Category Archives: Joacarro

We’ve decided to retire and have chosen our new home

When Liv and Owe were up a few months ago, Joanne and she began working on a new bark carving of a mountainside home. Liv had a couple of unique features she wanted such as a porch with a railing, some unique doors and windows throughout. Liv and Joanne spent several hours laying out and carving the basics, and Joanne’s done some final finishing detail work – check out the push-pin door handles and the railing around the damsel porch. Again, lots of work in this and don’t forget to click the pick for the real details.


Congrats to Joanne!

She was outta here before 6AM yesterday morning to participate in – and judge – the Pleasanton Wood Carver’s Show. Turns out that from among the hundreds of entries she took a couple of 2nd place ribbons. One ribbon was for her bark carving and the other was for Chez Pierre – a brightly colored snail on a brightly colored leaf. (I’ll take and post photos after she returns them from the show.)

Congratulations on the ribbons, luv!

hal

btw, Anybody else beside me think it’s a little fishy that the Head Judge won a couple of ribbons for her entries? Yeah, me neither… I was just askin’.

Carver Carousel

Here are the finished pieces that we have in our house as of today – the rest you can see at the SVCG show this weekend. (Click the pic if you dare, but to tell you the truth, there seems to be an issue with focus on these photos… don’t know why and need to figure it out. Bummer, because they’re really good looking pieces up-close.)








Random pics…


Pandora supervising Joanne’s work on the Carousel Rooster.


Mom Finch. This is a female Red Headed House Finch who has made a nest in our (now) year-round wreath outside the kitchen. With her having set up house @ that place, it’s an awful lot like having an observation hive for bees – we can watch her / the babies (when they hatch) go through this phase of their lives. Very cool.


Our first-ever baby doves – these are in the eaves right outside our bedroom French doors. When the babies hatched, the mother took their shells and removed them from the nest to give them all more room and to make sure the shell / materials didn’t attract ants / other birds. They’ve been out of their shells since Memorial Day.

Ah, a pollen-laden worker bee making her way in to the hive. See the pollen on her legs? Pollen is held in “pollen baskets” and when she locates what she feels is the “right” cell, she’ll lower herself abdomen-first in to the cell, then push the pollen off with the same movements we would push off muddy boots as we sat in a chair.

The pollen is brought in as a source of protein for bee larvae and, in case you didn’t know but are interested, nectar is brought in as carbohydrates for the larvae, too. Nectar is stored in capped cells where the water portion will begin to evaporate through the porous cap, turning the nectar in to honey. When there is more nectar / honey than needed to feed the colony, the overage will be stored in extra supers (that I’ve placed on top of the hive) that will be harvested (um, stolen) by me later in the summer.).

Phew – if you’ve stayed with me this far, you’ve read enough that I am now pleased to dub thee Beginning Beekeeper!

Now, buzz off 🙂

Thx for stopping by, be well and dont’ forget to write when you get work (I’m off to clean carpets 🙁

hal

So my wife went away with a bunch of men for the weekend…

I mean, what’s up with that?


Well, it turns out that she was attending a three day “green man” carving class over in Livermore. This class photo shows the “rough” final of their project and the following pics show the work in various stages / lighting, etc. These are really worth clicking on to see the full details….

Here’s a nice close-up of the facial details.

En route to becoming the man he was destined to be…

As they say in the U.K., “Early Days”.

Here’s the green-dude very early on in the process… some basic roughing out done and the chips were about to start flying.