Leather-wrapped tool handles

I've been wanting to wrap the handles of my tools with leather. I found a product online that worked really well for this, and I wanted to give them a plug!

What I ordered was the original version of these leather bicycle-handle wraps. Don't let the price deter you. The charge he's quoting is for enough leather to cover bicycle handlebars. He will sell smaller pieces for WAY less.

If anyone out there is interested in trying it. I did some instructions, and took pictures.

1. Beginning at the bottom, wrap tool handle with product such that the leather wraps overlap the pared (suede-free) edges, and a small triangle is created just below where you want the wrap to start.

2. Mark inside of leather at the level where you want the wrap to stop.

3. Lay leather flat, and cut at 45 degree angles as follows: the top angle having its highest point where you made your mark in the previous step. The bottom angle such that it is parallel with the top. (see photo).

4. Pare down suede at top and bottom of strip, creating a bevel. This wouldn't be absolutely necessary, but it does create a nicer finish.

5. Paint with PVA (It may be possible to use regular Elmers, but I used PVA since I had it).

6. Wrap handle as you did previously. The 45 degree angle you cut will make a straight line at the handle bottom, and then it will naturally wrap from there on. I pulled a bit to keep it taut. It might stretch a bit, so you may have to re-trim the top.

7. Smooth the leather, and let dry overnight.

The tools that I wrapped (except for the one on the far left, which I chose not to.)

Strip which I cut to wrap the scalpel handle.

Bevels at the top and bottom of strip.

Scalpel handle immediately after wrapping.

All the tools wrapped.

when confronted with a snowbound vehicle

I posit that a great deal can be known about a person based upon his/her reaction to a vehicle buried in snow.

Discuss.

LOOK what I can do!

The adorable nephew has just discovered that he can stand up.

The look on his face just makes me grin!

Thoughts on Boredom ...

In the last year or so, I've thought a good deal about the distinction between the basic introvert and extrovert personality.

Growing up, I tried to turn myself into an extrovert, because that's what I thought the Christian was supposed to be - outgoing, vivacious, always going going going and doing doing doing.

Later, I realized that I found that life exhausting. I've heard someone say that the distinction between the introvert and extrovert personalities weren't how outgoing someone was, but rather where they found that spending time alone, or time with others, stoked their energy level or depleted their energy level.

I've definitely found that I'm renewed when I'm alone. While I enjoy times of community, it's always like a glass of cool water when I come through my solitary front door, and hear the latch click shut behind me.

I was thinking this morning about how that relates to "boredom." I was telling someone the other day that I honestly can't remember the last time I was "bored." But then I wondered this morning if that's not true.

People normally think of boredom as something that happens when one's alone, with nothing to do. But I wonder if what the introvert experiences as boredom is exactly the opposite. Perhaps for the introvert, boredom is that antsy, restless feeling that comes when you're ready to seek out solitude.

An extrovert's boredom happens when he or she has had too much of what doesn't come naturally, and wants to get out into the world. Perhaps an introvert's boredom happens, also, when he or she is ready to seek the place where they are at rest.

So while my extrovert sister-in-law may be bored after too many days at home without anything fun to do. Maybe my boredom is when I've spent 3 hours at the happy-fun-party, and feel myself eager to hide in the ladies' room for a while for a little quiet!

Interested in opinions, if anyone else finds the subject interesting!!!

Happy New Year!

Just finished celebrating London New Year (which happens at 7:00 our time), with my brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephew. Here's a picture of the younger members of the party. :)

Well of COURSE it's legit!

Dear User,
 
    We are sorry to inform you that we are currently working on securing our
    server for the year, during this process accounts which are not manually verified by us
    will be deleted, Please confirm and submit your information for manual
    verification.
 
    Information which is to be provided is below:
    User Name:
    User Id:
    Password:
    Date Of Birth:
    Occupation:
 
    Upon confirmation of information from you, we will manually verify your
    Hot mail! Account and reserve it from being deleted, we are sorry for any
    inconveniences this might have caused providing your information over the
    email.
    Warning Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two
    weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.
    Thanks  Hot mail.. 


Spammers would be greatly benefited by some self-study on grammar and punctuation.  :)

Decorated Paper

In my class last fall, we learned to make decorated paper out of torn-up magazine pages. You layer them, sand them, then paint and wax them. I was working on a sample of this with a friend, and we finished ours today. Here's what I came up with.

It was great fun!

As with a lot of what I'm doing right now, it was a learning project. Next time, I'll definitely use smaller pieces, and will sand a bit more, and use paint with more color. But it was encouraging.

Some Sweet Fellowship Last Night

Last night our new interim pastor and his wife organized a Christmas get-together for the staff, elders and deacons at a camp out in Allegan.

It was a very nice evening, and one of the things he did was pass out a list of things to think about based on Christmas carol titles.

I found it brought up some really sweet memories, and I thought maybe you'd find it the same!

* Silent Night: Has God brought special direction or answers in the silence of a long, sleepless night?
* Joy to the World: Has your heart ever been so full of joy that you felt like shouting it to the world?
* O Come, All Ye Faithful: Have God's "faithful ones" been there for you in a time of great need?
* God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen: When has God brought a supernatural peace into your life?
* Go Tell it on the Mountain: Tell about a time when you felt led to share the good news.
* Winter Wonderland: Share a time when you were overwhelmed by the beauty of a winter scene.
* Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: Relate a Christmas that was meager with little resources, but became a blessing.
* Let it Snow: Describe a meaningful "snowed in" experience
* O Come Emmanuel: When did God's presence shine through after desperate cries for help?

Starting work on a Bible for a friend

One of my friends asked me to work on his Bible. Some pages were loose,
and pretty curled, so the first step will be to get them nice and flat again.

To do that, they need to start with 4-6 hours in a "humidification chamber."

So - here they are just before I put the lid on.

Any resemblance between my "humidification chamber" and my regular 9x13 cake pan is purely coincidental, I assure you. :)

Medieval helpdesk with English subtitles

The adorable nephew

Isn't he cute? :)

Yesterday's workshop on book repair

Yesterday confirmed my suspicion that I enjoy repairing books far more than binding them. Binding is fun ... but repair is WAY cooler. I love being able to see something put back together and useful again.

I started with my volume of William Cowper's poetry. The text block, covers and spine were all separated.

I learned how to use Japanese paper to put it all back together again.

LOVE LOVE LOVE learning this stuff!!!

When the invading army is just over horizon

2 Chron. 20:3-4, 12b

And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah, and Judah gathered themselves together, to ask help of the Lord … we have no might against this great company that cometh against us, neither know we what to do; but our eyes are upon thee.

I was reading in this passage this morning, and it was such an encouragement. King Jehoshaphat and Judah were facing an army coming against them, and it was WAY too big for them to tackle.

The actions of the fed last week in monetizing the debt (essentially de-valuing our dollar considerably) has been a temptation to me to worry.

Money is always a struggle, but the predictions about what this could do to inflation are staggering - particularly to the cost of staple items like groceries, gas, utilities, etc.

It’s led me to keep chewing over and over how I'll manage if these exponential price increases start to hit.

And while it’s good to plan and be wise … I was noticing this morning what King Jehoshaphat did when he was faced with an invading army … he DID fear … as is our nature when faced with a big threat. But his next step was to “set himself to seek the Lord.”

It sounds as if he made a deliberate effort to throw his thoughts God-ward. I want this to be MY response to fearful times!

His next step was to encourage everyone around him to seek God too.

They were honest with God - there wasn’t a blooming thing they could do to save themselves. BUT their eyes were on God. He can be trusted!

Books for Workshop, part 2

Books for next week's book repair workshop

I am taking a book repair workshop next weekend down in Normal, Illinois, and I need to choose two cloth bound and two leather bound books to bring along. They needed to have sound text blocks, and damaged covers. I have a LOT of books with damaged covers ... but the "sound text blocks" was a challenge. :)

Here are pictures of 3 that I've picked out - one leather bound copy of Cowper's Poetical Works. It belongs to my friend Deb, and is the most beautifully bound book I've ever handled. The leather is so soft it just melts into your hand. But the spine is suffering.

One is my copy of Cowper's Poetical Works. It's cloth bound, and in pretty ratty shape.

The last one is Olson's Meditations on the Psalms. This is Deb's too, but I'm hoping she won't mind if two of her books are experimented on. Promise not to do anything about which I'm not absolutely certain!

I still need to pick one more leather bound volume. I'd like to take a Bible, but finding one that's sufficiently ratty, but with a solid text block, is proving to be a challenge.

I'll also post pictures of the workshop, and of the finished products.

Office re-arrangement

Warning: this post will only be of interest to those who actually know me ... and probably not all of THEM! :)

This is the new partners' desk we've gotten for the church office, so the book-keeper and I can each have our own space. We're re-arranging and prettying-up, and hope to re-paint in February. We're both very pleased with how it's looking!

Condensed version of last night's condo meeting

Building Manager: We will be investigating whether switching our pool to salt instead of chlorine will save us money, ...

Resident: Why does the pool cost so much? Have we considered switching to salt water? (This question was asked more than once by more than one person.)

Building Manager: These white notebooks will be put in wall pockets by the maintenance room. If you ever need to find a shut-off valve, this has all your information. ...

Resident: Where will those books be? .... Do they have information on shut off valves in them?

Building Manager: We will have a pest removal service dealing with the bats in the attics of buildings A and B. After the attics are sealed, the pest service will go up in the attics to make sure there are no remaining bats and clean up the mess.

BOARD MEMBER: (I'm not kidding - even the board members weren't paying attention!) What if there are bats trapped up there? Will anyone check on that?

Building Manager: We will be closing the fire doors in the buildings, to help protect people if there is a fire. We've always left them open in the past, but this isn't safe.

Resident: Will someone tell us which doors are fire doors?

Building Manager: The steel doors are fire doors.

Resident: But will there be signs on them?

Does NOBODY listen and comprehend basic information?

I brought a book along because I know the meetings go like this, and even THEN, I was able to understand what was being said. Granted, often the questions were separated by a span of 2-3 minutes from the original declaration. But ... really ...

Ah ... memories ...

This is an ad for WordStar. I used this software when I worked for the English Department at Kellogg Community College in 1989.

It was this magical program that convinced me that computers DID have an advantage over the typewriter. You could COPY things, and PASTE them ... and then there was MAIL MERGE (something Apple's I-work didn't do as well in its first version last year as Word Star did then!)

Made me smile to see it.

Benjamin

Thought this pic of my nephew studying a pig was adorable. :)

The Gun is Civilization

Borrowed from a friend's facebook post:

"The Gun Is Civilization" by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception.

Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret.)