A Few New Pics

hey everyone,

Stuff is going well here. School is as busy as every. I haven't completed a new project yet but we are working on a lot all at once. I am going to take my camera to class some time soon so I should have school pics. I am havingtons of fun there which is great. I had a fun birthday. On Tuesday I went out with a class friend - Clare - and we went to dinner and had a great time. There were three other people in class who had their birthday's the same week. One of them - Wayne - had a birthday party at his house on saterday that we all went to and had a great time. My friend Felicity and I made Wayne and Clare birthday cakes which ended up being used as the arsenal in a food fight, but it was the thought that counts, and the food fight was a lot of fun.
This is Felicity getting some chocolate out of her hair at her apartment before the party



And here I am looking very silly indeed.

On Saterday before the party I went with Julie (my roommate) to Fisherman's Warf because she had to take some pictures for class - she is in photography school. There are a bunch of house boats there, which are not really boats more like floating houses, so I took some pics for yall.

This is a look down one of the house boat docks.


This is a sculpture at the end of one of the house boat piers.


I really like the monkeys on this boat!


This is just an old man down at the docks that I really liked the look of. He seemed so serious.


This is Julie in her ever so classy room in our apartment. Which reminds me we are moving this weekend so I will take pics of the new place and post them.

I have also decided to start volunteering and have choosed to do so at a women's shelter called - Transition House. I have to take about 2 months of classes before I can volunteer but it has been a really interesting experience so far. It has been hard emotionally though to learn about how pervasive abuse is in our society. But it will be nice to be part of the solution. Other than that not much else is new, I have been biking alot. I am going to bike to school everyday this week I think which is about a half an hour there and the same back. I have also been biking a number of other places and victoria has a million more hills than toronto so I am going to be fit if I keep it up! Well miss everyone and I hope that you are all doing great!

First Project

Hello,

Just a quick note. I have finished my first project at school. It is a simple pine side table made from construction grade 2/4's. The pictures are not that great, but I will try and take some better ones next week.





We are currently working on two different projects at the same time. One is an instrument case - a wooden briefcase basically. It is very interesting because all the the corners are being constructed with different types of joinery. The second project is a drawer for a little shaker side table we will build later. It is going to have dovetail joinery. The drawer has been as exhaustive project because it has to be all done by hand. This means we sawed the wood up by hand and we also have to plane down each piece to be flat and square by hand with block planes. This is a difficult process which requires a real careful hand and constant measurements. The drawer has definitely provided me with a new respect for people who built houses, and boats and furniture before there were power tools. Well I will post more pictures when I take them.

Cheers

This is a picture of the shop from the class room ( where we spend the mornings doing lectures) which is up a set of stairs and sits over the finishing room and tool room. The class room has windows that look down over the shop.

This is our first night in the apartment. We have since aquired one bed and are picking up another tonight :)

hey everyone,

So today was my second day of school and . . . . . . . I LOVE IT. School is so much fun, and it is almost weird for my to say that! There are two teachers who trade off teaching days and they are both great, really easy going and nice and really want everyone to achieve their goals. There are 17 people in the class right now because one of person never showed up. There is a huge range of ages from over 50 to one guy who just finished high school. There are only four girls in the class but I kind of expected that. The entire class seems easy going and it is interesting to have such a range of ages and experiences and goals. Most people have worked for a number of years or pursued other forms of education before coming to this class. The shop is amazing! It is huge with lots of different tools and machines. We got trained on a number of machines today including the table saw, the radial arm saw, the portable power saw, the jointer and the thickness planer but with each new technique we will learn more about each piece. Today we started our first project, it is a simple side table with a seven plank top. It is a total class project and we are only doing to get used to all of the machines. We have been divided up into four groups and each group is making one section of the table, the legs, the side rails, the end rails and the plank tops. Then we will each assemble our own. Our next project is a little tool case that kind of looks like a wooden briefcase. We will get into dove-tail work and independent work for that one. I have seen some of the other classes work around the shop and it is just so beautiful and it just astounds me that I will be able make stuff like that soon. Really over all the class is exactly what I wanted and I am looking forward to spending every day there. It is kind of like a treat instead of something I have to do! Well I guess that is about it. I will try and take some more pictures of my work and I create it. My teacher also told us on the first day that companies etc. Actually call in and make a list of places that graduates can get a job, so it looks like work will be no problem when I finish the program. This year is also special because the Furniture Society (http://www.furnituresociety.org/) which has annual meetings all over North America is having this years meeting in Victoria during the last three days of class in June. This means that we will not only have our final project on display in front of some of the best furniture makers in North America but we will get to mingle with them and meet them. It is very exciting but also kind of scary. Well I hope everyone is doing great back home. Cheers until next time. . . .

This is lupin on Grouse Mountain for my mom

This is a picture of part of down town Vancouver just to show Chris the mountains that surround Vancouver.

This is the sail boat - wave dancer - in snug harbour our first morning waking up on the boat

This is some of the storm clouds over the island

Here I am sailing on the edge of the storm

This is Robin and Erika

This is the light house on Entrance island which marks the entrance to the bay that holds Nanaimo harbour. The mountains in the back ground are on the mainland north of Vancouver

These are the black berries me and Erika picked

This is part of Richard the boat builder's yard

This is a picture of part of the climb up the grouse grind

This is a picture right from the top of the mountain looking down at vancouver.

View from the top of Grouse mountain - it is a ski mountain in the winter

Grouse Grind, Sailing and Victoria

Hey all,

I have done a number of things since my last blog so here we go. My last full day in Vancouver my friend Alyssa and I climbed Grouse mountain. The climb is called Grouse Grind. It was steep and made me realize how out of shape I am! I am going to start running again. Alyssa and I have decided to start doing alot more climbing so I have a goal to work towards. The climb must have taken around 1 hour - 1.5 hours but we didn't time it. It was straight up at points but the view was amazing at the end. I am excited about doing more climbing. The next day my friend Robin, his girlfriend Erika and I took off on our sailing adventure. We left after sunset on monday and went to Bowen Island not far from Vancouver. There was little wind and the swells were over 1 meter high. It was unpleasant going after awhile because that is the type of conditions that bring on sea sickness. But it was fun anyways and there was so much phosphorescence in the water - what that means is when you disterb the water it lights up and glows. We were trailing this long stick we had and it left a long strip of light behind the boat. We could also see little gimmers of fish swimming under the boat. We docked in Snug harbour that night and the next day we woak to see the mountains on the main land draped in clouds. The second day - tuesday 29th - we half sailed and half steamed across the Georgia Straight that separates Vancouver Island from the main land. It wasn't that windy but we had a lot of fun. Pat, Robin's friend joined us for the crossing and he brought his fiddle and played for us. Around 1 hour out of Nanaimo the storm that had been on the horizon all day switched the wind in a totally different direction and picked up a lot of speed. It was the fasted sailing of the whole trip. But was as if it was timed perfectly because we hardly got wet because we just snaked along the storms edge, using the wind but out of the rain and the worst of it. We dropped Pat off and stayed in Nanamio that night. The next day we sailed out of Nanaimo and headed to Silva Bay on Gabriola island. We ended up having to steam at the end because the wind died, but it was worth it because Gabriola island was my favorite place I have been yet! It was soooo cool. Just a spread out hippy island where everyone is in to boats. There is also a boat building school at silva bay that is really the center of this community of boat builders, and my friend Tim went to that school so Robin knew one of the boat builders - Richard - and we hung out with him a bunch and went to his house. Crazy guy, but nice and his work is really cool. The island is just so laid back and everyone says hi to each other and knows each other. It is also so beautiful and natural - there are black berries everywhere. The only problem is that big money has started coming there and it has made it much more expensive in the last ten years, forcing some of the hippies out. The next day we just hung out on Gabriola and picked berries and read and just relaxed. Friday I got up early and watched the sun rise and they hitch hiked to the Gabriola ferry terrminal ( you have to hitch hike on the island because there are no buses or anything, everyone does it). Then I took the ferry to Nanaimo and caught a bus to Victoria and headed to my place. . . which leads us to my next adventure. The apartment sucked. It is just run down with dirty carpet and kind of smells bad and broken. Anyway so this lead me and my new room mate Julie to look for a new apartment. Julie is great, she is fun and easy going and likes going on road trips etc. We had a stressfull afternoon and morning this morning but we have been able to find an apartment and we are going to be moving in either sept 15 or oct 1 depending on what we can work with the first landlord who has seemed suprisingly understanding about our decision so far. The new apartment is more expensive but it is super cute it is one half of a house in the area of town called fernwood a very quaint neighbourhood where everyone knows each other. The house has good sized living room, kitchen, bathroom and bed room on the first floor as well as a big laundry closet. And there is a loft bedroom over the living room but it is tucked under the roof of the bedroom so it is not really open to the living room giving it more privacy. I will take pictures after we move in and set up a bit. Well that about brings us up to the present. Please write I miss you all!