALL…
I’ve had a number of people on various web forums, 6 sets of neighbors, a few friends, and a ton of folks in our area ask me some detailed questions about our garage build: size, foundation, demo, siding, wiring, roof, the car lift, etc… As I have been making some videos while rehabbing the hip, I thought that I would turn my garage build into a three part YouTube series to answer most of the questions and have all of the information documented in one spot. The first one is done and up now and the second should be done in a few weeks.
This one and the next are from pictures taken during the build, with a voice over. The third will be a mix of videos, stills and some drone shots. I learn something every single time I put a video or slide show together, so my hope is they get more and more watchable.
I didn’t have the time or facilities to do it in this video, but I would like to use my own guitar, banjo, ukulele, fiddle, and mandolin picking for the soundtrack on future videos. My son, brother-in-law, and any friends I can con into it will also be future soundtrack contributors.
Port Townsend School of Woodworking is looking for a new Executive Director. It is my dream job! I read the job notice early one morning before Thanksgiving and it checked all my boxes. I have the EXACT qualifications for this position and then some. It was like the sky parted and a ray of warm sunshine fell upon me. I needed, my soul need this job! I had a momentary lapse into my new fantasy life:
Waking up on our 43′ sailboat moored near Ft. Walton Park.
Fresh cup of coffee in the galley.
Kiss my still blissfully sleeping, blanket covered, puppy snuggling wife as I head off the boat to start my day.
Stop in by my dock-side garage shop and feed the cat (an imaginary cat as I do not have one currently, but would need one for my dockside garage shop in Port Townsend...)
Walk or cycle to work.
Spend my day smiling – the scent of fresh wood in the air around me and surrounded by people also doing what the love.
Stop by a cute local store on the way home for a couple of things and pick up flowers for my wife.
Write a few work e-mails and do a little work on some personal wood projects before dinner.
A fine meal of local veggies and fresh-caught fish with a glass or two of a 2009 Pomerol wine.
Read a little, write a letter or two, play a game of chess, and/or maybe some Netflix before going to bed in our cozy aft cabin.
As I day-dreamed about this new life, I got WAY ahead of myself thinking about how I was going to break the news that we were selling our house in Seattle to my wife. I was fully into the dream right up until I read the last little bit: “…Starting Salary: $45K to $55K”. Dammit!
I guess I will keep my day-job and just huff sawdust in my free time. I sent the notice to my boss without any explanation and I got back something to the effect of: ‘I was worried until I got to the end. I think we will be seeing you for a while longer…’
We have lived in Seattle for almost 8.5 years and 2016 was our first time going to Bumpershoot. When it was announced that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were headlining – Stamps-With-Foot immediately bought 3-day passes. We saw some really great acts and I very much enjoyed the time I spent with my wife, eating faire-food, and listening to music.
Acts that we saw:
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
G-Easy
Billy Idol
Margo Price
Death Cab for Cutie
Micheal Franti and Spearhead
Tame Impala
Third Eye Blind
Kamasi Washington
Run the Jewels
The Macklemore and Michael Franti shows were our favorite and we are going to see Margo Price at The Tractor Tavern when she comes back to Seattle next month.
My garage/shop now has a name, but first: Story Time.
I have agonized over what to call it since the early planning stages began almost 3 years ago: The Place Warranties Go to Die, The Jeep Warren, The Briar Patch, The Shiznit Garage, My Little ADHD Shed, etc…
I was out on the slab one night a few weeks ago moving around the poly-burlab curing cover, the boards holding it down, and rearranging the soaker hoses when I smacked myself in the side of the head with a wet 2X6 – really f’n hard, right behind the temple. I saw stars and staggered around holding the side of my head saying F%$#!! loudly, over & over in a machine gun staccato manner. It was all that would come out. This scene may have just lasted a few seconds or more than a minute – the timeline is a little fuzzy. My sweet wife, Stamps-With-Foot, did not see the initial head strike, just my wobbling around and apparent sudden affliction of turrets. I stumbled in the kitchen door a few minutes later and she said over her shoulder while standing at the sink: “I am sure the neighbors will be glad when your little playhouse is built so they will not have to listen to all the dropping of F-Bombs…” I was about to take gross offence to her characterization of physical culmination of my fabrication dreams as a “little playhouse” when I realized that she had provided the perfect name: The F-Bomb Garage.
I have searched the Garage Forum and the Fabrication Forums that I frequent and no one has claimed it and I have found no others, so it is mine, I call it. I found a few stickers and images that I like for a logo, but I will be making my own to apply to projects, the Jeep, the Jeep Trailer, tool boxes, etc.
“A Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
I am not sure where or when I first saw this film, but it impacted me hugely. It is the story of a simple shepherd and the small thing that he did every day that had profound consequences. A beautiful film.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was one of my favorite short films while growing up. Almost shockingly it is an animated short made by the legendary Chuck Jones and is of course based on a short story from Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
As an update to my original post about the pottery class that Stamps-With-Foot gave me for Christmas, I have made a bunch of little pots and am in the middle of firing and glazing them. Really unhappy with the red glaze that is available, but the milky white one is great, so I am doing the majority of the pots in that color.
I plan to make 8-10 coffee cups, a set of matching puppy water & food bowls, and a number of honey pots before the end of the 10 week course. I have 4 coffee cups that have handles on them and that are drying now, waiting to be bisque fired. I’ll turn wooden lids and honey dippers for some of the cylinders and give them as Christmas and birthday gifts if they turn out well.
My wife and I have destination birthdays. She likes castles and I have a historical/cultural bucket list of places. In 2015 she went to Neuschwanstein for her Birthday and I chose Rome for my birthday trip this year.
We spent 3 night and 4 days exploring the city: Ancient, medieval, and modern. Did some light shopping, saw amazing art & sculpture, ate, drank perfect coffee after perfect coffee, and had delicious wine. Our apartment was just steps from Vatican City and we spent an entire day touring its Museums, Sistine chapel and St. Peters. To say it was packed is an understatement of high degree. There were people EVERYWHERE.
Other sites visited included: Basilica Santa Maria, Trevi Fountain (under remodel), The Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, Villa Borghese & the villa gardens, Colosseum, Forum, the Pantheon, and small streets and piazzas throughout the city. We strolled along the banks of the Tiber, kissed in the shadow of the San Angelo Fortress, listened to street musicians, and had much gelato!
The small shops in and around the Trastevere district and pocket restaurants were probably our favorite. Laurel even had a fine pair of bespoke and bejeweled leather Roman sandals made one evening after we happened upon a small cobbler shoppe.
My pretty wife gave me a pottery class for Christmas. Tonight was the first night. I made three “cylinders” and I am apparently “great at centering…” no idea, but I like the class and want to make a bunch of stuff. Will cruz Pinterest for ideas later.
