Smile! It's Father's Day!

Attempting to get a picture of Doug and the kids after church. This can be tricky!



"Give Daddy a big kiss!"



Awwww!

Kate says, "He's funny!  And he's my dad!"  High praise.

No Event Parking

The U.S. Open golf tournament has been happening at Chambers Bay, and these signs are all over our neighborhood. On the whole we haven't been affected that much--they've been busing people in from park-and-ride spots as far away as the Puyallup fairgrounds, so traffic has been kept down to a manageable level. A lot of people left town for the week to avoid the anticipated chaos.

Chambers Bay has been closed to the public for a while, in preparation. We're all looking forward to having it back again. (It's going to take a while to get it back the way it was--I hear they paved the lower meadow.)

This sign is on the next block up from our house. I went out to take a pic of the one just around the corner, and discovered that the signboard was gone. Maybe someone snagged it for a souvenir?

Conduit Trellis Frames

We got our trellis frames up!  I spent the longest time trying to figure out how to do these, and it turned out to be super easy.



We used electrical conduit (EMT).  It turns out that 1/2" conduit will fit inside 3/4" conduit, so we have 1/2" bars across the top with bends that fit into the 3/4" uprights, which fit into the 1" PVC pipe bolted to the sides of the boxes.  No connectors needed. 

I thought we were going to have to do some complicated measuring and calculating to get the bends the right distance apart, but then I found this video.  You just make one bend, figure out where the outside of the leg on the second bend needs to be, mark it, and line that up with the star point on the bender.  I was able to do it all myself (with a little help from Doug to hold the first leg perpendicular to the ground while I bent the second one up to match).  Snap!  It was really fun how quickly they went together.  (We did end up having to buy our own bender, so hey, if anyone needs any conduit bent, let me know!)



I got this netting, which turned out to be just barely long enough for our four boxes. It's fastened to the frames with zip ties. 



One month after transplanting. We're having a  warm summer and the plants are loving it.  If they keep growing at this rate they're going to max out those trellises before the end of the season.  (That's lettuce and basil in there too.  Yum!)

Trek Flag (and the Really Big Stamp)

Our stake is doing Trek this year (pioneer reenactment, complete with handcarts), and I was asked to help make a flag.  They had the logo ready, and wanted it blown up and transferred onto fabric.  I was pretty much given free rein in exactly how this was to be accomplished, so I decided to break out the craft foam and make a stamp.  I've done a lot of these but never one of quite this magnitude before.  It's about 18 inches high.

I traced the design onto craft foam and then spent a day cutting out all the pieces.  (Andy was a little too interested in the letters and kept putting them back in the negative cut-out.)  I got a big piece of clear plastic (Hobby Lobby has them in the stained glass section), and glued the pieces to that.  I wanted a clear background so I could place the stamp more accurately, and re-align if I needed to stamp the image more than once.



Today I cleared off the kitchen table and did the stamping.  It's on two pieces of fabric so they can be sewn together back-to-back for a double-sided flag. I applied acrylic paint to the stamp with a brayer, positioned it on the fabric, and hand-pressed it all over. 



On the second side, I mixed some Golden Open Medium with the paint, and it came out a lot darker.  So then I went back and printed the first side again.  (Good thing I had that clear background--I was able to line it up just fine.)

The verdict: it won't replace silk screening, but if you're going for that printed flour sack look, it works pretty well!

Teacher Papercuts

Kate on Optimism

"Half empty is better than half full. You know why? Because half full means you press the button on the soda machine and fill up your cup half way, and then you only have half a cup of soda to drink. But half empty means you press the button on the soda machine and fill up your cup all the way, and then you DRINK HALF OF IT!"