Jordan"s Jewelry Box

I started a family tradition a few years ago by making each niece a jewelry box for their 13th birthday. I made the first one for Megan a few years back, and had a few years off before the next niece (Jordan) turned 13. I started he latest one last year (Feb 08, I think), with the intent of delivering it by June. Jordan turned 13 in May 08. Unfortunately, all of this coincided with heavier travel for work and getting occupied with other interests. Before I knew it, I completely missed her birthday and was looking for other milestone dates I could shoot for delivery. Well, I finally finished and delivered it in June when the whole family was together for vacation in Georgia. And it was ONLY 13 months late! Yay me! All beating myself up aside, I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out. Here's a few photos I took of it at Miss Emily's house after I gave it to Jordan.
The box itself is made of a single board of quartersawn white oak with half-blind dovetail construction. The top panel and lift are mahogany and the inner divider is finger-jointed sections of maple, mahogany, and black walnut. The finish is a gloss varnish. I even had a plate engraved to put on the inside. It turned out really great.

The next delivery will be a double set since Jessica and Victoria both turn 13 the same year (about a month apart actually at the end of 2010). Based on this schedule fiasco, I should start on them now. I may need every bit of hat time to get them done. :)

Fly Fishing in Vermont

I spent the Memorial Day weekend at an Orvis fly fishing school in Manchester, Vermont. My buddy Regan from Atlanta invited me up to join him since he was up near Burlington on a business trip and couldn't resist the opportunity to get some lessons and advice from some of the best fly fishermen on the planet. You see, Regan is really good and has a ton of experience fishing. Me? I'm a hack and basically just enjoy being on a river and enjoying nature. I love catching fish, but the thing about trout fishing is that it's all about technique and skill. That's where the school comes in :-)

Orvis puts on fishing schools throughout the country, but what makes this one special is that 1) it's at their flagship store, and 2) the Battenkill river is nearby. Regan told me that the Battenkill is legendary since it's one of a few rivers in the country that are truly wild (no stocking of fish), which makes the trout even tougher to catch. This fact has some irony to it that I'll explain more later :)

The school is a 2-day fly fishing extravaganza, with classroom instruction and plenty of casting and fishing exercises. I finally learned how to cast, although I still need tons of practice. We learned about proper casting, fly selection and what the actual mayflies and caddis flies look like that we're trying to imitate. We were in class from roughly 9-4 each day with the rest of the time to ourselves. Luckily for us, the instructors are also local fishing guides, so we took the opportunity to hire a few of them (one for Saturday afternoon and another for Sunday).

Saturday afternoon we went out with Antoine Bissieux, a relative newcomer to the Orvis schools from France. He took us to 4 beautiful areas on the Battenkill and we fished until there was hardly enough light to see. I was the lucky one on this night, landing a gorgeous 17" wild brown trout from a hole near the Rec Area. Antoine happened to have an underwater digital camera that took video, so he was able to capture it in wonderful detail for me. I was tickled beyound belief with how it came out (This is where the irony comes in... I was so lucky in landing this fish since I basically did just about everything wrong that you can do. Luckily for me, our skillful guide talked me through it and I ended up with this amazing keepsake video!). I was the talk of the class on Sunday, which I must admit was pretty cool :-)



Day 2 of the course was cool since they gave us the opportunity to fish in their trout ponds for some MONSTER pet trout. They keep the ponds climate controlled and allow visitors to feed them, so the rainbows, browns, and brookies get HUGE! It was like fishing in a Koi pond, except you're allowed to cath them! I landed a 20" brown that took me about 10 minutes to land, and Regan landed a ginormous rainbow that was easily 30" long and weighed about 8 lbs. Granted, it's not exactly river fishing, but the thrill of the fight and bringing them to land was just as exciting .


On Sunday after class, we hired Peter Kutzer to take us up to the Mettawee River, another amazing wild river that runs along the eastern Vermont / New York border. This river is absolutely beautiful and we had a ball fishing it for a few hours. Regan and I both caught a few small rainbow trout (we're talking really small...~3-4"), but had a lot of fun fishing dry flies for the first time all weekend.

I highly recommend these classes and these guides for anyone who loves the outdoors, even if fly fishing isn't necessarily your thing. Just having the opportunity to wade in these beautiful rivers was worth the trip.

Goodbye, Las Vegas????

The end of my being nomad in the desert may finally be upon me. The project I've been chained to in Nevada for the last 9 months is finally coming to an end. FINALLY....Now those who know me are undoubtedly going to say, "yeah, I've heard that one before," but this time it may actually have some teeth.

Now for the record, let me say that despite all of it's downfalls, Las Vegas isn't as bad as I was expecting. Granted, that's not exactly a glowing endorsement of the place, but it does have its charms and attractions for me. Most notably:

1. Five brewpubs and quite possibly the best draft beer bar in the country. I didn't have to go far to have quality craft beers in this city. This cushioned the blow of having to spend a majority of my last year here.

2. Excellent barbeque. Who would have predicted this? Between Buzz BBQ, Shane's, Famous Dave's and several others I've heard about but haven't tried, this city will satisfy the BBQ lover.

3. Golf. More nice courses at reasonable prices than any place I've ever been. Even cheaper in the summer if you can stand to be out in close to 100-degree heat. Thanks to friends I made out here, I rekindled my love of golf over the last 9 months. Hope I can keep it up back in NY.

Now for the downsides:

1. This entire city seems like one continuous strip-mall, housing development, or office park. Every neighborhood looks the same, regardless of where you are. This is even more depressing considering how hard Vegas has been hit by the foreclosure mess. Seems like 1 out of 3 houses and storefronts are empty.

2. Everything is brown. The ground, the houses, the office buildings, the mountains. It's damned boring for an east-coast lad like myself who loves trees, grass, and seasons.

3. The wife never got a chance to come visit me out here. It would've been nice to take a weekend and party on the strip with Beth. Maybe one day we'll come back out. I definitely won't feel like a tourist since I know the place so well now.

Did you notice something missing between these two lists? I'm completely ambivalent about gambling and casinos. Didn't sit at a single table while I was here and played a grand total of $40 in video poker. I don't view this as a positive or negative. It just doesn't matter to me. Oh...there is one part of the gambling thing that pisses me off. It's truly difficult to find a bar that doesn't have video poker machines built into it! I hate having to put my beer (and/or dinner) on the side because of these awful wastes of space. But I digress...

Here's to more blogging and less traveling! Cheers.

To all of my beer lovin' brothers & sisters out there...

I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.

Happy New Year

I managed to take the last 2 weeks of the year off as vacation, which was more than deserved after the marathon work weeks I'd put in out in Vegas. These 2 weeks have been fantastic. I've spent only a few hours actually working, with the remainder spent relaxing, with friends, or doing things I enjoy. Here's an update:

• I've gotten back to working on J's jewelry box, applying some tung oil finish. Once the oil catalyzes, I'll apply a few coats of wax (or maybe poly) and finish up installing felt on the inside. It should be ready for shipping by Valentine's day (I unfortunately have a two week return trip to Vegas coming up this weekend...arrghhh).
• I finally cleaned up the surround sound speaker wiring in the living room. For years, bare wire was showing in the corners with the unslightly blue spots from the sticky gum-like adhesive that is supposed to work wonders. Well, it doesn't. I replaced this failed folly with thin, paint-able wire conduit that actually hides the wires. It looks 100% better already and will look even better when painted the new wall color. What actually inspired me to do this was the HD satellite upgrade I had installed. The system is now kickin' with over 60 HD channels having Dolby 5.1 surround sound. I'm really enjoying it.
  
• I also made a trip to Party Creations to pick up supplies to make my first all-grain brew. I'm doing a Pale Ale similar to Sierra Nevada from the Brewing Classic Styles book. I built a cooler-style mash tun to do single infusion mash recipes. From what I've read and seen, it should work just fine. Here's the You Tube video set that inspired me to do it (there's 8 in all, each ~3 minutes).
  

I hope to get it into the fermeneter on Saturday so It can do it's thing while I'm away. By the time I get back from Vegas, it should be ready to keg. I sure hope so! Happy New Year all.