2020 is Closing!

In this closing point of the year, knowing my greenhouse is still as yet unfinished, I spent some of my Christmas holiday moving it forward. I have ordered the glazing panels and they will be here next week. The roof glazing spars are bird's-mouthed angle cut and ready to install. I just lack the four-meter ridge board to form the roof and tie in the end frames.

I plan to make the door and window lights as frames with mortise and tenons, rebates, etc and they will have automatic openers that are thermally controlled to open according to internal temperatures. Tie permitting, I will video making the door and the window sash frames and although technically the joinery and construction is all the same but with nuances that make them subtly different too. I plan to make this another COVID lockdown series as we are not far off a total lockdown once more. I will glue up the sections starting January 1st, 2021. The components for the sashes and the door will be from secondhand and offcut wood. I plan to make the door frame, glaze the door, rebate the stock and then hang it, all of course by hand. Can I make a door like this in two hours? Possibly! Maybe! Probably! who knows? We'll see. Gonna try!

The methods are exactly as any standard exterior/interior house/office/cupboard door, so as a series this will be invaluable for anyone missing some of the tricks of the trade in traditional door fitting and hanging. Oh, and these will be free videos via masterclasses free subscription and then YouTube. I think this will be helpful.

It stayed around freezing the past few days, but I stuck with it and felt warm enough just in the doing of it. I started to think about how life is changed by the pandemic as I worked but for me little has really changed because my work etc is pretty much the same. In fact, I have to say that IO did enjoy the work we accomplished last year and especially tackling the additional challenges for social distancing in a studio setting. I think that we have the most remarkable staff in that their willingness to shift and change to make things happen for the greater good is always there with such readiness. It's not that long ago when I rode the few miles out through the countryside to deliver my camera SD cards to Natalie's house so that she could edit them. We had an exchange system where I would toss a tiny white envelope onto the grass two meters away from e and she would toss another back to me with the empty cards for my next video work. It did look a bit suspicious and we did have a laugh. Mask wearing at first felt no different for me because I regularly wore them for five decades when machining wood. For the others, though it felt quite weird to them. Nowadays it is as normal as putting on a jacket against the cold, or shoes to walk out in.

I can see my garden starting to develop with three-inch leaves to my onions and the garlic and shallots poking through the black soil too as a close second; that's despite the hard frosts every morning. In our Tier-4 restriction area, the current efforts to curb the COVID virus, the garden has become a special place for most to go to. This is hard for everyone here and many are fearful of contracting the disease. With three of my sons dotted on other continents giving me feedback and a vaccination program rolling out, I am hopeful that 2021 will indeed be a much better year. There is no question that we all need a 'shot in the arm' as we close the years to boost morale on every level of society and in every different culture. 2021 promises that and we must all do the best we can to help control the virus. I am looking forward to completing my greenhouse, filling the seed trays I have made from scrap pallet wood (not a species) and such, and then too planning and planting out my 2021 spring garden. This year I will hopefully double the size of my beds in the ground and perhaps add some more growing boxes. Comparable yields of like varieties gave me more potatoes from the boxes -- what a great surprise!

Oh, this headshot came as a result of a recent haircut at the latter part of this year's pandemic. This is the first sign of my going grey in my hair aside from my beard. I have good genes to that end as my mother never went grey before she passed in her mid-eighties and my father only when he was in his late seventies!

My last task of the year has been sharpening all of my tools. I like to have everything sharp, clean and in order at the close of a year so that is what I have done. See you nice and sharp in 2021 everybody!