Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

Thursday evening. All I could get tonight for a sunset. 

Damn it’s been cold. I remember working out all day in the cold weather and surviving. I worked at Saddleback Ski Area when we first moved to Rangeley, when I was much younger, I’m older than that now. 

The mountain was running out of water in the snow pond, the owner’s minions kept telling him all fall that he should be able to pull a syphon and get gravity flow from Rock Pond to the snow pond. All fall I tried, everyday I would follow the thousands of yards of pipeline going up to the pond. Every day I would need to make more repairs to the 6” PVC plastic line where moose had tried to get by the pipe that was suspended above the ground on log cribbing and they had broken it or cracked it. This went on all fall and early winter. 

When the snow pond was about empty, the mountain manager called me into his office and said I’m through listening to the owner, can you get me water? I said yes if you can get me an industrial grade ditch pump. He did and I hauled it up to the pond and devised a way to connect and disconnect the inlet and discharge on the pump and started sending him water down the line. Someone had to be there and babysit it, but my argument was someone had to babysit a snow gun or lift as well. I have no idea how long this method was used but it was my baby most of that winter. 

Back to the damn it’s cold, most days that winter were minus 10º to minus 25º Fahrenheit. I remember taking my sandwich out of my back pack awhile before I wanted to eat, usually baloney and cheese or peanut butter and jam. This is because they would thaw out pretty quick when I layered down a bit to put them under my arm pits, two sandwiches, two arm pits. It only made me cold for a bit. With my coffee, I had about 15 minutes, max, between pouring it out of the thermos with it too hot to drink and it’s starting to freeze over. Cold, I would snuggle next to either the ditch pump or the snow cat I used to get the mile or so out into nowhere to deliver the water. I have a great many stories of the crazy things I have done over the many years of solving the days problems.

Today I had no problems. It was too cold for me to needlessly go outside so much of the day was spent in the sewing studio. Carol was sewing bindings on quilted tops and I am still cleaning and as a Facebook friend said, I am refilling the pantry. 

I am still going through plastic bags of pieces. These pieces may be side triangles that would fit anything from V-blocks to Corner Beams to Diamond Rects and I guess Split Rects. I used to clean up and cut fabric to different sized squares. I have bins full of those squares and rectangles. Now when I am cleaning up I cut pieces to the sizes needed to make the units I use in my scrap quilts. Then I go the extra step and actually make the different units, trim them and put them in bins by size. The bins contain the following finished sizes: 1”, 1 1/2”, 2”, 2 1/2”, 3” and 4”. The following units in most sizes: V-blocks, Corner Beams, Square squared, 1/2 Square triangles and 1/4 Square triangles. I have also accumulated an abundance of Flying Geese including:

1/2” x 1”, 1” x 2”, 1-1/2” x 3, 2” x 4” and 3” x 6”. 

 I am beginning to get a lot of ready to go units in my pantry. I think tonight will be the end of “cleaning” for this round. After almost a week it will be time to start another project.

As usual I have a few ideas in mind. The first decision will need to be the size of the finished units to pull out of the pantry. I’m leaning towards 2” or 2-1/2”. 

Both those bins seem quite full and will be getting fuller this evening.

Stay warm, stay safe, until next time.