Feels like flying...

Last Sunday my next door (boat) neighbor Richard and I took the boat out to fuel it up and what would you know there was WIND! Never one to let that pass we decided to sail. I had the camera and Richard was at the helm and we made this little video of the sojourn.

Windy. Cold. Rainy. Fun.

In the home of a master

Carrie is taking a class in letterpress and has a complicated project coming up that will require the creation of a hand cut linoleum illustration. She has, in this regard, what can been seen as a true gift. Her sense of composition and detail is lyrical and I know that her execution will be great. There was only one problem...

There were no tools to be had and there was no linoleum to use for the work to be carved from. This was a real poser. She went everywhere. She called everyone. She ordered from the internets. She would have to wait till tuesday. She does not wait well.

She called her guest lecturer, Carl Montford. Carl is a master woodcarver and letterpressman. He would know what to do. Perhaps he could help. It turned out he could.

Carl told her to come over, that he had things that she could borrow plates that she could use and return after the class. He would be happy to let her use his gouges and vee chisels, the linoleum block and the other tools needed to complete the project. Yes, she could come right over and pick them up.

She looked at me." You need to go too," She said. "You are going to really want to see this." I was not so sure. Well, I was sure that she was right, but I didn't know if I really wanted to leave the boat. I was feeling like being a homebody and having thoughts of a book and a blanket and some wine and some solitude. Still... a fine woodcarving expert and his letterpress shop did sound like a very nice diversion... I said "Okay." She said "I'll drive."

She drove.

We arrived and were met by two smallish fuzzy dogs who seemed like they were either trying to eat the glass between us or were really trying to rip our throats out in the nicest way possible. I wasn't too sure.

Carl showed up. There was no mistaking him. He could be seen as an artist, as a patient soul, as a craftsman. You could see it in his walk. The clothes he wore. His hands. He led us in and down to a room the with the footprint of the whole house. With giant full floor to ceiling windows along one whole side, and absolutely crammed with the most beautiful things I had seen in a long time.

There were presses, not just one or two, but ten, twenty maybe, of all different sizes and makes. There were cases and cases of type. Wooden type, metal type, mixed fonts and letters. Beautiful ornaments and decorative edges, leading and typesticks and furnature and, of course, there were woodcuts. The woodcuts were epic. Amazing illustrations of incredible precision and deft hand. They sopke to you from within frames and under glass. They peeked out around the corners and under the stacks of paper on which were printed messages and jokes. A riot of type and imaging from a time long before digital imaging and Adobe Garamond Pro. This was the land that time forgot. A playground for anachronism.


We played and talked and asked all the questions. He answered and showed and talked and laughed. He told us of his craft, gave us tips and told her she was going to do great. He talked about his great loves. His wife, the presses, the type, the fine lines of the wood as they are peeled from the blocks, the english boxwood that he uses to make the intricate carvings that make up his work. He was a most gracious accidental host. We were very happy to have come.

We said our goodbyes and took the tools he leant Carrie. We talked on the way home of the things we saw. We talked of how I would have never forgiven her if she had not insisted I come. How she would use the block and the tools to create the piece. we drove back to the boat to work...

There are many people that I have met in many ways in my life and they are always interesting but this was a good night.

Followers...

I looked over on the side of the blog today and Lo, and Behold! there were people over there! Sarah and Mark have joined the blog as followers! Welcome. I am so glad to see you both here. Sarah I know, as a great friend of the family and a noted shipwreck researcher. (who must be getting it from all sides this week as the HMS Victory was just found!)

Mark I have just discovered as a local photographer who seems tied to the natural world around us with special links to water and the mountains. I look forward to seeing what he shoots in the future...

Which brings me to this. Please guys! Please enable the "Follow this Blog" widget on your own blogs so we can all follow each other! There are instructions to do that if you click the link on my page. It is pretty easy, too.

So once again, welcome. There will be lots more to come.

Electrical part deux

I have been to Fisheries Supply twice. (Actually a record for hardware store runs during a project) and I have bought some wire, some connectors and some assorted other bits and bobs and I have added a new leg off the mains to the 25 amp bank of switches... and... IT WORKS!

I would like to think the Academy, my mother and father, my wife who put up with all of this crazyness over all of these years... Oh you know the drill...

Anyway, the newly assembled controll panel looks the same as it did with one more wire instead of many less. I was thinking of rewiring the whole thing to make the plan simpler and therefore much easier to figure out faults but I will have to wait and do that another day. One thing I did find out is that marine electrical parts are expensive. They are, in fact VERY expensive. I really don't want to be spending too much more money fixing things for a while.

As I live on a boat this is a very funny joke I like to tell myself. Things on boats are either broken or just about to break. There is no other state. They ever enjoy years of trouble free service, never last beyond their warranty (well actually, they last a month after it ends..) and they never can be seen as permanent. This assures me that I will have projects aplenty for all of my days. I am very happy with this scenario...

Such is my curse and my joy.

Electrical mess

Today Ben from Lake Union Yacht Center came by to look over my electrical panel and showed me what was going on. There are lots of things that look dodgy on the current panel and I am going to have to rewire a fairly important section of it. This, in earlier years, may have been met with thoughts of seppuku, but now I am thinking that this may just be something I could tackle myself.

I am going out to Fisheries Supply this afternoon to get some wire and I am going to wade into the world of low volt electrical myself. I have now seen how it is wired and I have been shown how it should be, and armed with this knowledge I am going to attempt it. The fact that Ben said he would help me out in the event of me getting myself in a jam was not lost on me either.

I will blog later to let you know how things are going but as of now it seems that the path should be pretty straight forward. I am sure that there will be a few curses thrown at the panel and more than a few problems will arise, but you will have to check back to see what happened.

Keep checking in!