The Bohemian waxwings were back briefly this weekend. We saw a small flock, maybe ten or a dozen of them, in the crabapple late Sunday afternoon. Arlene thought she saw one redpoll, but I didn’t get to see it.
The trip to the lumber yard last Saturday was to get wood to build a stand for the Jet mini lathe I bought at Woodcraft in Portsmouth NH (actually Newington NH, but it’s a suburb of Portsmouth) on our way north the previous day. I pretty much finished the stand this weekend, but the shelves still need to be installed, and the lathe isn’t on it.
I did crank up the lathe and turned one big weed pot (that’s still what I’m calling them) on it. It sure is easier to use than the little worn out lathe I’ve had up to this point. The adjustments are very convenient and smooth. Speed changes are easy (not as easy as the variable speed model, I guess, but easy enough that I don’t yet regret saving the money on that feature) and mostly it feels very solid.
There was a full moon this weekend. Arlene and I went out on snowshoes as far as Sleeping Rhino on Friday night. It was a little too cold to be much fun, about 5 degrees, and we settled for a very short walk. I went out alone on Saturday night just before midnight. It was much warmer, way up in the 20s, and I was pretty comfortable. There were scattered clouds blowing over the moon. The lighting changed from moment to moment with the cloud shadows, but it never got so dark that there was the slightest problem finding the path. We had been all around our trails on snowshoes the previous weekend, there had not been any more snow over the week, and the trail was easier to follow than it is in midday in the summer.