Category: Project

Alright. Let’s start at the beginning.

Shortly after the lockdown happened, we started trying to spend more and more time outside as a family. We can add to that the initial food-instability we were feeling, and before I knew it my better 3/4 bought a garden-in-a-bag off Amazon. A mylar envelop showed up full of tiny bags of seeds- labeled, sort of. They said things like “Pumpkin” and “Tomato” without any information about type or needs. Ok.

So: We knocked together 3 4′ x 4′ raised beds, filled them mostly from our compost/yard waste pile, and jammed the seeds in. A bit of watering and off we went.

The results were… crazy. Nearly everything came up (minus the Chives and most of the Basil), and we had huge yields. Arugula, lettuces (red, romaine, and butter), peas, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, red cabbage, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, jalapeños, banana peppers,  cayenne peppers, bell peppers, carrots, watermelons, cantaloup, radishes, and pumpkin all came up. And we got results from everything except the brassicas- the cabbage moths got those. All that from three tiny raised beds. Oh, and when we found some sprouted onions and potatoes in the pantry, we planted those, too. And they grew (the onions eventually went into a pot roast we made).

Besides the food, the time in the garden was very good for all our health. There was always something to putter with- weeding, picking, spotting new growth, and watering. It was relaxing and it was outside. It was amazing. It looked and smelled beautiful.

On the heals of that success, we’re ramping up for next year. Here’s the current plan:

1. New seeds. We’ve bought seeds from a serious supplier, and we’ve picked some stuff we’re really excited to grow. Hopefully better varieties than last year. Plus we’re planning more onions, potatoes, and we’re planting an apple tree too. At least. Maybe a kiwi or fig tree, too.
2. More beds. We’re upgrading to 6 4′ x 8′ beds. And we’re keeping the original three small beds as an “experimental” area. There are some allium bulbs planted there already, for example. Also, I’m going to rip up 50% of our large front yard. That’ll get seeded with a bunch of native wildflowers and be the space for the pumpkin plants (and maybe the watermelon) to run rampant.
3. Much earlier indoor seeding for some plants. Tomato, melons, pumpkins, and peppers will all get started much earlier indoors under grow lights. We ran out of season before we got full yields, and this should help with that a lot.
4. Planting flowers as well- to hopefully attract more pollinators and spice up the joint a little, too.

We’ll see, I suppose, if all these plans work out. It’s a lot (the fencing alone is a project), but I’m hoping the eventual relaxation it affords is worth it.

I’ve been yammering on for weeks about the work I’ve been doing preparing to rework the studio/home office, but it occurs to me I’ve hardly broached either the why or the how of all that. And I’ve skimped on pictures, too. So let’s fix all that.

The current space looks (more or less) like this:

Yowch. That’s not pretty. To be fair, there’s a bunch of stuff prepped in those bins for the install, so it’s a fair bit more cluttered than “normal” right now. But still.

I’ll break down part of what you’re seeing. On the left far wall- that’s all analog stuff. Sewing, typing, book binding, soldering, crafting… all that stuff happens over there somewhere. There’s about eight feet of desk there between the two tables, but it’s crowded and not great. The right side is all digital stuff- that’s some rack gear on the ground, four monitors (for two different machines), and a laptop. And another rack underneath. And it’s a hot mess of cables and clutter. No good.

The plan is something like this (all along the right hand wall):

In case you can’t read my writing, that’s two seven foot desks (with a bit of overlap) mounted to the wall, and a freestanding (on casters!) 28u rack on the far right. That extends my computer standing desk from just under four feet wide to seven, and adds a considerable amount of storage above for all the other supplies I need to keep around.

The 28u rack I’ll be building is 30″ deep, too- so it’s going to get all the audio, video, and computer gear I have strewn around. All the hard drives. All the dead media format devices (VHS!) I keep around. All of it, in one place, neatly. Both computers go in there, too, along with (I imagine) the in-the-mail NAS I’m putting together.

I’ve got most of a parts list (and most of the cut-list, too), but I need to take some more measurements and finally do a proper scale drawing of the whole thing (with markings for the studs in the wall) to know exactly how many brackets of which type I need to buy. And then there are a couple of specialty parts (24″ shelf brackets, 28u rack mount rails, etc) that need to be special ordered, so I’ll have to get those en route.

So that’s where I’m at: an hour with the stud finder and some tape away from a full shopping list. Then it’s time to mount stuff to walls, cut and glue a bunch of shelves, and get going on the rack case.

This is less an update on status (my standard SitRep posts), and more some smaller look at how I manage some my projects. Just a small look, mind you.

This is a (partial) look at my project board- anything that I’m even thinking of making. It gets added to an index card, and pinned up. I (usually) organize them by category (bike, house, clothing, etc), but I shuffle them pretty often to see if anything lines up or can be batch processed. From here, these cards get filed as “finished” when the project is completed or “abandon” when I decide it’s not something I want to pursue. Every once in a while, on the rare occasion I’m feeling dry creatively, I sometimes paw through the “abandoned” cards for inspiration- I almost never re-up a project as-is.

For projects involving building, I usually spend some time sketching before I begin work. I have a couple of notebooks, depending on the scale I need, but this example is from my largest. It’s done in pencil, and it’s deliberately loose right now. I had the idea to overhaul my studio into a more functional space- that means more desk space and more storage, all while looking a bit less hodge-podge than things currently do. I’ll be installing a massive (16′ long!) work-wall, with (double) vertical desks build in- plus more shelving storage, cable management, and lighting. It’s about as big a project like this as I’ve taken on, and I know (based on finishing requirements) that I won’t be doing much until I can work in the garage again- the stain and polyurethane don’t like below freezing temps. But: I’m spending between now and then sketching and sketching and thinking to get the plans as solidified as I can, so when the temps finally break, I’ll be able to get right to work. So, for now, the sketches live here, and I’ll be revising and adding detail as I go. It’s the thinking that’s important, as it’ll make the construction go far more quickly, be less expensive, and better fit my ultimate needs.

So: between the board (to see the full range of the projects that are active) and the notebooks (for project details, sketches, equipment buy lists, etc), I find I manage to keep a reasonably good eye on what project is on which burner. For stuff I’ve never done before (like this studio 2.0 project), there’s a much-needed hibernation phase. I need the time to think through iterations on projects so I don’t have to build as many physical iterations. For some stuff (like my long suffering shoulder bag project, currently on prototype #5), that build/test/build is a normal part of the process- but when I can (and especially for larger stuff like this), I need to minimize the number of physical revisions.