When Ryan was sleeping over, Lori got the kids all to sit down for some painting with watercolors. I love their watercolor paintings now - they actually look like something. When they were younger, they would just mix all of the colors together and make a big brown muddy mess on a paper, which I had to pretend was beautiful. :) Now, I can actually tell what they meant to paint, and I don't have to pretend anymore.
Year: 2011
Four in a Row
A Bushel of Bowls
A few weeks ago, I helped a friend cut down an apple tree that was growing too close to his house. I took a whole bunch of the wood home with me, to use for woodturning. Since then, I've roughed out all of these bowls. Once they've finished drying out, I can turn them down to finished thickness, and put some finish on them. But for now, they're still soaking wet. While turning them on the lathe, I sometimes ended up with a line down my shirt and across the floor of water. When turning fresh apple wood, there's a smell almost of apple cider - it was pretty cool. I really like the contrast between the dark red heartwood and the cream-colored sapwood in these pieces. Apple has a tendency to crack and twist pretty badly as it dries, so if at least 50% of these rough-turned blanks make it through to finished bowls, I'll be really happy.
Thanksgiving
Pilgrim
Robot
Halloween
We had no power this past Halloween, so trick-or-treating was a great excuse to get out of the cold, dark house for a couple of hours. We went to Lori's Mom's neighborhood, and things went pretty well. Sean did better this year than he ever has before. Usually, he gets tired and bored pretty fast, and starts to get cranky and ruin our fun. But this year he had an awesome time from start to finish. Carter had a great time too - most years, it's too much walking for her little legs. But she's really shot up this year, and had no trouble.