family, woodworking, photography, K-pop
This week has me beat. I’m still not quite over a cold I came down with last weekend which is sapping all my spring-cleaning energy away. But I better rally soon because we’re having house guests next weekend (eep!).
You may have already seen this video, but I think it stands up to a repeat viewing. I like it, anyway.
Have a great weekend!
Do you remember how much I loved this band jacket Stella McCartney did for Gap Kids? Well, my super seamstress sister-in-law Miranda did. She made E his very own marching band jacket for Christmas! And she didn’t just make one, she also made a jacket for her son L (I know, I know–her sewing skills are insane).
Aren’t these cousins cute together? L is two months older than E to the day and they love playing together. L’s coming over for a few hours today and I’m sure the two of them will have a great time tearing apart my house. E loves L so much that whenever it’s time to say goodbye E cries and cries.
But at least now he can look stylish while he cries.
There’s no woodworking class tonight because it’s spring break (SPRING BREAK, woo!) but I thought I’d post the photos from last week’s class so I’d be all caught up. I was getting kind of discouraged and moped around the shop a bit complaining about what a pain making the diamond-patterned panel was. But then it came together by the end of the night and I went home happy.
The long skinny checkerboard panel. The issues is that I need a big square panel of diamonds rather than squares and this panel is too skinny to cut a square out on the bias.
I cut the corners off the rectangle and rearranged them to make a panel of diamonds. This method gives me minimal waste but was a real pain to figure out exactly because I’m horrible at geometry (my instructors were a lot of help).
I applied glue to the edges and used tape to clamp them together (please excuse my characteristically tidy workspace in the background). This blue painter’s tape works well for this purpose because it’s a little stretchy.
I found this piece of mahogany to use for the box of the cabinet and to border the diamond panel on the cabinet door. It’s hard to tell from this picture, but it really is stunning. Mahogany usually has a very tight grain so to find a piece with dramatic grain like this one is fairly rare.
I cut two pieces of mahogany for the sides of the cabinet and marked where the dadoes (or grooves) for the shelves will go.
Then I cut the dadoes with a panel router.Next week I need to sand the diamond panel, cut it to size, and glue on border of mahogany. I also need to work on getting the cabinet box put together. Since I missed two weeks of class when I was out of town I don’t think I’ll be able to totally finish this project before the end of the semester. But if that’s the case I can hopefully finish it in the fall. My spices have survived this long without a posh cabinet to call home so I think they’ll make it a few more months.
Before I move on to something else I wanted to post a few more old family photos I scanned. These ones are of my dad and his family.
I love this photo of my dad as a boy.
My dad on the left.
My dad (second from the right) with his mother and siblings.The weekend was kind of a mixed bag. Saturday was great: N and I took E to a dim sum restaurant we had heard about and it was really good. I love dim sum! While we were there two grandmas sitting next to us who made a point of complimenting us on how well E was behaving and how cute he was. We assured them that it was entirely the luck of the draw (as it usually is with two year-olds; sometimes E can really be a monster at restaurants) but it still felt nice to have strangers go out of their way to compliment E. Then the grandmas asked us about dim sum and how ordering it worked and we explained it to them and then basked in a parents-of-a-perfect-child/cosmopolitan-foodie glow which lasted all of about one minute until E started yelping and I couldn’t bring myself to order the chicken feet even though I was kind of curious. But then that evening we went to visit some good friends and stayed until entirely too late talking and laughing and watching our sons play together.
Sunday was okay except that I woke up feeling under the weather AND we totally spaced the time change so we showed up for church an hour late. (I know, I know–we felt like morons.)
At chuch N and I are attending a Sunday School class on family history. My church is very big on family history because our doctrine teaches that family members can be sealed together for eternity though covenants we make with God inside temples. So the church is working on an online database system that helps people find their ancestors.
Participating in this Sunday School class has sparked an interest in family history in me. When I was at my parents’ house I took the opportunity to scan some old photos. Are these great?
My mom with my grandmother.
My grandmother (Halmoni) at her house in Korea.
My aunt and her husband on their wedding day.I really enjoy looking at old pictures. My mom has all our family pictures in a cardboard box but I would love to get them all scanned and put together in a book.
So…yesterday after his nap I noticed that E’s eyes were getting kind of goopy. Greenish-yellow gunk was collecting in the corners. I talked to my doctor’s nurse and she said he had an eye infection and prescribed some eye drops. It must be going around because when I went to the store to pick up E’s medicine the pharmacist told me they had had a run on the drops and they were totally out of stock.
Eventually I found a pharmacy that had the drops in stock and last night N and I held down a protesting E to get the drops in his eyes. This morning I had to get E the drops by myself and uh, it didn’t go as smoothly. I explained to E that I needed to put the drops in his eyes for his own good but somehow that didn’t seem to make a difference–go figure.
But E seems to be feeling better already. The nurse said that after 24 hours of being on the drops he wouldn’t be contagious anymore. So today I had to keep E home from preschool and also apologize to Miranda for unknowingly exposing her kids to the bug yesterday morning when we took all the kids to IKEA. Oops. (Sorry again, Miranda!)
So today is going to be a low key day of doing laundry and cleaning up the house which after a busy week sounds fine to me.
Sorry for the picture dump: woodworking class is already over halfway over (I missed two weeks of class when I went to WA) and I since I haven’t posted about my project yet I have a lot of photos.
This semester I decided to make a spice cabinet. I was inspired by this cabinet which has hung in my parents’ kitchen for as long as I can remember. Objectively speaking it’s not exactly my style but over the years I’ve grown fond of it and its folksy illustrations.
My mom’s cabinet has handy spice charts on the door but since I don’t have any charts for the door I decided this would be a fun opportunity to use some fancy woods.
On the left is some African lacewood I had left over from the jewelry boxes I made last semester and on the right is a piece of zebrawood I bought specifically for this project. I’m going to be making a diamond pattern out of these two woods for the cabinet door, similar to what I did for the jewelry boxes but on a larger scale.
I cut the boards into one-inch strips and glued together the lacewood and zebrawood in an alternating pattern. (This part of the process is also similar to making cutting boards.)
Then I cut this board into one-inch strips across on the table saw.
Next I flipped every other strip and glued them together. 
This makes a checkerboard pattern. When I saw how busy the woods were together I started to get a little nervous that the pattern might be too much but I think rotating them 45 degrees so they’re diamonds instead of squares will help. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
When I was visiting my parents house my mom and I took E to Ocean Shores, WA. He had a blast. I took some photos with my Holga and liked how these three turned out.
Dear E,
During this last month we went on a trip to Washington to visit family. I was pretty nervous about flying there alone with you but you behaved yourself remarkably. I thought you might freak out but you pretty much handled everything in stride except for some understandable separation anxiety at times.
You loved staying at my parents’ house. Unprompted by anyone you’ve started calling them “Meemaw” and “Peepaw” and basically have both of them wrapped around your little finger. My dad, who is not well known for his affinity with small children, even volunteered to watch you for a couple of hours so I could go to the spa with my mom. I was a little nervous about leaving you but you had a great time going to the playground, eating lunch together, and taking the car to get washed with Peepaw.
Speaking of car washes, they are your very favorite thing right now. You went through the one with Peepaw and then we got a free car wash when we picked up our car from the airport which pretty much cemented them in your mind as the coolest thing ever.
Ever since we returned home one of the first things you do after you wake is to hopefully request “Car wash? Car wash?” Even after I explain that we aren’t going to one today you continue on, “Car wash fun! Car wash fun!…car wash!” It cracks me up, enough so that last week I gave in and took my very slightly dusty car through the car wash even though it was obvious that it was going to rain soon. (Yes, sometimes I can be a total sucker for your cuteness.)
I’m so glad we went and visited family last month. February can be a dreary month and it was nice to get away and see you in a different environment. Your resilience and the aplomb with which you handled most situations were great to see. You seemed to grow older right before my eyes.
It was wonderful to see you enjoy being with your grandparents, uncle and aunt, and cousins. Even though you may not see them that often, there are a lot of people out there who love you.
Love,
Mama
I had a fun weekend. On Saturday I went to the Overstock.com warehouse store with Elaine. It was packed but we both found some shoes that we liked. I found these leather boots by Kenneth Cole priced at $28. They were cute and seemed to be well-made so I decided to get them.
We had to stand in line for half an hour to check out but it was worth it when the cashier informed us that all shoes were actually on sale for 50%. So I got these boots in black for $14(!)
That evening was fun too. We went out on a date that was my belated Valentine’s day present from N: we tried out a nice restaurant, Forage and saw Daniel Tosh perform stand-up. It was great hanging out with N; after all this time together (nine years in May!) he still makes me laugh. Yay for date night!