Friday, July 23, 2010

bloggavacation

My post on July 10 was, believe it or not, my 350th blog post ... a stunning statistic for someone who dreaded completely, and went to great lengths, to avoid writing anything at all throughout 16 years of formal education ... goes to show that you just never know how things are going to turn out. In honor of that 350 number, I decided to take a two week blogging break and do some vacation like stuff with my 'spare' time. The post below is a quick overview. During that time, I acquired a pretty substantial backlog of stuff I want to write about ... I plan to do a little more writing tonight and trickle the other stuff in over the next week or two ... Quick overview below ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...
I spent a wonderful long afternoon at The Shelburne Museum .... I had forgotten the depth of utterly fantastic woodworking stuff on display there from tools, to the carousel above (which is a totally amazing display of turn of the century carving and painting), to a houseful of carved decoys, sneak boxes and punt guns, some great architecture and the restored Lake Champlain steamer ferry, The Ticonderoga. More on that later for sure.
I finished the second of the famous Stieg Larson books and reluctantly cracked the third the day before yesterday ... I read the first one way back the week after the 4th of July. I'm actually surprised I'm not reading the third one now except after a thousands pages or so, you actually can stop reading for a minute or two. I'm sure I'll be back at it in an hour or so. The one above is 600 pages and I think it took about 4 days. Boy was I tired at work. Avoid these books like the plague if you have anything even remotely important to do ...
I fooled around with a mockup for a hanging, spinning steel sculpture I want to do. The one above is painted 1/4" luan, reddish on one side and reddish/brownish on the other. After several failures, I am awaiting 350 lb test stainless steel 'large salt water game fish' swivels from Cabelas.
And the boys in the shop have been hard at work on an 18' wall unit/fireplace surround/bookcase that we'll deliver and install next week sometime ... Will's got a different project going on too ...
And I managed to get in a couple of rounds of golf to boot ... above, one of them, a first ever for me, fivesome ... what a hoot ... All for now; more soon ...

3 comments:

Jeff Branch said...

My dad does wood carving and I ham going to have to show him this post because he has made a carousel horse before.

wrduce said...

Congratulations on 350 posts...quite an achievement...

The Shelburne is quite the not-so-little jewel...we went there for the first time last year, and what a great collection...definately something for everyone. It's certainly someplace we need to go back to (only trouble is we're in Ontario...so it's a bit of trip).

Keep up the great work on the blogging...your's is on the top of the list of blogs I frequent.

all the best, bill.

Mary said...

Great for you to have your vacation! And thanks for the posts. Did you spend your Holidays in Dorset?