It’s cidering season, and I decided not to cider.
It’s just too much work, and the last couple of seasons have given me back aches and worse, for a dollar a quart.
It was a lot of fun, and I make world class stuff, but it’s time to add cidering to the long list of things I’ve tried, gotten good at, and then lost interest in.
Maybe next year.
So what am I supposed to do with the lineman’s boom I spent half the summer working on, so it would be working when cidering season came?
I painted the house.
My easy chair is an embarrassment.
I built a pair of chairs in the ’90s and I upholstered them with foam on plywood, with a burlappy brown fabric I liked, and then I sat on it every day for 25 years.
It is worn out and ugly, but it’s got good bones, and I wondered what it would take to make it more … sittable.
According to Google, ‘springs’ is the answer.
I bought an upholstery-for-dummies starter kit on Amazon, took my chair down to the cellar, and stripped it back.
Foam and fabric? Rrrrip!
Coffee stains? Washed away. Petrified olives? Still good.
Worn spots? Sanded back and re-coated.
And what was left was a gorgeous piece of woodwork. Even from behind.
But gorgeous and comfortable are two different things, and ‘comfortable,’ is not one of my superpowers.
I fed at the fountain of youTube and then started playing with upholstery springs, taking special note of how they feel, buttside, when I’m on top. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s not, and little changes make a difference.
It took me about 10 tries to get it right.
And then there was twine and burlap and foam and batting. There are a million ways to get it wrong. Maybe two million. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s not.
You just gotta trust your butt.
But when I needed to pick a fabric, my butt was of no use. Mary perked right up, though, and ‘we’ picked a pattern we both liked, in a color which, I gotta admit, ‘goes with’ the walls.
Sadly, this mock-up is not that color.
| For Sale |
My ’09 Tacoma has gotta go
It’s an SR5 with a cab and a half, 4 cylinders, 4wd, 5-speed stick, 6 foot bed, and 92k miles.
It’s got power steering, brakes, windows, locks, and mirrors, cruise and a fancy radio but the package is a notch below premium.
The rubber’s good, so you can hug the road or peel out when nobody’s looking.
The frame is still ‘recall-new’, and the body’s just starting to rust, but – remember when trucks had that chesty, muscular look? Before they turned all boxy?
That’s this truck.
It’s got a metal key. The kind you can find with a metal detector.
It’s never been over the speed limit except once, when I was late for church.
And it’s still got that new car smell.
It’s been a reliable workhorse and a good friend, and it’s never not got me where I wanted to go.
This perfectly good truck comes with the Premium Wear and Tear package:
The AC don’t work, the tail light lenses are cracked, there’s a hole in a rocker panel, a loose ball joint, and some kind of nonsense about rust in a drum.
Nothin’ serious.
Still, compared to $12-14k at Blue Book, it’s a bargain at $9k.
Email me, or text Reid at 555-2468.
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Before …
After
I couldn’t help myself, and I picked some crabapples.
The freezers are full.