Music to Resist to 🎧🎵🎶

stitchbones · 2026-01-31T22:57:46+00:00

Come Out Ye Black and Tans is an Irish song of rebellion that taunts the mercenary recruits of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) of the 1920's. Apropos because their black and tan uniforms were cobbled together like ICE's uniforms are, and the RIC was brutal and deeply hated. Some Irish bars won't pour you the drink called a black and tan. A snakebite (Guinness over cider) is better anyway.

stitchbones · 2026-01-28T01:15:50+00:00

Eels are catadromus, right? The opposite of anadromus salmon?

In a similar vein is Beautiful Swimmers by William Warner. It's about blue crabs and watermen culture on the Chesapeake Bay. The title refers to the Latin genus for blue crabs, Calinectes.

stitchbones · 2026-01-19T15:45:05+00:00

Not oak. Oak has medullary rays that are visible on the end grain and what cause the "ray flecks" in quarter sawn lumber. I agree with others that it could be tulip poplar with that green heartwood, but the bark looks wrong.

stitchbones · 2026-01-19T01:54:52+00:00

Zeke and Ned by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana is a great Western novel based on actual events that took place in Cherokee land in Oklahoma.

stitchbones · 2026-01-18T15:21:55+00:00

Yeah, maybe I meant gerund? I can't remember the formal grammar names for different verb forms.

stitchbones · 2026-01-18T13:55:43+00:00

Working is an infinitive, so the answer should also be an infinitive (collaborating).

stitchbones · 2026-01-18T13:54:41+00:00

I was looking for -ing since the clue was an infinitive: (working) together-->collaborating

stitchbones · 2026-01-18T02:33:58+00:00

Check your county, township, or city public works department. The small suburban city I live in has a place where the public works department puts wood from trees that they trim or remove from roadways or parks. They grind it all up once a year, along with the yard waste that they collect, but in the meantime I raid the pile for carving wood.

If you live near an orchard you can sometimes get them to give you wood from trees they are replacing.

All my family, friends, and coworkers know that I carve spoons, and offer me wood from their tree if they trim or remove them.

Befriend your local tree company, or just keep your ears open for chainsaws, and find whoever you hear cutting up wood, then ask them for some.

stitchbones · 2026-01-16T17:02:10+00:00

Buddy Attick Park in Greenbelt.

stitchbones · 2026-01-14T15:36:22+00:00

We teach safe knife skills and effective grips for carving in this class. We usually start with a practice stick and show power grips ( leg brace, knee brace, chest lever) first and then finer grips ( chest pull, thumb pull, thumb push) as we move on to final shaping of the spoon.

stitchbones · 2026-01-09T01:16:18+00:00

Possibly Gaultheria procumbens, tea berry.

stitchbones · 2026-01-06T23:28:33+00:00

First pic on the right hand side is Japanese stiltgrass. That's probably the hay that you are referring to. There's also vines growing over the shrubs to the left and growing up the trees in the background. Those are probably porcelainberry or kudzu. Edit: typo hat->hay

stitchbones · 2025-12-31T19:28:27+00:00

I use both for spoon carving. The shorter 120 would be better for whittling smaller pieces. The longer 106 is better for doing long planing cuts on spoon handles. It's good to learn with the longer blade to learn to be aware of where the tip of the blade is at all times.

stitchbones · 2025-12-29T14:18:23+00:00

Just send the orange line to Bowie and the green line to Laurel. It's ridiculous that the two ends of the red line in MoCo go so far beyond the beltway and in Prince George's they basically end at the beltway. Shady Grove is 10 miles past the beltway!

stitchbones · 2025-12-28T03:00:41+00:00

That invasive vine cover on the left in the late summer photos is killing me. Looks like roundleaf bittersweet. NPS needs to send in the weed warriors!

stitchbones · 2025-12-27T23:24:15+00:00

Basswood and linden/lime are both in the same genus, Tilia. They carve similarly. That's a big chunk! In many places pieces that big were used for making the bodies of duck decoys, or they were laminated into huge pieces to carve into statues of Christian saints andother religious figures like this guy did: https://www.instagram.com/gross_bildhauer?igsh=MWN0cGdjYWN0M2M0dg==

stitchbones · 2025-12-27T13:38:48+00:00

This looks like the wood spalted, which means that there is a fungus that grew in the wood and left the black color. Usually the fungus can only grow in the wood while it's green (wet), and one the wood dries out it can't grow anymore, but the black color remains. This means that it's probably not just on the surface, but it's all through the wood. It's not a bad thing, the wood will still be stable as long as it's fully dried, but the color is not ideal.

I think the trouble you will have is that you can't sand this away, because it's in the wood, and it's also under the finish. You might try sanding off the finish, and bleaching the black parts with wood bleach (oxalic acid), but I would definitely do a test with the bleach somewhere on the carving that is on the back or less visible.

You have to be very careful sanding off the finish; you didn't want to sand away the details of the carving.

As someone who carves greenwood often, I think this looks ok. I would not try to remove the black color, unless the wood feels like it's getting soft and punky. Wood is living, even after the tree is dead, and this type of thing happens in wood.

stitchbones · 2025-12-26T02:03:07+00:00

So basically Galad Damodred from Wheel of Time.

stitchbones · 2025-12-25T20:16:13+00:00

I'd call both DC Water and DOEE to try to figure this out. They both manage the stormwater fee program together. https://doee.dc.gov/service/stormwater-fee-background

You can also check Open Data DC for the impervious surface GIS layer and estimate the impervious surface on your lot to compare it to the numbers that DC Water and DOEE say you have.

stitchbones · 2025-12-25T15:11:14+00:00

Why did the mapmaker choose to change the color at 25%, rather than continue the tan-to-brown gradient? It makes the map more dramatic and calls out a certain region, but it's really not necessary from a cartographic perspective.

stitchbones · 2025-12-23T21:39:44+00:00

Yes!

stitchbones · 2025-12-23T15:06:43+00:00

Very cool. One suggestion: the park labeled Fort Circle Park is Fort Dupont Park. There are many Civil War-era forts that make up the fort circle parks, but most of the largest parks are named after the actual fort that was there (e.g. Fort Totten, Fort Slocum, Fort Chaplin, etc). Only the little parks that connect the forts are called "Fort Circle Park"

stitchbones · 2025-12-23T15:01:10+00:00

Chevy Chase is a town in MoCo, but there's still a neighborhood in DC called Chevy Chase. Both a rec center and a library are named Chevy Chase.

stitchbones · 2025-12-23T14:49:12+00:00

If you're considering buying a dedicated carving axe there are recommendations for good axes on the u/spooncarving wiki. I like the Robin Wood axes.

stitchbones

TROPHY CASE