July 20, 2024

13-19 July 2024

Last weekend I went to see the piece of land I found of about 3.5 acres. It’s commutable from where I live (35-40 minutes). Really nice area. Lovely plot, with a neighbouring orchard plot, which would be great synergy with the owner. Already mentally planning all the propagating I have would do for all the bushes and shrubs. Would need to start sourcing cuttings pronto! So they have time to root to be ready for next spring. Will be scouring parks and roads. I’ll need to buy the fruit trees e.g. apple, pear, peach; as those need to be grafted, which i don’t know how to do yet. A starting selection of around 16 trees. Grafting would be a project for the future. The missing puzzle piece right now is how you make the root stock – where you get it from – doesn’t that takes ages? Not sure.

Hops houses from back the day, right next to the plot!

In woodworking, the seed trays got finished off this week. It was quite a quick and simple project to start with before I start on my octagonal plant pot. The wood shop is closing soon, just as I’ve found it, so I’m doubling up sessions to get in as much experience as I can. Using machine tools etc, which I don’t have at home. I’m not the biggest fan of most of the machines. I like the chop saw, but that’s about it. I don’t like the track saw, which I had to use for a whole session to cut the sides of the octagon pot. Each side has to be bevelled at 22.5 degrees and track saw seemed to be the best way to do it, since it’s 17cm long. Sketchy stuff…  I some point I regretted the whole thing and thought it was going to be too difficult to make it all fit together perfectly, but I ploughed through and somehow the 8 sides do seem to fit!

Octagonal pot in the making

Next week I’m going to use a domino tool, a bit like a flat shaped dowel, which can help glue the sides together. The whole thinking about the the plant pot, is that they’re quite expensive to buy and I’m always on the lookout for them as my indoor plants grow. I’m using birch plywood, which costs about £120 per sheet, I’m using about 1/3 sheet, which is £40 in wood cost. Square pots are definitely much more simple… but I think this will look nice. Not sure I’d repeat it, with the faff of the bevelled edge. After this, I might look into Japanese techniques of joinery, which is generally all by hand stuff. Hopefully by the end of the pot I’ll have a good idea of the basic tools, and which of them I might like to have at home.

My bread making pursuits continued this week. This time, I made sure the proofing cloth didn’t stick to the bread. But my mistake this time was not putting tension in the dough so it doesn’t splay sideways and rises up instead. All the baguettes just puddled in on each other. It was still edible, just more like flat bread, with very little volume… Big learning is why is it so important to put tension in the bread! You are supposed to fold the bread as you’re shaping it, and make like a ‘sealed’ loaf. So no cuts or folds that stick out where the air can escape. Not sure if that makes sense, but it makes sense to me now finally for next time – next week. I’ll be eating 3 loaves of flat bread before that…

What not to do…

I finished this knitted hood i made in orange alpaca. Think it looks cute but random. Then i wanted to do a more bulky crochet project to take a break from the small needles. I made a quick unicorn on the weekend with left over yarn. Really ran out of year with the legs, so had to make them short and stubby.

Now all that’s left of my stash is a blue mohair yarn. I tried making some mittens with it already, but the size of the first one was way too small. I’ll probably unwind it to make something else. Likely a knitted rabbit, I’ve made one before in beige alpaca, and think it would look nice in mohair.

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