Let it glow, let it glow…

Doing a bit of research and then field experimentation, I have found that yes, Black locust wood DOES glow bright yellow green under black light. I’d heard the rumors, and after acquiring a Black locust board at our local timber dealer, I tried it.

The Bandsaw and I

Last weekend, the spouse had emergency gall bladder removal surgery, pretty nasty, but hey, we got there in time. While recovering, he walked me through changing the broken 1/8″ broken blade for a 1/2″  unbroken blade so now I’m back at it: making large pieces of wood into small pieces of wood.

I am a human beaver.

Natural Color, Open Fire

I spent last weekend at the first of my local fall festival lineups, the Ox and Mule Festival, in Gerald, Missouri.

I’ve been the dyer there for almost ten years (That much already???) and it’s one of my favorite small venues. I get firewood, access to Black walnuts, lots of dye-source weeds, and interesting neighbors.

Book Matching, Small

Tried another new thing this week, “book matching”.

Turning blank consisting of a glue up combining book matching and regular blocks in sycamore, mahogany, and upcycled red oak.

Book matching is where you slice open a block of stone or wood and if there’s a neat pattern, arrange the two or more pieces side by so that you get a reflecting pattern from piece to piece.

I tried a few new things.

An array of little 7″ spindles with one of my regular 12″ spindles. Puppies! Kittens! Um, spindlets?

Had a day over the weekend to myself.

So I spent it in the woodshop.

Making big pieces of wood into little pieces of wood.

As it should be.

Two Weekends as the Dyer at the Central Missouri Renaissance Festival

As part of my educational display this year, I brought in a portable herb garden. Mainly culinary herbs with strong, pleasant smells, I found myself walking small children through the display and encouraging them to touch the plants and sniff them. The mint was a big hit.

Well, I survived the two spring sessions of the Central Missouri Renaissance Festival in Kingdom City, Missouri. I’ve been an artisan demonstrator since 2000, and after nearly 19 years doing the KC Renfest, this smaller, local festival has become my “home” festival.

It’s nice to be able to come home every night to a hot meal, a hot shower, and my own bed. That, and I can come in days in advance to set things up in advance so that I don’t have to go through the whoop-whoop of packing the car with everything under the sun plus the family and charging towards Kansas City seven weekends in a row.

Please Read the Description Before You Buy, Sir

As you can see, these were pretty beat up when I was given them. They were covered in mud dauber nests, among other things, but cleaned up well. It’s pretty hard to miss that I’ve converted them into orifice hooks for spinning wheels.

I just had an interesting run-in with an angry individual over a orifice hook for spinning wheels I made from broken Great wheel parts given to me as part of a box of broken spinning wheel parts by someone who caught them on their way to the dumpster.

It seems they needed a part known as a “maiden” to restore a Great wheel. No problem there. This particular part was mass-produced well into the 1920s, so unlike a lot of other spinning wheel styles/types, there is a certain amount of interchangability. Had I known, and I have NO IDEA whom this individual is, I would have saved this person this part. No problem.

However, the Universe working the way it does, I did not. And so, I salvaged them both into a tool handle, took pictures of them showing the modifications I’d made, ten of them in fact, and wrote up a catalog description explaining what it was, and what I’d done to it because I feel that letting a potential purchaser know as much about an item I am selling is the correct thing to do.

Perhaps a bit too much?

My current drop spindle output in the last few days is up to around 21-22. This is not counting the pendants I made earlier. Summer festival season is almost upon us so might as well stock up because I have vendor friends who buy in bulk. Might as well be ready.

Random Tuesday Thoughts

Coming from a family where both sides or more seem to have probably been on one spectrum or another, it’s more an affirmation than a relief or reason to grieve or whatever, to have one’s child officially placed upon both the ADHD/ADD (whatever) and the ASD spectrum.

I do other stuff, you know.

Because I like to make stuff, and because supplies and tools are expensive, I do a certain amount of wood working and wood turning and sell it in order to afford tools and supplies. I mostly use found or upcycled wood (Citywide cleanup week is one of my favorite times to acquire hardwoods for the effort of stopping my car and loading broken furniture, mostly chairs, in the back.) So far, I’ve scored oak, cherry, mahogany, maple, and what may be elm. If you do small stuff, such as drop spindles, pens, wands, nostepinnes, etc., this is the way to go.