February 14, 2019 - Thursday morning

18 degrees/cloudy skies/calm winds

Pentoga Road

A happy Valentine's Day to everyone from Pentoga Road. Ah, a day of love, smooches, and romance. Sargie and I are celebrating by hosting the window man who's due to arrive around ten this morning to do the final measuring and cart away our hard-earned dollars.

I'm still talking about snow this morning as that's what occupied my time for fully half of Wednesday. I thought the drive was fairly clean Tuesday night, but upon stepping out the door Wednesday morning, discovered an additional six inches had fallen during the night.

In some areas, the snow is one wire away from being over the top of the electric deer fence.

Between the snowblower not wanting to start and getting the four-wheeler high centered in deep snow, more than a few words were muttered. Still, by morning's end, the drive and deck were cleaned.

I made my way to Iron River and stopped at the Rose Quartz Cottage to purchase Sargie's Valentine's Day gift. It was there I met Trish and her Teddy Bear pup.

Talk about a log cabin that's just filled with all kinds of unique goodies.

After telling her some of Sargie's likes, Trish made up a custom basket filled with soaps, lotions, and candy. I left Rose Quartz Cottage a happy man knowing that Sargie will be a happy lady.



It was back to Pentoga Road and into the shop.

Oh oh, here's what happens when a person forgets to dump his paint water and leaves it sitting overnight.

I emptied the plastic glass of ice into the sink and ran hot water to free the four entombed paint brushes. The shop gets comfortably warm during the day, but plunges to well below freezing during the nighttime hours, especially when the outside temperature occasionally dips far below zero.

I worked on the intarsia of Chief for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. Each of the forty one pieces was cut on the scroll saw then individually shaped and hand carved using the Dremel.

The rotary hand tool is mounted by the work table and is easily accessible.

Since I'm still learning the art of intarsia and making plenty of mistakes, the dog's head is made from a scrap piece of pine. To keep the forty-one pieces straight, I made a duplicate pattern and numbered each cut.

The project is going fairly well, although I've made a ton of mistakes. There's a lot more shaping that needs to happen, plus one or two pieces may be beyond repair and require sawing again. 

Still, I'm just learning and am enjoying the challenge of making a flat picture into a 3 dimensional object.

Speaking of Chief, we'll be Chief sitting for an entire week at the end of this month. The Rottweiler that I've known since he was a small pup, is a HUGE overgrown teddy bear. No doubt there'll be plenty of wrestling matches and doggy games played on Pentoga Road during his stay.

Sargie wasn't home until 9:30 last night and it was quite late before we went to bed.

Sargie's off today and as mentioned earlier, the window man is due to arrive after while. It's been a long process of talking, working, and subbing to make these windows happen, so we're both excited. Hopefully, they'll be installed sometime this early spring.

It's time to close and bring Sargie's Valentine's Day present from its hiding place in the basement. She's presently in the shower and I want it ready when she's dressed and ready to meet the day.

Ah, Valentine's Day, a day of love, smooches, romance, and... oh, yeah, the window man.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

The hill above our home on Pentoga Road is like driving through an ice palace. It's beautiful.