Tea tray finally done

Well, its been a pretty long time since i started working on this tea tray. in fact, it really started during the winter of 09/10, when i found some local maple that was sawn down, convinced bill to get a load of it with me, and stored it in bill’s garage for all of 2010 waiting patiently for it to dry. as you can see when i first started working on it late last year, it still had not fully dried, and got lots of cracks.

well, between filling those cracks with epoxy, sanding and well, not working on it due to wanting to make bowls all the time, my tea tray is finally done, and I’m pretty proud of it.

just for comparison, this is what it started out as.

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and now…..
it looks like this.

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thats with full tea ceremony paraphernalia. yes, the water buffalo is essential.

with all the reflections is pretty hard to see, but the heartwood is almost certainly my favorite
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you can see it much better here. incidentally the drain cover was an afterthought, but i think its one of my favourite parts now too. i made it out of teak, turned on the lathe, and then carved out the design after.
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hes so important to everything. doesn’t he look like he’s right at home?
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on the right there, I’m pretty sure the tree was struck by lightening.
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and pouring some tea
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This project has really been after me for a while. I’m glad to have it be done, and can’t wait to have people over and drink tea together.

Spring is here…

We have had a few nice hot days so far, and all this month my photo theme has been spring. the only bad part, i haven’t taken many pictures!! but i have a few that are spring-y to me.

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my hops (check them out here when they arrived) are doing amazing this year. its year 2 for them, and they get good sun exposure all day, and the soil is super warm in the back alley where they are, so they just bolted first chance they got. look at those huge super happy leaves. that pole is probably 30 ft up and this was a few weeks ago.

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forlorn ferret fixing for freedom

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this is my plant pride and joy, my little Sichuan pepper tree. He’s 3 years old now.

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and this last sign of spring, one of the pitcher plants is blooming! the pitchers always look worse for wear after winter, and i cut a lot of them back. but one of them got enough energy last year to push out a bloom. its slowly growing, and should be out soon. they put the flower out WAY over the pitchers, so that bugs that pollinate the flower don’t get eaten afterwards. i can’t wait for it to bloom.

Whistler weekend day 2

After getting a good nights rest, and a hearty breakfast, off to whistler we went. if you haven’t been following along, you meet our motley crew in whistler, on a weekend getaway including such fun activities as walking and zip-lining! craziness!

so, we hit whistler, and well, there competitions, concerts and who knows what (seriously, i can’t remember) going on. But its super packed with people, and fun vibe. in the parking lot, we saw this awesome van. who wouldn’t want to drive around canada in this bad boy? i was this close to buying it and going on a cross canada tour! whaa whaaat?!!
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whistler peeking out behind a hotel
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ohh, finally a picture of me and noa. its hard work being a photographer.
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speaking of being a photographer, i challenged myself and only took the 35/1.8 with me on this adventure.

i love doing this. should just remember to put someone i know in the background.
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anyways, we were ready to zip!
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our destination
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and what we have to walk across to get there
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and what we were zipping across!!!
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Look like fun?
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heck yeah!
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There is the zip line at the top of the screen, and the one we just crossed on the bottom.

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it was a lot of fun
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Brent got some pictures of noa and i, but we haven’t gotten those from him yet, so once i do, ill post them.
i did take a ton of shots as i was crossing with my camera, and i wanted to compose it into a video, which i still have to do also.

lastly, we did buy the photos that they take on the last zipline. its special because you get to go upside down, so you can see me furiously trying to release with both hands, but its really hard to mentally do so.

whoa…
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so close!
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phew, i didn’t fall
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and no’s final zip
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what a weekend. thanks to our hosts for the wonderful time, it was so nice to actually stay in whistler, instead of having to drive back the same day. it was a fun, action filled, relaxing weekend. just what we needed.

and i’ll leave you will a final shot. of some bark. west coast bark.
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