Christmas time come and gone, breakin up Christmas right along

Well, like the song says "Christmas time come and gone". Now I can show you what I have been up to.

The triple one is a present for my daughter Sarah and her husband, so I couldnt blog about it earlier. Thats Jeremy, James and Jeff from top to bottom.

These are made of cut paper glued together in 3 or 4 layers, then matted and framed. I really love the technique and have about half a dozen more in the planning stages.

I learned the technique from Dude Craft - a great place to learn all kinds of crafty stuff - one of my favorite blogs.

Christmas time's a-comin'!

Wow, it's November already and my thoughts turn to "what the heck am I going to make the boys for Christmas this year?".

Well, Sarah had an idea for me and it was something I was already thinking about!

Here's a clue for you.

That tells you a lot, doesn't it?

Here's another clue:

Hmmm. Now we know it's made of wood at least.

Let's have another clue:

I made three of these boxes today, and did you know that there are 112!!! cuts in the joints for each one of those boxes?!!!

Look back at the first picture now and you can see that it's going to have a curved top.

Any guesses?

A Visit to Carmel

I was in Carmel over the last four days visiting with my sisters, Gretchen and Lucinda and their husbands, Tom and Richard.
We drove all over the place the first three days.

Took the 17 mile drive, and saw the iconic Lone Cyprus.

We drove down Highway 1 to see the waterfall at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, and had a picnic in Pfeiffer - Big Sur Park.

Then we went down to Moss Landing and took a pontoon boat cruise on the Elkhorn Slough via the Elkhorn Slough Safari.

Here are some photos from the cruise - click on them for a bigger view.

Tuesday afternoon a really huge storm came in off the Pacific and the power was out all over the area, so we sat and talked by candlelight.

Called it a night about 9:00 pm, and then of course the lights all

came back on at about 10:00!

It was pretty much cleared up by Wednesday morning so I could take Cindy and Richard to meet their plane in San Jose without incident.

I built a boat, and made a documentary!

I've wanted to build a boat forever, so I finally said "Why not now?", and just did it. Of course I had to document the project too!



Check back later. There are more chapters ahead in the saga of this little boat.

Adventures in Breadbaking!

I bought "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, from Amazon a couple weeks ago after reading a good review of it somewhere online. I was immediately sceptical of course - who wouldn't be with a title like that?
A little background - I've been home baking off and on for almost 40 years now, starting back around 1970, when I was in the Navy. So I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was and wasn't possible in a home oven.
Well, I was wrong! Their method is an elaboration of the well known New York Times method of no knead bread making, and the results are incredible!
(mouse over for description)

It involves mixing the dough for a weeks worth of baking all at once. You keep it in the refrigerator, and pull out a loaf-sized chunk whenever you want to bake fresh bread. There's no kneading involved, you just shape the dough and let it rise, preheat the oven and bake. No attention needed for 90% of the process - though you do have to stay close.