Christmas is creeping up. Naturally I had the decorations up within a few days of Thanksgiving being over. There are 650 lights on this tree. Daytime picture does not do it justice. Each 50 has it's own flasher. It is an ever changing light show. It is fake. It had permanent white lights. I have snips and ambition. It has multi-colored lights now.

 I have since changed out the angels lights. Vivian has had it many years. It had not been lit up in a long time. I got it going. The other night I reached up to check it. Found the old bulbs had burnt holes in the plastic base. Touched bulb and burnt my finger. Maybe that is one of the reasons for all the fires you heard about at one time. I ended up buying a short string of lights. Changed the last 8-10 bulbs to the yellow/gold ones and strung those into the angle. This tree picture is the old clear lights. Angel is now gold and goes much better with the tree.

 So you know I don't sit still very well. Yes....I have been working on projects.  This is an oil painting I found at Goodwill for under $3. It was in perfect condition so I decided it was the bargain of the day.

I took it home and built a frame out of scraps I had in the garage.

It took longer for the "stone finish" paint to dry than it took to build the frame.

No....that was not my only project this week. I had been planning a build-in sewing table for Vivian. I started it last week. I may have mentioned it last post. I finally figured out how I wanted to do it.

The mechanism that locks the folding leaf up was the most difficult to figure out. It had to be simple, strong and most important. Not metal.

By the time I had the rest of the table pieces ready to go, I had a plan.

You will notice the end of slotted piece. I put in a notch that drops over bolt as leaf is pulled out. Locking knob will not have to be over-tightened to hold leaf up. Just tight enough to keep notch from slipping off the bolt.

 Vivian seems as pleased with it as I am. A corner that had no purpose turned into a place where she can keep machine ready to use. It is quite solid. All oak except the slotted arm and the trim around white board is one inch thick. I used dovetails for frame. I bought a dovetail jig to use when building dorade boxes for Mary Lee. This was a good time to try it out.

 This was my first practice with pine scraps before I built sewing table frame

The hole next to dovetail below is screw hole from fastening it to wall. I took picture when I was putting varnish on it.

A friend in Wilmington said he would supply the mahogany if I would also build him some dorade boxes. Good plan. I will build a couple out of pine first for practice.

Of course Vivian had to sit at the sewing table to see how it "fit".

 She has had a shirt pinned and cut out for a while. She is just real busy and needs a machine set up so she can use it more readily. Got one!!!

So last but not least. Therapy. It takes a lot of effort to get ligaments to move again on a guy my size. Scott(therapist) seems up to the task.

It is painful...but I can already feel the difference this session made. Vivian goes to sessions with me on Saturdays. She takes the pictures.

So there you have it. Not everything that happened since the last post, but the highlights.

I hope everyone is gearing up for a great Christmas!!!