Hobbies
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Another project. Finishing a little section of the basement as a kitchen. Already have a nice kitchen in the house but it makes Sharon nervous when I cook stuff in it even when I clean up. I also like to cook odd things that no one will eat but me. The second oven will be handy during g the holidays for large gatherings.
This is where the sink will go. Not the ideal location but it’s where the plumbing is.
The cabinets came out the garage at an AirBnb house two years back. Not great cabinets but too good to throw out. Nice enough for the basement. That house is under contract right now -wish us luck!
The freezer will stay but move to another wall to allow for a smallish cross top freezer/fridge.
This is the long wall across from the counter. Drywall work is done now, waiting for texture/paint. It will have the range, a little counter, the freezer and some shelving.
Added lighting because at my age I need plenty and I had some fixtures I moved here from CA. Felt good to use my tools again. Haven’t decided on flooring - might just polish the concrete but I have my eye on some commercial (airport grade) carpet tiles at Habitat for Humanity going for cheap. I’ll not be frying anything and the basement stays very dry so they should work.
Lots to do and I’m busy enough in retirement that I can’t imagine how I ever managed to find time for work!
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Got my eyes checked, still needed more light and put a 250 watt bulb in my reading lamp.
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When we were house-shopping here in suburban New York, it was surprising to see how many houses had second kitchens. Many older houses here have been divided into multi-family rentals, sometimes being reconfigured more than once over the years, so sometimes you could tell the extra kitchen was left over from a previous configuration. Our house was built as a single-family home, but it had been converted into a two-family sometime before 1925. When we converted it back into a single home, we made the second kitchen into a master bath.
I can see the logic in not tearing out something that's expensive and could be useful, but sometimes you might want to use the space differently. My son and DIL were looking at houses with the thought of perhaps moving here someday, and my DIL said plaintively, "I'd really like a house that has more bathrooms than kitchens." I could see her point.
In other cases, you could tell the second kitchen was built for "overflow" cooking. Our realtor said this was common in Italian families. There was a time when I routinely cooked in my single solitary kitchen for ten and sometimes more, and I never thought, "If I only had another kitchen...." You'd have to have a second cook to keep you from constantly running up and down stairs, burning things on both floors.
People from earlier generations in the South had huge families and managed with one kitchen, even when they had big gardens and had to can and pickle a ton of stuff. I guess even basic household work flow is cultural to a degree.
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Not familiar with either of those brands. Mark knows a lot more than I do and maybe he’ll chime in. I will say that I prefer analog components because digital stuff can be impossible to repair if it breaks.
What do you want to do with your new system? Is SW short wave?
Not familiar with either of those brands. Mark knows a lot more than I do and maybe he’ll chime in. I will say that I prefer analog components because digital stuff can be impossible to repair if it breaks.
What do you want to do with your new system? Is SW short wave?
The set needs to be mobile with in-built speakers, used in the sitting room & bedroom (stop me putting on the TV so much!).
Yes SW is short wave.I want to brush up my dismal Spanish by listening to spanish speaking radio, as well as UK stations. Though I think SW stations may now be available on the Internet e.g. on a laptop,
there's a lot of pleasure to be had wheeling through shortwave static to find some remote radio station. -
Not familiar with either of those brands. Mark knows a lot more than I do and maybe he’ll chime in. I will say that I prefer analog components because digital stuff can be impossible to repair if it breaks.
What do you want to do with your new system? Is SW short wave?
The set needs to be mobile with in-built speakers, used in the sitting room & bedroom (stop me putting on the TV so much!).
Yes SW is short wave.I want to brush up my dismal Spanish by listening to spanish speaking radio, as well as UK stations. Though I think SW stations may now be available on the Internet e.g. on a laptop,
there's a lot of pleasure to be had wheeling through shortwave static to find some remote radio station.@AndyD said:.
there's a lot of pleasure to be had wheeling through shortwave static to find some remote radio station.Radio! Radio (back in the day) was magical wasn’t it. I still listen to Internet radio (if that’s even what it’s called anymore, Pandora, Spotify). But it’s not the same. For one thing, there’s no DJ and you can skip a song if you don’t like it.
I can remember listening to the radio in the car with my mom… or going to stay at my grandma’s house when I was in JH and HS, I slept in a room on the second floor and she had a radio in there. At night, I would listen to different stations. Because it was a completely different state, I always had to search around on the dial before I found a station I liked, and even then it seemed like the music and the person talking were quite different from home. It was both a little bit exciting and a little bit disconcerting.
Sorry @steve-miller this thread somehow keeps making me feel very nostalgic!
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The radio station of my teen years, 89x, was reformatted as a country station when I lived in Toronto. But last year they reformatted (re-reformatted?) it to be the alternative station of my youth - with an afternoon DJ who is my age. I actually listen to it sometimes when I drive, after not listening to radio for twenty years!
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I went through a brief audiophile stage after college. I did a lot of research. I bought beautiful tube amplifiers (you needed two for the type of system I was building). I didn't get to the preamp, the source, or the speakers. I sold the amplifiers. They were work of art.
This would have been my second stereo. I had one in college. Solid state.
My next one will be sold state. Life's too short.
I learned some important information about speakers in the intervening years.
This system will sound much better than my first one. This one will be produce a precision sound stage, not be about volume, and definitely not be about over-emphasis on bass frequencies.
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Hobbies. But first, I love the Moth Radio Hour on NPR. Don't catch it as often as I'd like, but thoroughly enjoy it when I do.
My hobbies fall into 2 categories: Fiber (especially wool) arts, and late nineteenth century mechanical homewares (sewing machine, music makers, etc.)
Two Saturdays ago, I took a day long workshop on great wheel spinning at the Newbury School of Weaving, 27 miles northwest of here, just across the VT border. Although I've made yarn at the great wheel before (learning from videos and books), taking the class was a real boost. It answered questions and filled in gaps. I want to take a week long weaving class there, but that will have to wait until Cielo is a less dependent on me.
I'm currently spending my evenings picking wool, a Wenslydale fleece I bought last year. Some is scoured and picked, ready for carding, some is not yet scoured, and some is scoured but not picked. I put something on YouTube and pick away. I will be spinning it on the great wheel. Left to right: picked, scoured and unpicked, raw (unscoured) in the plastic bag.
Other fiber related projects in the works are a hooked rug I'm completing, a wool applique quilt I made 2 years ago that needs quilting, some Shetland wool I'm spinning for a shawl.
At the moment, I'm rebuilding the bellows on the Roller Organ I bought last year. It's all on the dining room table!
The industrial revolution cheapened everything.
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I've been crocheting a lot lately.
This was a graduation gift for Muffin's Sister's firstborn. I'm now starting one for Muffin's brother's firstborn. I have three years to finish it, which should be doable, but the next three graduations are four, five, and six years from now, so I'll be crocheting graduation afghans for the foreseeable future. If Muffin reproduces, I'll be crocheting until the end of my days.
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Hobbies. But first, I love the Moth Radio Hour on NPR. Don't catch it as often as I'd like, but thoroughly enjoy it when I do.
My hobbies fall into 2 categories: Fiber (especially wool) arts, and late nineteenth century mechanical homewares (sewing machine, music makers, etc.)
Two Saturdays ago, I took a day long workshop on great wheel spinning at the Newbury School of Weaving, 27 miles northwest of here, just across the VT border. Although I've made yarn at the great wheel before (learning from videos and books), taking the class was a real boost. It answered questions and filled in gaps. I want to take a week long weaving class there, but that will have to wait until Cielo is a less dependent on me.
I'm currently spending my evenings picking wool, a Wenslydale fleece I bought last year. Some is scoured and picked, ready for carding, some is not yet scoured, and some is scoured but not picked. I put something on YouTube and pick away. I will be spinning it on the great wheel. Left to right: picked, scoured and unpicked, raw (unscoured) in the plastic bag.
Other fiber related projects in the works are a hooked rug I'm completing, a wool applique quilt I made 2 years ago that needs quilting, some Shetland wool I'm spinning for a shawl.
At the moment, I'm rebuilding the bellows on the Roller Organ I bought last year. It's all on the dining room table!
@Bernard I saw your blog post about your class, and it sounds like stepping back in time! So wonderful.
I am suddenly working a LOT (knitting), with new designs and editing and herding test knits. I got a wild hair and had to go follow all the things! They’re wrapping up now, and I hope to just knit a sweater that someone else designed and not think for a while…
When hobbies become work, it’s fun but not as much fun as it was before.
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I've been crocheting a lot lately.
This was a graduation gift for Muffin's Sister's firstborn. I'm now starting one for Muffin's brother's firstborn. I have three years to finish it, which should be doable, but the next three graduations are four, five, and six years from now, so I'll be crocheting graduation afghans for the foreseeable future. If Muffin reproduces, I'll be crocheting until the end of my days.
@Mary-Anna I love crocheted afghans. I crocheted quite a bit as a teenager. Made one huge granny square; just kept going around and around using up whatever tidbits of yarn I could find. (Lot's of acrylic in those days, from Woolworth. Ironic.)
Yours, above, is beautiful. It looks much appreciated.
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I've been crocheting a lot lately.
This was a graduation gift for Muffin's Sister's firstborn. I'm now starting one for Muffin's brother's firstborn. I have three years to finish it, which should be doable, but the next three graduations are four, five, and six years from now, so I'll be crocheting graduation afghans for the foreseeable future. If Muffin reproduces, I'll be crocheting until the end of my days.
@Mary-Anna beautiful!
I have an afghan my grandma made and one made by a great aunt, and my mother has a few more of her aunts.
I love them all!!
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Re audio, I “inherited” my brother-in-law’s stereo system when he went into assisted living. It’s an old quadraphonic system and the receiver is a total beast weighing about 40 pounds. I’ve no need for 4 channels so just use 2. It’s glitchy, probably because it needs cleaning, but I don’t know how to do that. And my hearing is so bad now that I can’t appreciate the quality that much anyway.
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I rejoined the audio/stereo universe with gusto in 2017, and it hasn't stopped. Back then I had 1 vinyl LP which was Mike Oldfield's Airborne. Now I have well over 500 LPs and about 30 Reel to Reel tapes and even more cassette tapes that I never tossed.
My system is more than I ever imagined it would be including a pair of 650 watt SimAudio 400M Solid State mono block amplifiers, a pair of Decware 6 watt Tube Mono blocks for when I am feeling like some tube goodness, a matching SimAudio Pre-Amp, a couple of Reel to Reel decks, a Marantz 3 head, 2 speed Cassette Deck a Roon Streamer and separate PS Audio DAC, a super crazy German Turntable and PS Audio phono pre-amp, and some crazy sexy Sonus Faber Il Cremonese, Italian speakers. It sounds so good, I will never want for something "better".
Ugh, we desperately need new window treatments. And don't mind the messy listening space.
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