Sunday, October 30, 2016

Cradle Project Nears Completion; Another Park Explored; A Successful Sale

With less than seven weeks to go until our daughter's due date, the cradle is just about finished. Only a bit more finish to put on and some knobs and stops.

Before Erick headed off to the East Coast, on business for 10 days, he gave me some tips on applying the oil plus varathane finish to the cradle pieces.

(Note: Click on a photo to see a larger version.)

Erick demonstrating application technique
Cradle end piece insert that Erick put the finish on

Piece with finish on the left vs unfinished on the right

Pieces I applied finish to while Erick was traveling
Back from traveling to work on the cradle:

Erick sanding an assembled end piece

Maybe just a bit more sanding...

Assembled end piece


Two views of the cradle - only a bit of finish to put on
and knobs and stops to add


Earlier this month, we went on a 2 hour guided walk along the Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline which is less than a 30 minute drive from our house.  The weather was perfect and we were lucky to get some great views of the local wildlife. 

The dedication plaque
Our guide for the walk

Kiosk on the importance of recovering wetlands


Great egret at the edge of the wetlands
Distant and Close-up



Birds along the shore - notice the industrial
area the runs along side the shore trail

Resting birds in the center - old railroad bride behind

Close up of cormorants and black-legged stilts

Used my zoom to get this photo of a seal aways from shore

Erick waits for me to catch up after snapping
a photo of interesting trees along the shore

Bird skimming along the water


The first part of our walk ended at the Native Plant Nursery


The observation platform at the park
Cormorant drying its wings

A gathering of Dunlins (at least that's my guess) 

Cormorants in San Leandro Creek

This is where the elusive Ridgeway's Rail breed.
We got to claim a "sighting" because we heard them calling.

Our group 

The Air Museum across the way from the park


Used my zoom to get the photo above of a great blue heron and the
photo below of a great egret near the end of our walk


Zoomed in on this marsh hawk perched on one of the
observation platform post.  We saw it hunting a rabbit.

Looking back toward the hills where we live -
that's the local Mormon Temple in the center and
above it Round Top in Sibley Regional Park
So many parks, so (relatively) little time...

Mid-month, I spent a lot of time coordinating parts of the Friends of Montclair Library's big fall sale, We tried two new things this sale - a "Teachers' Special" discount and sheets that buyers could use to tally their purchases before going to the cashier's table.  Both were well received and we'll probably include them in our spring sale.

The big question mark for the sale was what to do about the early rains that hit our area.  Fortunately, we had a window of only overcast weather that just about exactly matched the time we needed to set up, hold, and clean up after the sale.  As a precaution, we decided to hold the sale of books for children and young adults inside the library - a first.  


The banner goes up.  Note the canopy
and umbrellas ready just in case.



The $2 book shelves - that's as expensive as it gets at our sale.

Setting up children's books inside the library


The clean up crew minus one - the photo taker
Giving a cheer for all the day's volunteers!


You know you live in California when you can get excited about weather like this:

Mid-October rain - happy plants


Clouds portending rain 

 

Earlier today - rain from the SW sheets the doors to the balcony
And a few more:

"Holy card" sky over the ridge

Black birds in flight

Super moon

Lights across the Bay