Making, Crafting, Creating... aka Whatcha workin' on?

Test flight of the FT Arrow: launches easy, lands easy, flew beautifully right up until the heat of the motor softened the glue holding the firewall in place and the motor/prop assembly fell off. Oops.

It glides well, fortunately. :sweat_smile:

Repaired with a more heat-resistant glue and some twist-tie safety straps.

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Just made some stuffed animals for a rainy day project. My kids did the conceptual design work for the sock monster and the bat.



I’m afraid that I had to make the ultimate sacrifice in the process of making them though. (It’s OK, I have a spare.)

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My knitterly friends all swear that knitting really helps with their mental health. I believe them, for the same reason the “relaxation response” is known to work.

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My landline connects through the modem (probably to force me to pay for more than one service). If the power is off or the modem stops working for some reason, I get nothing. My mobile is much more reliable.

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Are you sure that’s not a VOIP line?

If you have a modem, there should be a phone jack in the wall that it plugs into (as well as an electrical outlet). You can get an attachment that turns one phone jack into two, so that your land line is attached to the phone jack directly, not the modem. Then it would work like a landline.

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I have cable internet, and everything goes through the cable connection. There are telephone sockets in the house, but they’ve been cut off from the system. I agree that traditional landlines are still useful (and my in-laws get a lot of use out of whatever it is that we’ve got), but what we’ve got loses a lot of those benefits (and I’ve had much more reliable modems in the past too, TBH)

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I made a small batch of soy candles the other day because my brother wanted to learn. These are actually supposed to be yellow. Not quite sure what I did wrong but I suspect using more dye would have prevented it. They do, embarrassingly, turn a bit yellow around the edges when you burn them. :laughing:

Even more embarrassing, we gave one as a gift before realizing it would turn colors like that when burned. :cold_sweat: Other than that, they went well.

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Then you don’t have a landline, you have VOIP. (Voice Over Internet Protocol, I think)

That was exactly my point! Landlines have not been fully replaced yet.

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I’ve failed you, crafting thread.

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Today in the shed:

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I got some beeswax I’d ordered, so I’ve made a couple of batches of hair pomade. Second batch is better, but I need to keep working on it. Not creamy enough, yet.
Got some raw wool in, so I’ve been experimenting with darning socks with felted wool. So far? Maybe.
I continue to do battle with the shelve install from hell- finding my power sander was a win of a battle, but the stain we’ve chosen may yet win the war.

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Bookshelves Phase 1 are done and they look great.


Mostly plywood with a stained wood edge attached to the front to finish them off. The stain mostly matches the newel post at the adjacent stairs.

The tricky bit was reusing the baseboard that had been on the wall behind, we wanted these to look original and were really careful to disassemble and reassemble, have a look at the corner:

The original baseboard did have a giant hole in it from a receptacle that had been moved up the wall a few years back, so we decided to make it back into a receptacle and now we have a place to plug in the vacuum at the bottom of the stairs:

No top molding yet as we’re putting shelves across the entire wall with window seats as well.

Sure do miss those Billy bookcases.

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Good work. I also approve of your reading list.

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Thank you sirrah! No books have been sorted at this time. Vowell would never live next to Chabon in the real world. Well, thinking about it, they might live near each other in the real world, but not on a bookshelf.

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Wow, for something from Jerzey that sure is easy on the eyes. Swell bookcase too.

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Phase II will crush your face off with awesomeness! And cute little lamps for window seats.

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The kit-makers for Mod at Amplified Parts have been super patient and helpful. They lead (heh) me through diagnostics and determined the power transformer (PT) was likely bum to begin with.

I installed the replacement tonight, and now I get sound. Distorted, but sound is better than smoke. Sounds like a womprat ingested a phaser and fuzz pedal but you only hear those notes when it burps.

This, my friends, is progress. :beer:

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Did some lathe work today. These are made from a leftover scrap of Corian counter top, of all things. From left to right: fancy gel-ink clicky pen, pencil and ballpoint set, screwdriver, perfume sprayer. Corian is fun stuff to work with on the lathe.

Detail so you can see the pattern in the Corian.

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Sorry for the late reply. I know it’s months later, but I just now saw this.

I have several different small businesses. I have been a successful author, currently on hiatus from that, but the books still sell on Amazon. I also build custom home waste-water treatment and conservation systems for DIYers. And I also do some contract programming, some woodworking and cabinetry, and we do some home farming, depending on the season.

Facebook has never made me any money. I get a lot of likes, and a ton of fan mail (and un-fan mail) for the writing stuff, but not much business.

Each of my businesses has its own specific domain and website, which is where I get most of my contacts for the waste-water and programming gigs. Roughly 5% of the serious contacts generate a good lead. The woodworking thing is strictly word-of-mouth; people searching on the internet are usually not interested in bespoke cabinets, furniture, or things like the pens I posted a while ago. And much as I love it, I’m stretched too thinly right now to give it the attention it deserves.

The home-farming thing is mostly a waste of time having a 'net presence at all; we sell or trade everything to our neighbors and other locals. Two exceptions: two years ago, we sold our entire fig crop to a store that found us online, and we sell all our lettuce to a nursing home that’s just down the road, but the initial lead came from the web. It might happen again, so I keep the web site alive and up-to-date.

Obviously, these are all different from your thing, but maybe it will help?

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This looks really really great, and I’m impressed with your plan for Phase II.

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