David de Groot 𓆉 @dadegroot@mastodon.social

Did something a bit different for dinner tonight, turned out brilliantly. (no photo I'm afraid, I ate it)

Gnocchi served with pumpkin pieces cooked in butter, garlic and nutmeg, with bacon pieces fried with anchovies thrown it at the end, and some small cubes of grana pandano cheese.

Very tasty indeed.

Whoohoo Amaroq update.

Tonight's #hammer handle is a little baby one. One of the off-cuts of the eucalyptus branch made for a decent small hammer handle.

I tried something different with this one, using an offset tooling on the lathe, meaning I got a nice oval shape on one side of the handle (it would have been both sides, but the wood split on the tail end where the spindle poked in - my fault, should have left a bigger piece on the end).

#woodwork #tools

As some of you know, I have a recipe site: http://degroot.id.au/recipes

But even so, it came as a bit of a surprise to have a call from a talent scout yesterday while at work, asking if I'd be interested in appearing on Family Food Fight (which apparently is some cooking game show thing on Ch9 - I certainly didn't know that, as I don't watch TV).

Needless to say, I did not accept the invite (who wants that sort of pressure? not to mention supporting commercial TV - Bah!)

#cooking #food #tv

This afternoon, Jonathon found a long, straight-ish branch off what appears to be a bloodwood. I got him to save me a length, and tonight I cut it into #hammer handle lengths, and having done that, decided to make another handle.

This one is longer than the last one, head seems to be about the same weight. I shaped the handle more this time, so it's not perfectly round. There's a small slip-guard on the bottom.

#woodwork

Recently I bought two boxes of hammer heads for $10 (absolute bargain!).

Anyway, this afternoon, I decided to make a handle for one of them.

I grabbed a dry eucalypt branch I had under the house, cut a length, and turned up a handle on the lathe.

Some sanding, planing, rasping later, and voila! One functional (and pretty) 1.5lb ball pein #hammer.

#tools #woodwork

I cleaned up the clay/termite mud firebox in the forge last night.

Today, I dragged it out from under the veranda and lit a small wood #fire in it ( which turned into a somewhat more vigorous wood fire when I added a garden blower to the mix #pyro ).

It worked well though, the clay mix is now well set and hardened. I'll add a bit more around the top edge to protect the stainless steel a bit more, but otherwise that portion is pretty much done.

#blacksmith

Inspired by @lauraritchie 's Dawn Chorus the other day, here is the dusk chorus from my veranda.

https://youtu.be/l3tEfdWY-aM

#BirdSong

This is how I'm spending my nights lately - madly scanning old family #photo s before they go off to my Uncle (and thus probably never seen again by me).

I made a thing!

Had some scrap steel with holes in it lying around, and thought, why not try making a knife.

So I carefully cut out the blade shape (around the holes), then ground in the bevel, filed out the grinder marks, sanded out most of the file marks and then made the handle scales from an old branch I had lying about.

Used 5 min epoxy to join together (with wood pins), then cleaned up the handle, filed in finger grooves, sanded & oiled.

It's very rough by #knife standards but ok.

So I just caught a Praying Mantis that was trapped in the house overnight and carefully took it outside.

I released it from the veranda, it flew around in a wide half circle looking for somewhere to land, and in an instant a Spangled Drongo (bird) swept down out of nowhere and caught it for lunch.

D'oh!

Well I guess it is the thought that counts...

And she has won!!!

Excellent news. Thanks all who voted.