Jean’s First Electronics age 5 (by sarah)

Again old photos but this is Jean doing her first ever electronics with Alaric - it was the first Christmas Holiday of Jean starting school - Daddy explained and Jean drew a sort of circuit diagram and then they made it :)

Shortly after this Jean received two electronics kits as presents.

Free Things (by sarah)

Saturday I went to Arts Cafe at Centre Arts in Cheltenham to again soak up some creative vibes - I was writing my novel this time rather than poetry.

But whilst there I was given four lovely glasses - just the sort I want for serving deserts in!

Then on the way out a man stops me and Jean and says the green grocer is giving away the stuff that wont last till Monday - so I'm thinking he's selling it off for pennies and go round there and no it's free and he starts giving me bags of stuff!

It would all go to waste other wise - it was strange how everyone was apologising about taking free food - so British.

Alaric just looked at me and said 'I see your waif and stray field kicked in again' cheeky sod!

We took some of it around to our neighbours and some of it was just beyond, we eat a load of it and had enough for some jam making etc...

Ruskin’s Mill Writer’s Retreat (by sarah)

Today I went to my second one day writer's retreat - this time at Ruskin Mill near Nailsworth. It was organised by the same people Writing Space Stroud and was once again lovely.

It was raining and I currently do not have a camera which is why there are not a hundred photos of chickens with feather flares and light sculptures on the water.

This time it was £30 instead of £20 but included a yummy lunch in the cafe.

I met more writers and had great conversations over tea and cake and lunch between mad sprees of writing. I got 9000 words of The Awakening written today which is amazing even if it does mean the novel is going to be much longer than I was expecting :/

I will finish off the last 1000 words before bed to round it up to 10K.

Once home Alaric made a lovely dinner whilst I made some visual poetry booklets out of card, pen, and old writing magazines. This lead to a fun discovery of using someone I know's story title as part of it :)

Christmas 2010 (I think) (by sarah)

I think this is 2010 and that for actual Christmas we went down to Essex for dinner at my parents house but these are photos of our Solcist meal and general festiveness.

Jean and Al playing with the marble run.

King Alaric at the washing up again

Garlic Bread - as in bread with garlic gloves in it :)

Jeany sort of setting the table

Jean decorating the MK 2 of The Little Book of Festive Poetry - I spent ages printing out out the sheets and glueing the words onto the pictures as the laptop I had couldn't cope with me trying to do things with large files!

It snowed and I remember playing with Jean outside and me and Al taking it in turns!

Tom and Jean :)

Jean really could not get enough of being outside in the snow!

It was the first year we found a yard of Jaffa Cakes!

Jean ran off with them :)

Sleepy Jean after all the fun :)

Day 3 of making the ladder (by alaric)

Well, after two days of prior work on the ladder, yesterday I settled down to another day.

I started by welding together the second side of the ladder, to match the first. With that done, I now had the two sides of the ladder, ready to join them together with the rungs:

With that done, I carefully aligned everything on the welding bench and ground the welds on the inward sides down so that the rungs could fit on nicely:

I set the rungs back half a centimetre where they were attached at the same point as a spacer, so they were welded both to the uprights and to the spacers, as I felt this would be stronger. The pieces of wood you can see under the rungs are maintaining that spacing.

Now, as I mentioned before, I'm not very good at welding; I can make things structurally sound, but not pretty, because my welds often go wrong and I have to go over them again. This usually leads to big, messy, welds, and on a couple of occasions with this job, I actually melted a hole in the metal and had to patch it up. Here's one particularly terrible weld:

I ground the lumps around the edge of the hole down:

Then welded a metal plate over it:

This, in contrast, is I think the neatest weld I've ever made:

With all that done, the ladder was actually a ladder:

I sanded it down to get the weld gunk off, then washed it thoroughly in white spirit to remove the grease the metal came covered in, and laid it out in the kitchen to paint:

Then I gave it a priming coat and left it to dry overnight (I did it in the kitchen so it would be warm and dry overnight, rather than the cold and damp of the workshop):

It'll need another couple of coats of paint, and I need to cap the open ends of the uprights at the top, then I can mount it on the wall.

Part of welding that I always find quite profound is the way that a bunch of bits of metal, initially held together with clamps, and gingerly handled in case it comes undone, slowly transforms into a structure made of solid steel. This was driven home with the ladder project when, finishing the welds on the rungs, I found the best way was to lay it on its back like in the last photos and sit on it so the welds were flat (the best orientation, as molten metal likes to run away when the weld is vertical) and comfortable to reach; it didn't even flex!

I can't wait to be using it to get up on the roof. There's a flap of plastic sheeting lifting up in the wind and letting rain in, and I can't reach it in any other way...

Continue to day 4...