Launch of The Merry Yarn

Today we launched our new row boat, The Merry Yarn.

The whole crew (except for the photographer) posed for a photo opportunity.

Monya tried it out first.

Then Bopop took the mermaids for a ride.

We even have a video of the ceremony. Notice how much at ease the two girls are. When I told them to "hold on" because I was about to hop into the boat, they tucked down low to the bottom of the boat, making it much more stable.

Launch of The Merry Yarn from Jim Zimmerman on Vimeo.

Clean Garage

Once every fifteen years or so I clean out my garage. Somewhere I have a photo of our 1981 Toyota Starlet inside the garage but I was unable to locate it. It's probably a printed photo, not digital, so I wouldn't be able to post it anyway, and within one week the garage was so full of junk that the car didn't fit any more.

When I started, there was only enough room for two bicycles to roll in and out. This occasion for cleaning the garage is to make space for Monya's new 14' rowboat on a trailer. I still have five boats hanging from the ceiling, so maybe I should call this a boat house rather than a garage. It's certainly not a woodworking shop.

October Flowers

Monya planted these flowers at the same time as the tomato seeds. The summer was unusually cool, so the tomatoes didn't ripen before the cold Fall weather returned, so she pulled out all the tomato plants and left these flowers to finish maturing. Now it is mid October and the poor things are just getting going.

The Fireplace Channel

The other day I noticed we had the television tuned to "the fireplace channel" and decided it was worth a photo.

Bicycle Repaired

Yesterday the guys at GHY Bikes called to tell me that my bike was ready to pick up. Those guys are really good! I'm just barely able to ride a bike again while those rarely replaced parts have been ordered, shipped and installed.

Broken Parts
front fender
hydraulic brake line
hydraulic brake fluid
rear view mirror mount
right shift housing

Worn Parts
brake pads (front and rear)
chain
cassette
Schwalbe Marathon Plus tire

So in order to save a little walking time, I decided to ride the XtraCycle over to the shop, then walk both bikes back. But Jesse pointed out that I could put the front wheel of the Norco into the carrier of the XtraCycle and it will pull like a trailer. It worked so well that I could have gone much farther and faster without any problems.

Grape Harvest 2011

The weather this summer was very cool. In fact, the summer weather didn't even start until nearly July, and during the month of August the high temperatures never reached the average. So our grape crop was very late in ripening.

Last year the crop wasn't ripe so I left it on the vine until the Fall rain started. Three days later all of the grapes had fallen off the vine and we lost all of them.

Two years ago we had a great harvest (Grape Harvest 2009). So when the rain started this weekend (Oct 1) I immediately checked on the grapes. They were not ripe but they were swelling, getting soft, and falling off the vine.

In desperation I gathered up what was left: about six gallons of grapes. Some of them were the ripe purple color, but most of them still had that reddish glow. A few were still green but full sized. I picked all of them.

I picked the grapes off the clusters and put them into a crusher sieve. Since there were so many reddish grapes I wondered whether the juice would be too bitter to drink, so I tasted the first batch. It was wonderful! A bit on the sour side, but very nice.

I finished off by including even the green grapes and finished with about 4 quarts of juice. Next year I'd like to try using a centrifugal juice separator since the sieve I'm using doesn't get all the juice out. Maybe an apple cider masher would work more effectively too.

Tree Climbing

We had two visitors spend the weekend of Sept 24-25 with us. I put up a rope swing in time for a wind storm to blow through. I captured a few seconds of the wind gust blowing through the oak tree while two girls screamed in mock fright. A few drops of rain fell and when the girls were touched by rain they immediately fell to the ground, growing mermaid tails. Unfortunately I was not prepared to take a movie of that action. Later, I put up a real climbing rope and LaGrande showed her strength and courage by climbing higher into the tree than she's ever been (except for the movie where she "jumped" out of the top of the tree). By the way, these photos have not been altered except for rotating and sizing for web viewing.

Swollen Hand

Two days later and the swelling in my hand has gone down quite a bit. I've been keeping an Ace bandage on it, and that helps around my wrist, but it isn't very effective around my fingers or knuckles. I don't know why the swelling would go way up into my fingers since it was only my wrist that took the impact.