A Weekend of Hard Work

Alex and I had a weekend of hard work on the yurt.  One thing I have learned is that working outside (or even worse in the greenhouse) when it is in the mid 90's is not fun and not really conducive to quality work.  Regardless we made lots of progress and here are the pictures to prove it!

Alex working hard starting to plan the wood for the Center Ring

Doesn't he look just dashing?

A few more action shots, each of those boards is
about 10 feet long and he has 5 of them that he is working with

Why yes, that is a Green house we have been working in. 
The plants are really thriving on the hot humid conditions,
Alex and I however are not thriving

He is focusing really hard.
 One nice thing is that all the shavings that came off the
wood will be perfect for our toilet!

Before and After shots of the wood. 
The planer really did some amazing things to the wood,
 it actually looks like what you would buy at a store now!

The next step is to trim the edges to make sure that each board is square

You might not consider this dangerous,
but there is a family of wasps that lives
in the guide bar of the saw.
 Needless to say they don't like all the action.

Alex preserved and actually only got stung by one small honey bee.

I worked hard as usual. 
The book in my hand is Overbite by Meg Cabot,
a new vampire novel.

Sometimes I sit by the wood just to make it look
 like I am working on this yurt too.

Alex took one whole picture of me working on Sunday.
 I started sewing the fabric and window screens on. 
It is going well except I am going to need at least another five spools
of thread and like 10 more needles. 
Apparently punching through multiple layers of coated canvas
and fiberglass dulls the needle on my sewing machine exceptionally fast!

While I sewed Alex put together a test octagon of what the roof ring will look like. 

He is so proud that everything fit together
and he could now start working on the big "real" pieces of wood. 

By the end of the weekend Alex had cut about half of the pieces for the roof ring.  The next step for him is to finish cutting all of the pieces and then laminate the whole shebang.  Once it is good and hard he needs to cut the outside edges into a circle and notch the ring to insert the ceiling beams. 

I will be sewing dutifully every night after work trying to get the walls done.  Are plan is to set up the yurt probably first on the pond house frame and then build a second frame between Scott and Shawns house where the yurt will live.  It is pretty amazing to see everything coming together.  It is also pretty amazing to finally be useful in this building progress.  So far it has all been wood work which Alex has done while I am at work at the library to unfortunately I still haven't learned to use any of the power tools such as the saw mill :(  Where the yurt will be living already has a natural clearing but Alex and I will take out some maple and pine trees so that we will be able to have some south facing sunlight and a slightly larger opening.  I want to plant roses and poppies all around the yurt, I think that will look pretty kick ass. 

Also this weekend we have had success at the community garden.  Alex and I harvested our first ever Zucchini and it looks beautiful.  Hopefully next week Flossie can take a bike trip to the garden with us and she can investigate a bit. 

That is the update for now, more pictures later as things continue moving along. 

-Anna