Good morning.  Our long cool  high desert springtime continues, with the addition of several days of welcome rain.  Green emerges slowly as the dominant color as the last of the trees leaf out and winter-dormant native grasses come back to life.

Various projects continue, and I'll report on them someday soon, but right now we are here,  once again, to discuss repairs and improvements on Kossak homes, YOUR homes, and perhaps have some information, advice and encouragement you might find useful.  We'll see who among our ad hoc cadre of construction professionals and gifted amateurs shows up.

If you have an issue, bring it on and we'll try to save you some bucks and aggro.  Or, show us what you have been working on.

WAYWO is a weekly series - What Are You Working On - for all things creative and crafty.  

Please share what you are working on, and post the pictures if you have them.  

I promised a Cake Decorating Lesson, but alas, that diary is not finished.  I will share slices of cake though, from the final birthday cake, and share the finished picture.  

Good morning. The shop is open, coffee is on;  Spring is fully sprung here on the high desert and my world out here has turned green.  The huge ancient cottonwoods, last to emerge from dormancy are putting out their first leaves, following the  invader Asian elms and olives and the poplars.

On my own place here, I have had a small crew doing a mud plaster job on my outbuildings: shop, wellhouse and chickencoop, and this weekend I hope to get the door and the window in to the East wall so the plaster can be trimmed out around them.  We mix the mud from local soils, and it costs me, at local rates, about 50  cents a Sq Ft for the labor to trowel it on the walls, both adobe and straw bales.

No, not this kind - we're in a different kind of war here. And it starts on May 9.

The war is conducted with these sticks and some very fine and beautiful string ... er, yarn.

Yes, it's time for SOCK WARS III!!!

Good Morning, and welcome.  The shop is open and there's coffee on the stove.  We gather on Saturday mornings to discuss home repairs and/or improvements, in hopes that you might find help, advice or encouragement to tackle distractions of this nature that keep you from your True Appointed Role in Life, the election of more (and better) Democrats.

Hard to keep that focus if there's a faucet dripping in your background or your roof is dripping on your head.

We are big on empowerment; YOU CAN do a lot of things yourself, and spare yourself the expense and frustration of having to hire professional to solve what might be a minor problem if you have a little insight from our ad hoc cadre of construction professionals and gifted amateurs.

There's not much over the fold, but...

We've been enjoying our weekly WAYWO chats for a while now. Well, except when my real life intervenes (or my increasingly spongy brain forgets) and I don't post it like I should. Therefore, I'd like to open WAYWO to a rotating schedule of hosts.

I've made a Gmail calendar for the rotating hosts' reference. Please message me through the Yahoo! WAYWO Group if you'd like to host. If you are not already a member (and you want to host) you must join to send messages.

Now, housekeeping done for the time being ... Let's talk about what we're working on!

Good morning.  The door is open and there's coffee brewing.

Saturday morning community-fest and at this booth we discuss home repair/improvement crises and projects.  Got a leaky faucet, or a gurgling toilet? Our ad hoc cadre of construction professionals and gifted amateurs has got info, advice and even inspiration to help you out.

Empowerment R us.  Welcome

Good Morning, once again.

Amazingly, I am writing this the night before, and I have a few more photos of progress on the adobe house I am building.  Make the jump to view them.

This is, as usual, the Saturday morning hangout for the DIY builder/project types amongst the Kossians, where we share our home improvement/construction projects and try to answer questions that arise from other Kossians who may have woken up with a dripping faucet or stopped up toilet or some other catastrophe that might be interfering with our True Goal In Life, the election of more, and, hopefully, better Democrats to public office.

Here is the teaser...

In the late 1980s, GM launched the "Not Your Father's Oldmobile" campaign in an effort to revive interest in the brand. The Olds is now defunct, but the tagline lives on in various forms, pushing the idea that old is bad, new is better and that the previous generations are hopelessly square.

At the same time, though, PBS launched a series of reality programs that documented modern families' attempts to live as their forbears might have -- in a frontier house, or in the 1900 house.And you know what? It's hard! Those old folks lived differently than we do and had to invent their own solutions to their particular problems. Perhaps there's a lesson here about learning from the old ways.

Good Morning.

Low bandwidth edition today, although progress continues on the adobe houses as split-cedar latillas are being installed in the living room, and regular peeled latillas are going onto the hand hewn squared timbers that support the kitchen ceiling.  The split cedar is bright red, and aromatic, and when completed will be a stunning piece of visual texture.  I should be able to show that next week.

Meanwhile, grab a cup of whatever and pull up around the fire (yes, I made a fire this morning, as we had a quick spring snowstorm yesterday and this morning it is frosty and cold, just in time to nip the flowering apricott and peach trees that have ventured forth too soon.

Bring us your projects, dreams or problems concerning your house and keeping it up and humming. Every week, it seems, we actually do help someone out with advice and encouragement, because they spoke up.

A lot of stuff around the house is doable, and doesn't require the services of expensive professionals to make right.

Empowerment is a political act.  You can do it.

All things crafty!  Many mediums - hard, soft, or combinations.  

This is an emergency substitution, so pretty thin.  Still longer than about half the diaries I've seen this week though ;-)

So Share:  Write!  Post pix if you've got them or ask for help if you don't know how!

Good Morning, and welcome. I didn't make a fire this morning, but there's coffee on. For those of you new to this, we meet and talk about fixing our houses/homes, ask for and share advice on various "how to do it" topics ranging from  dripping faucets to adding on a room, or about our own projects or problems.

We do empowerment:  you can do this. We might be able to help.

From time to time I have shared the progress on an adobe house I am building and this week have some more photos you may enjoy, over the fold.

A lot of Kossacks will have occasion - for a rally, an academic degree, a conference or visiting friends - to visit Washington, DC.  I certainly hope that if you visit, you have a good time and that you use Metro whenever possible to get around.  The system, while not perfect, is excellent.  However, not everyone who uses Metro thinks it through, knows its peculiarities or limits or, frankly, ever thought to give a damn about it.  Commuters who need their paycheck think about it a LOT.

This is designed to help you a) get where you are going quickly and b) not foul up the commutes of people who work insane hours to feed their children, often commuting by three or more vehicles each way.  

My commute is 50 miles and my work day is 10 hours on the clock; that's 14.5 hours daily.  In my house of four, I am the sole paycheck.  If it appears that I have a nasty attitude about people who disrespect the system or wreck its efficiency with their misuse of the service, it's because two disabled children await me at the end of the day, and if you don't jam my tightly-scheduled commute or my job clock, I can both earn all of my pay and kiss my kids goodnight.  I am not unusual; the Metro has 250,000 "me's" on it daily.

Have a safe trip.

Yep, I'm back. Didja miss me?

We've been across the country and back, and have seen a lot of beautiful countryside, and we've met a lot of friendly people. But, I must say, it's good to be back home.

I had hoped to get my act together enough to upload some pictures to Photobucket for you, but, alas, I am a slacker. So, no photos this week. I'll try for next time.

Good Morning.

Posting on the fly here, but these stone columns were a real treat to work with.  The owners had scrounged them out of someplace years ago and they had been sitting around in storage until this week.

Good Morning.  The shop is open

Bring your projects and problems and join us in talking about our houses and keeping them repaired and pleasing.

Thanks to borkitekt for posting the diary last week, as I was otherwise occupied.  I don't have an informative essay for today, but I'll be here for a couple of hours with whatever advice and/or encouragement may become needed.

This will be a short diary, and if because of that it violates Daily Kos guidelines, I pre-emptively apologize. I don't have alot to offer on the subject, but this might help a few people.

I haven't seen a WAYWO for two weeks!  Not since monkeybiz talked about 93% problems.

Our fearless leader, emerald maiden, is in the middle of a move.  

So I wanted to give us a place to chat and share, a refuge in the storm.  Please post pix of the stuff.

So, What Are You Working On ?  Textiles, ceramics and glass and polymers - home improvement, anything DIY, you are all welcome here.