2010

A Year In Review

Well it's been a long year chaulked full of stuff. The beginning of this year is when I started to get more involved with posting the things I do online. This post will review just what I have done in 2010 using links to those things I posted. Click away.

January

• I made my first blog post here on this blog.
• I started uploading photos to my flickr account. 
• I started listing items in my Etsy Shop.

February

• I spent the weekend up on Whidbey Island with Sarah and Jay, spending the time relaxing, exploring fort casey, and having a one man rave on the beach. 
• I had my first Thrifty Post.
• I had my first Uwajimystery Post.
• I watched Paris Texas and it was awesome. 
• I was a few months into working on Lead Pencil Studio's border sculpture.

March

• I changed my blog name. Will probably change it again. 
• I was doing a lot of welding for Lead Pencil Studios border sculpture.
• I started working on John Grade's new sculpture Circuit.
• I stayed up at Casey.
• I made a video of the quick trip I made over to Port Townsend while staying up at Casey.
• I took down Mantle, John Grade's sculpture at Bitterlake Reservoir.
• I was still welding.
• I saw the crow master.
• I redecorated my apartment.
• I saw some funky fungus.
• I sold my first item on Etsy.

April

• I really wanted to do this.
• I took down John Grade's sculpture Bloom: The Elephant Bed up in Bellingham. More here and here.
• I was still welding.
• I really liked this song.
• I went a little crazy.

May

• I drove across the country.
• I installed John Grade's sculpture Circuit in New York.
• I spent a few hours wandering around Manhattan.
• I started working on the Bells for Lead Pencil Studio.

June

• I shared some important information.
• I installed Windfall, Lead Pencil Studio's temporary sound sculpture at Seattle Center. Here is a video.
• I bought a bike.
• I went to the Fremont Solstice. (previous bike post not related)
• I found and modified an awesome camera, then took it to folk life.

July

• I watched some fireworks.
• I watched Where The Wild Things Are.
• I was doing random jobs.
• I went to Oregon to do even more random jobs.
• I had my first giveaway.
• I played some croquet.

August

• I finished Jay's bar top.
• I went to a birthday party for a house.
• I had my second giveaway.
• I helped to install Gerri Sayler's show at Suyama Space.
• I re-installed John Grade's sculpture Circuit at Davidson Galleries. 

September

• I helped install Lead Pencil Studio's Ramp Drawings at a new library in Bellevue.
• I took a hike.
• I gave away the bells.
• I made a new lens for my camera.

October

• I got a new welding hood.
• I saw this.
• I spent 2 weeks up in Blaine installing Lead Pencil Studio's border sculpture Non-Sign II. Here is the video, and some pictures, and more stuff.
• I came upon this in the middle of the night.

November

• I saw some huge ass lights.
• I had my third Giveaway.
• I started compiling a collection of photos of my etsy pieces.
• It snowed.

December 

• I started on John Grade's newest project, which involves me first dismantling the old sailing ship the Wawona.
• I had my fourth Giveaway.
• I spend a lot of time working and working and working and working on the Wawona.
• I gave my mom this.
• I blogged about what I did in 2010. 

Man when you write it all out that was a lot for one year. I'm sure I'm probably missing a few things as well, but these are at least some of the major things I did or saw in 2010. By far this was the best 2010 yet.

Even More Work

Detailed Wawona Video

Here is a longer video detailing just what goes into removing one of the planks on the Wawona.

Christmas Of Old

Christmas 1987

Oh boy, I uploaded the video of our Christmas morning that my Dad filmed way back when in 1987.

Some highlights of part one include:

In the beginning my sister sends me and my brother up as scouts to see if it's alright to come up yet, at the 20 second mark you can hear my brother give the all clear.

@ 1:35 You can see me look with envy at my brothers gift because apparently his had a little man and mine didn't

@2:30 I quickly forget about all my new toys and start to play with the candle snuffer

@3:20 Classic forgetting to turn the camera off while walking. It's great though because you get a good view of what the street looked like and there is still an empty lot across from the house which had the newspaper shack where I though the paper boy lived.

@5:00-5:40 you can hear me and my brother yelling at my Grandma to sit down, probably because my mom had told us that we can start opening presents when everyone has sat down.

@6:10 Me: "I want to open my big one now!" My Dad: "You don't get a big one." Me: "Uh huh"

@6:54 My Dad: "Who's it from Ian?" Me:"I DON'T KNOW?" I didn't know how to read yet.

@6:59 Sarah, why the hell are you grabbing my present? HANDS OFF! Seriously WTF.

@6:15 Mom:"The potato head family" Grandpa:"A potato peeler?"

@7:47 Dad: "Is that an old skirt?"

@11:50 Wrinkle cream

@12:50 My sister throws something at me, and my initial defensive reaction is to scream, but I stop mid scream either because she threw some candy at me or I get distracted by my stocking, I can't quite tell.

@13:20 The infamous Australian Plate is mentioned

@14:47 Me looking at a wrapped gift. My Dad: "What is it Ian?" Me: I throw my hand up. My Dad: "Who's it from?" Me: "I DON'T KNOW!

Here are the highlights from part 2

@1:04 My Dad: "Sarah come on were getting hungry."

@2:43 My Grandpa: "A Chinese host considers it their duty to get their guests drunk." My Dad: "It's their duty? In Japan they get their guests laid." My Uncle Dan: "I thought that was Hawaii."

@3:17 Dad: "Don't jump you'll break the floor."

@3:32 NSFW

@4:47 My present I made for my mom. It's not just a piece of wood. This year I also gave my mom a piece of wood for Christmas.

@9:20 Pants, and I quote "I hate these pants" I still hate corduroy.

@11:08 My Dad's present to my Mom is a video cassette cabinet, Just what my Dad always wanted.

Christmas

My Mom's Present

This year I decided to give my mom a piece I've been working on for about a year now. I've been working on it off and on every now and again while working on other things for my etsy shop. This piece was much more detailed and took a lot more patience to work on. The original design concept is based off of organic form doodles that I had been doing. The pattern consists of an intertwining, overlapping, multilayer form. It's all carved from one single piece of rosewood and is backed with a piece of sterling silver.

Christmas

Christmas 2010

Well, Christmas has come and gone. Here are a few pictures I took of the Gillville Christmas this year. The evening was filled with lots of good food, beer, wine, camera battles, more food, then even more food, then to top it off my aunt Julie gave everyone the finger, just another typical Gillville Christmas.

View Count

Super Titi View Count

I've posted a number of videos to Youtube, most of which I post in this blog. After I post a video I never really check on it, I basically use Youtube as a video hosting site for this blog. Well recently I was looking at the view counts of my videos and one stood out with an unusually high number of views. That video is my Super Titi video from the blog post I did about it. Currently the video I made for that post has 4,533 views.

Here is the video

There are also a number of comments on this video that are all in French, here they are with a google translation along with them.

Ou est l'intérêt de poster ce genre de vidéo ? - Or is the point of posting this kind of video?

Mais pk maitre sa sur YouTube - But his master pk YouTube

Mais pourquoi ne pas savoir écrire français - But why could not write French

MDR ! - LOL!

 From what I can figure my video must come up when people are looking for this guy.

I guess he's some French douche bag that pranks people when they litter?

More Work

How I'm Spending My Days

This is pretty much all I do now.

Each plank takes about an hour to remove. Each section I'm working on is roughly 15 feet long and the plank is attached to 4 ribs. For each plank there are on average 4 Iron spikes and 12 wood pegs. The wood pegs are really easy to saw through once the plank is wedged up slightly to get the saw in. The time consuming part are the iron spikes. Originally I tried to pull the spikes out with a spike puller but it was not going well. If you look in my previous video you can see Emmett trying with no luck trying to get one up. Those spikes have sat in the same spot for 120 years and are happy where they are and don't want to come out. Trying to pull the plank up with the spikes in will actually damage the plank because the head of the spike will blow out the bottom of the board and can actually spit the board. So, I decided to square off the heads of the spikes with a chisel. My carbide tip chisel cuts through that old iron like butter. Once the heads are squared off the board easily slides up off the rest of the spike. So far it's the fastest method that results in the cleanest and best way to prevent damage to the planks.