Projects

Our big project for the past month and a half or so has been clearing the land across the road, as I described last week. A few other things have happened in that time, though.

Mr. Intellectual decided he wanted to build a canoe. He took these two sheets of roofing iron and hammered them flat, then riveted them together. He’s been working, when he has a free moment, on crimping down the edges so they won’t be sharp. I’m not sure how he’s planning to waterproof the seam and the ends.

Mr. Diligence needed a way to organize and protect his drill bits, so he built this box.

One evening, a few months after one of the burners on this hob quit working, I was standing beside it finishing cooking the meal. Suddenly I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye, and simultaneously felt pain in my eye. With no idea what had happened, I quickly got some cold water from the sink in case I had been burned, and was very relieved to find out I could still see from both eyes. After some investigation, I discovered that the light that turned on to show that a burner was turned on had blown and the cover hit my eyelid (thank God for quick reflexes that close your eye when something is coming toward it!). We had bought a gas hob from a friend after the electric one started going out, and I had been wondering how long it would be till it was installed—it happened the evening the stove blew up on me! I am thoroughly enjoying having a gas hob for the first time since we moved to New Zealand (it’s what I always had in Michigan). It is supplied by a 9 kg (20 lb) cylinder, so we can replace it ourselves. The first cylinder lasted about 3 weeks.