rinne me dearmad...

just got back from a fun little ride at crev mo on the ssstump. a couple of minor annoying mechanicals, but i began to realize that it might actually be quicker running a handful of gears. and a suspension fork. biggest annoying parts are the clank of the chain or der. hitting my right chainstay, and the reba still seems to dive on the backside of logs, even in lockout. i'm pretty sure that's something i can adjust though. i brought my camera, as it's a gorgeous blue sky day, with golden yellow birch opening up to views of freshly snowcapped mtns. unfortunately, i forgot to put the memory card back in, so it was just dead weight...

all of my day, up until i went for the ride, was spent getting my wood carving blog (http://carvingsbygrady.blogspot.com/) up and running. photographing carvings, finishing touches, uploading the photos, pricing and descriptions. took quite a bit of time. i guess there really is no complete escape from 'office work', but it was entirely self centered, so i didn't mind really. i've decided that i'll be putting the finished carvings only up there, and will still occasionally post photos of in progress ones over here.

alright, time for dinner and a fancy beer. i've been drinking the beast ice all week and i deserve a reward for my diligent frugality.

ag bogail

at some point this weekend, i will begin putting all of my carvings and artwork on another blog: http://carvingsbygrady.blogspot.com/ future carving/artwork updates will go there, as well as information about how to purchase any of them, if anyone is so inclined.

i've been dreading the painting of my carvings for some time now for several reasons. for starters, i really don't have alot of practice painting with a brush. all of the paintings here were done with a combination of sticks, scrapers, paint markers and my fingers. that kinda crap just wont cut it on wood carvings of the size and ilk that i am currently churning out. painting with brushes will take some getting used to, and for now, it's tedious and taking waaaay longer than it should to achieve a given result. practice, practice, practice.....

i began painting a couple of the monsters today in light acrylic washes. neither are finished, but the devil is close. layer after layer of color after color. the horns won't be painted, but will have that sweet polycrylic finish to bring out the grain. oh, and apparently "primary red" is basically pink. took me for friggen ever to mix those colors into something resembling what i think of as red. note to self: next time buy cadmium red...





while i was waiting for layers to dry, i went out for a quick spin on the SSSTUMP. tried going to crev-mo, but there was a high school invitational xc meet, so i decided against risking collision and headed out for a steady effort on the palmer-wasilla highway bike path. fall colors are coming out fast. the reds have been here for a while, and the yellows are coming on strong. wont be long now.



got home to find a package from juxtapoz containing my new t-shirt by jason maloney. i subscribed a couple of weeks ago. it's a magazine i've missed sorely up here.



so i wore it while i painted some more, and when i got sick of painting, and indecisive on colors, i went back to work on a piece of driftwood spruce that i've been chopping away at little by little. i think it's spruce anyway, kind of hard to tell sometimes with driftwood. it's slow going because it's a pain to work with palm chisels. tempermental and tight grained to say the least. the below carving as well, is not yet finished. needs a little more filing and sanding, and i've yet to decide wether to polycrylic it or oil it. i'll also cut the bottom flat so that i can mount it on a wooden base.



i'm probably going to head out for another attempt at crev-mo after an early dinner, then maybe try to get to work on them again afterwords.

aistriu.

got out for a shakedown spin on the Semi-Squishy-Shifty-Therefor-Unmanly-Pony, or SSSTUMP for short. it's got a single ring up front and 5 speeds out back, of which only four seem to work, so it's not really a full on multispeed. i like to think of it as a singlespeed that stutters. besides, the easiest gear it has is a 32 x 24... i need to lower the front end. shorten the travel to 100mm probably and maybe throw on a lower rise/longer stem.

as expected, it's significantly faster over the roots and downhill, and more forgiving of error on obstacles with bumpy exits. climbing was noticeably slower, which i'm attributing to the front end being so high. i also need to actually try adjusting the fork. i kinda just took it out of the box and put it on the bike, like one would with a rigid fork, not adjusting anything. i have no idea what the +/- air pressures are. the maxle is incredible though. 40mm more travel than the reba i was running a couple of years ago on the rigorilla, yet it tracks really damned well through the turns. i like it. gordo rims aren't that noticeably heavy, at least compared with halo freedom disc and wtb ddfr's, which i'm running otherwise. stouts at 50psi had more traction everywhere i rode yesterday than they do at 30-40 psi, and roll alot faster. i did notice more bounce out back on the roots though. even i can admit that 50 psi is a wee bit high for a 29er, especially with 35mm wide rims....



sat down and knocked out a couple of carvings today. first female face i've carved in a looong time....

pre-polycrylic in the backyard sun





post-polycrylic in the behind the garage shade

cosuil le fliuch....

polycrylic is awesome. especially on cottonwood bark. really brings out the colors, darkens it up just enough while maintaining the visual depth of the carving....

for size reference the slats on that picnic table are @3.5" wide.

an diabhal

honestly, if all i ever did was carve santas and wood spirits and other palatable whatevers, i would probably puke and seek out an office job. a monster, demon or devil here and there keeps it interesting for me, and hey, halloween/samhain/dia de los muertos is right around the corner anyway. two today, learned a valuable lesson about trying to carve too much detail in cottonwood bark. that valuable lesson being to not do it. the sharp pointy teeth on demon # 2 below were a royal pain in the ass and probably took much longer than they'll prove worth. in a larger piece of bark, and with increased carving dimensions, it would be fine. but this stuff is somewhere in between basswood and balsa in consistancy and really doesn't like 'fine' detail.

# 1



# 2

ceann eile

carving even a soft wood like whatever the piece below is really makes me realize just how heavenly it is to carve cottonwood bark. and you'll likely never catch me trying to carve ironwood again with hand tools like i did in mexico... i remember at one point down there waking up with my fingers locked in a clench.

i intended for this to be a full body, but it just didn't happen.





my legs are really sore from yesterdays hike, and there's a bottom bracket issue with the new bike, so not much in the way of exercise today. excuses excuses...

snoíodóireacht adhmaid

no riding today. it was raining and i, again, lacked the motivation. got an interesting call though, with some interesting info. need to return that call.

worked a little bit on two of the carvings i posted yesterday. well, a lot on one of them and a little on the other. i cleaned up the one and squared up the eyes a 'little' better, and cut the entire face off the other and re-carved it.

still not symmetrical, but who is?





this guy from yesterday's post:




became this guy from today:



this is one i've had sitting around for about a month.



anyone know what type of wood this is? it's about 2 inches in diameter and was found as driftwood on the coast of norton sound.