Billy Goats Gruff

Well, we finished installing the flooring. Everything with it's installation went pretty smooth. The wood I had was just barely enough to finish the job. Each plank spans the entire length of the room so there aren't any joints. For the most part anyway. I did have to piece together the last three. Which, I must say, looks even better than the full length planks because I think it adds a little more flavour to the floor. Had I known this, I probably would have intentionally cut all of them so that there would be jointing across the whole floor.

Yes, I'm currently in the midst of building another house. It's even smaller than the cob studio but it can fit a lot more people. It will have all the amenities as a typical house, including a kitchen, bathroom, living, eating and sleeping areas. It's going to be three stories tall, with the flue of the fireplace passing through each floor so that every level will receive radiant heat. Oh, and did I mention it's a doll house?

My what warm weather we are having! So far, all winter long it has been pretty mild. Not a whole lot of snow and just a handful of cold snaps. I'm not complaining at all, but I'm just not so sure it's a good thing to have such strange weather. Generally, after February is when things start warming up. It's either going to be an extra early Spring, or a really late Winter. But since the weather was especially mild today, Phoenix and I decided to head out to the cob studio and get working on the flooring.

All last week I've been thinking on making some modifications to the pocket rocket. After I built it, I read that the metal bucket will burn to a crisp real quick. I read that after only two burns, the rocket could be toast. They didn't say anything about the environment in which they were using the stove, but it seems to be well known that if a fire is burning directly on sheet steel, it won't last long. So I wanted to devise a simple way to get the fire off of the bottom of the can. A quick rummage through my 'inventory', gave me some good options.

Well I suppose I need to fess up on a little secret I've been keeping. To speak the truth, it's not a secret at all (which is why I'm telling). Just a subject that has never came up, and there was really no reason for me to just blurt it out. But it's one of my new hobbies that I recently picked up, and have been thoroughly enjoying it ever since. A hobby that has brought me a good amount of satisfaction and peace. It's a hobby that can, and will be, taken with me when I begin homesteading. Which is why I am blogging about it.

"Come on Little Darlin', lets go try this out!" That's what I told Phoenix when I finished building the pocket rocket. And I don't know about her, but I was stoked about stoking this little contraption. So we jammed our feet in our boots, I grabbed all the parts to the rocket, and we headed out to the cob studio. Overall, the pocket rocket was a very easy project to build and took less than a day to put it all together. It was so easy, but yet I still managed to make a mistake.

Well, things around the house have simmered down quite a bit. The holiday haze has receded and Patricia and I are beginning to work on some new things. The festivities and the break from our labours was a nice change, but now it's time to get back into it. I don't want to get too rusty ya' know. So what's next? Before I get into that, I'll recap on where we're at right now.