Here and there..bear, wood and weather.

After the little bear left last night we had four large raccoons come to feast on the seed that the birds and squirrels (and I guess the bear) spilled onto the ground. I say "little bear" because it's about the size of a St. Bernard and maybe weighs less than a full gown adult St. Bernard would weigh. It barely left any tracks in the garden soil I had turned over and raked last week. Of course, the rain may have packed that soil down some, but the depressions of its paws were barely discernible. The same bear came back again this evening looking to score on sunflower seeds. I had pulled most of the feeders inside, however and the bear went away empty mawed when I shone the million watt flashlight at it. That's another indicator that it's not the same bear as we've had the last two years. Not only is it 1/2 the size, but last year's visitor cared less that I would shine a light at him. he kept right on eating and seemed to enjoy being in the spotlight. It could be worse. At least it's not a sow and a couple of cubs coming to the feeders....yet.

I did some more work on the wooden quilt block today. I had cut all the strips and glued them up yesterday. Today I cut all the little triangles, squares and diamonds for the corner fill blocks. I had to cut some twice because I didn't see the measurement and made a stupid assumption. (Yeah, I know what they say about assuming things.) Then I had to make another series of cuts when I proved to be brain dead. I was cutting triangles before lunch and I resumed cutting triangles after lunch even though I should have been cutting diamonds. Finally, I cut the glued up strips from Monday into so many new strips.

Everything got its edges rounded over using the 1/8 inch round-over router bit and then the new strips got glued up into large diamonds. That's another story of near frustration. I had all the pieces. I had the plans and the pattern the pieces were supposed to go in. I laid everything out dry and immediately realized something was very, very wrong. I was so mad I could have spit and my vision was clouded by anger. I just couldn't see what the heck was wrong. I had followed the assembly diagram on the plans exactly...I even checked twice to make sure. I finally had to call in a fresh set of eyes and asked Terry to take a look and see if she could figure out what was wrong. It took her a few minutes. First she confirmed I had done exactly what the plans said I should have do. Then she looked at the full sized diagram of the finished product. That's when a little light went off and we started shuffling the strips around. The plans had the assembly diagram bassakwards.

Once the shuffle was completed, I glued the strips up to form 8 large diamonds. And then cut the two pieces of plywood for the backerboard, traced the pattern onto the top piece of plywood and glued the two plywood sheets together to provide a strong surface for the oak, walnut and cherry to be glued to tomorrow.

The weather here was great today (even though I spent most of the day in the workshop). We started off overcast and only in the upper 20s but the sun emerged and burned off the cloud cover by 10 AM. The rest of the day was bright and very warm with a high right around 60 degrees. This won't last long, however. Tomorrow is April and April is known for its showers. We should get some tomorrow and tomorrow night, and again on Friday. Much of what's coming our way is the rain from the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys. Luckily (?), by the time it reaches us, the amount of moisture in the system will have been reduced greatly and we will only get around 3/4 of an inch of rain.