Monday, October 30, 2017

What is this mess all about?

Why on earth would I pull all this stuff out from the cabinet under the bathroom sink?  It's a lot of work.

The story begins when we found the faucet had a slow leak.  There was continually a slow drip into the sink.  John removed the cylinder in the center of the cold water faucet and drove to Ace Hardware to get the necessary parts--hopefully just a washer or two.  Unfortunately, though they had a whole wall of faucet parts, they didn't have anything like what came from our sink.

Next, I called Cavco, the company that built our manufactured home.  When I finally got in touch with Art, he explained they had stopped installing that kind of faucet because the company didn't even stock parts for it!  That meant we had to install a new faucet.



We were off to Lowe's for a new faucet.  Next, John crawled under the sink.  Is there a more difficult place to work than under a sink cabinet?








Job complete! We really like the new one.


But it hasn't been all work around here. We have both been spending time in our shop, making pens. And John has been copying a document to include in the genealogy book he is writing. In addition, we have been able to get together with two couples we always enjoy. We met Ron and Barbara for lunch at Kneaders. We try to get together with them often when we are in Arizona. Hopefully the weather will be cool enough as we head into November that we can go for a hike the next time we see them. No picture from that visit.

Colorado friends Larry and Betty were in the Phoenix valley to attend a wedding and visit friends. We were glad they included us on that list. It was good to see them before they moved on to another engagement.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Haven't done this in a long time

I can't remember the last time I made anything with yeast dough. Growing up, I learned to bake bread in 4-H and when I was a stay-at-home mom I made almost all of our bread. When the boys grew up and left home and then we began our RV travels that baking came to an end. I just checked my past blogs and discovered that over Labor Day weekend in 2012 I baked a loaf of bread and some hamburger buns. That was a looong time ago!

Today I decided to make some rolls.   I mixed the dough and let it rise.


After dividing it into thirds, I rolled out circles and cut 12 wedges out of each circle.


The first batch on the baking sheet.


Because yeast dough rises slowly, there is always a lot of waiting involved in baking.

But finally--here is the first batch out of the oven!  We had to sample one and I did a good job, if I do say so myself.  There will be more of this during our time here in Arizona where I have a good-sized oven.

Monday, October 09, 2017

Learning is Fun

Saturday John and I attended a class on turning pens at the Rockler store in Phoenix. They sell woodworking supplies and equipment. There were 6 of us in the class and our instructor was Ed.


We chose which kind of wood we wanted to use. The store had pre-drilled both walnut and canary wood pen blanks for us. I chose the canary, John chose walnut. We each had a Manhattan pen kit. This is John's kit and his completed pen body.


Ed demonstrated each step. First we filled the ends of the pen tube with wax to block the open ends from getting glue inside, then glued the tube into the wooden pen blank. Ed demonstrated each step. Here he is cleaning the wax out of a tube that has been glued into the blank.


We turned the blanks on the lathe to the shape we liked then put on a finish oil.



We used this small vice to put the cap end on the pen.


These are the two pens we completed and brought home! Aren't they beautiful?


I already had some of the equipment we need to make pens, including the lathe I use to turn bowls.  But there were a few things we still needed.  We bought them before leaving Rockler.  I am sure they offer classes to bring in customers to buy supplies and equipment.  That is reasonable.  And our instructor Ed helped us choose what we needed.

It was a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.