A fantastic movie pick! Makes my all time top 10!

“Lars and the Real Girl”.
A wonderfully thought out, patiently drawn movie plot.
I’d recommend this to anyone… so I’m recommending it to you.
The movie is slightly uncomfortable, at times sad, funny, touching, insightful, and ultimately heartwarming.
I liken the edgy, cringey feel of the “Lars” situation to the movie “Little Miss Sunshine”, where “normal life” is really just what we live with, and choose to embrace.
I don’t think you will be disappointed.
One favorite part for me… (no spoiler here)… Is when Bianca (Lars’ “girlfriend”) gets a clothing store job at the mall, presumably (by extension) as a mannequin…

Great weekend, seafood boil, and the Barrelhouse Mamas…

Marie and I were invited to a seafood boil this weekend.
Being from the west coast, I have never had the pleasure of partaking in a “boil”.
Our hosts Amy Parker, Rick Ramsey, Todd Bailey, along with Flo and Dean Carlisle put on quite a spread in Old Fort North Carolina.
24 feet of folding tables covered in butcher paper, then piled up with boiled shrimp, mussels,clams, sausage, corn, chicken, and yukon gold potatoes. The food was bay spicy and fabulous, and about twice as much as 35 people could eat. Amy, Flo and Dean had knocked it out of the park again!
Flo and Dean’s house and acreage was charming, and their deck was a perfect setting for what was to come.
The dessert was treat of a lifetime!
The Barrelhouse Mamas played two intimate sets live, while we watched the moon come up. Their harmonies were beautiful. Their musicianship was heart warming. Their easy going nature and wonderful voices were truly a gift to us all. They also played one of my favorite songs… “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen.
If you want to check them out… visit their website link , you can also watch this Youtube video… It is 8 plus minutes, but worth the time.
The Barrelhouse Mamas are also playing at Asheville’s Grey Eagle on May 16th. If you get a chance to see them, they are truly not to be missed… Here’s a link to the Grey Eagle Calendar page.
Maybe see you there!

The fence project… a challenge… turned out beautifully!

Beth and Jordan’s design was challenging…
We had 100 1×4’s to cut. 200 short pieces of pipe to cut.
80 feet of 5/8″ all thread to cut.
Each 1×4 part had 4 counter sink holes to retain the pipe sections. A through bore to accept the all thread.
We were crossing our fingers that everything would come together properly.
It appears that it did!
Cheers to the designers for putting us to the challenge.
The outcome was worth the head scratching!
Beth and Jordan’s new side yard hang out.

Making lemonade…. out of lemons.

I am working on a project with my buddy Jim Ojamaa for the lovely and talented Beth Benischek here in Asheville ,NC.

Beth and her hubby Jordan Bates (see his musings in my blog links area) have designed a fence to make the ugly house next door to them disappear.

Jim and I took on the job with the knowledge that the materials required included 200) 2 1/2 inch long, 1 3/8 inch diameter, steel pipe sections.
These pipe sections will stack on treated 1×4 fence elements to create a stacked blind “look”.

I will post pictures of the completed project when available.

We thought dry or cold cut off saws were rentable locally… really the only way to cut so many small lengths when “doing it yourself”. We were wrong…

It was looking like our only option was to buy a $349 dry saw from Northern Tool.

There goes the wages for the job…..

Then we brewed up a novel idea!

We trapped my steel cutting circular saw on a board at 90 degrees to a stop.
Yes I drilled holes in the base plate of my saw.
I built a fence out of wood.
Then used the saw’s blade depth extension as my chop armature….loosened the retaining screw, and carefully let the blade drop through the steel tube… Voila!
The entire cutting job took me only a few hours, and other than mind numbing repetition…. it worked like a charm!
The drill bit in the middle of things is my 2 1/2″ tube length stop.
Simple pleasures, throwing creativity, instead of money at problems!
Cool!
Here are some photos of the set up.

Credit where credit is more than due…..

I am embarking on a new career, as I have loosely outlined here.

I am 50 years old and finally know what I want to do, if… I mean, when, I grow up.

I am outlining my new directions in my Billy Sproul Blog and my Fab-Slab Blog.

This brings me to a huge support factor in my new directions…. My lovely and incredibly hard working wife Marie Morris.



She has come to Asheville North Carolina, reinvented her career after 30 years in the legal, public relations, and non profit sectors.

She has excelled at everything she has touched.

I can tell you very easily what has made her sucessful at what she does.

She is determined, detail oriented, friendly, knowledgeable, professional, and she truly cares about her clients.

As for me… Marie not only supports my ideas,dreams, and directions, but she puts up with me 24-7!

So if she can put up with my grumpy troll-ish behavior for 14 years… She can handle just about anything!

Marie has her own website relating to Asheville North Carolina real estate, her listings, services, and insights.

You can check her Asheville real estate site out by clicking here!

 

Fab/Slab Blog fired up…

I am spinning off the metal design/fabrication, concrete casting posts to a new blog.

They will live at FAB-SLAB BLOG

I have also registered the domain name www.fab-slab.com to post pictures of projects etc.

I wanted to keep the production things separate from the art sculpture things….

I find them both interesting, but possibly for only my own sensibility, I wanted to clarify a line of demarcation.

The blog site has just been created, so it will be a few days before I can settle in.

Lamb Tagine

So I was watching a episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.
He was eating his way through North Africa…
The next day, I started craving lamb with fruit and sweet spices, slow cooked in a clay pot.
It’s a bit like barbeque in that, the more you visualize the slow cooking process,the smells, the anticipation, the more your mouth waters.
My apologies to you vegetarians….
I bought a leg of lamb, some dried apricots, raisins, sliced almonds,onions, and italian parsley.
I cubed and browned the lamb.
Threw the whole mess together with fresh nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, salt, pepper, and a bit of honey.
I let it cook for a couple of hours and this is what it looked like….



It was very good, it probably smelled better than it tasted, and tasted better than it looks in this picture!
Of course it was even better the next day!
Here is my theory as to why that is…
I think that while you are cooking meats, the moisture is always leaving them (drying out).
When you allow them to start cooling in liquid, the meat reconstitutes some of it’s moisture by reclaiming it from the spicy pot juices. Reverse osmosis?
That is why many slow cooked stewy dishes are better on day two. (IMHO)
Oh… of course this dish is eaten over a bed of couscous! 

I posted new photos of my work… check my Flickr.com site!

My friend Lynne Harty is a professional photographer.
She and I did a photo session using a few of my pieces.
She does fantastic work (please check it out on her website link on this page).
I am indebted to her great skills, her great eye for light and composition, and her patience with me. She makes my work look super… if I don’t say so myself!
Please click my Flickr.com link on the right side of this page to see my new “stuff”.  

Ok, I’ll stop with the concrete updates…

I just bought a domain name. I’m calling my steel production and custom furniture/ concrete tops venture “Fab-Slab”. I will try to confine my obsession to that website and talk about less obsessive things here.I am making a tagine lamb dish tonight, it smells good. I will tell you how it went and it’s genesis after I sample it. More later…… 

Ok , I was wrong…. You can get there from anywhere!

I took a break from my apparent failure.
I revisited and put the gloves back on.
 I pushed “it” (the offensive green) back with some more dark brown Bri-wax .
They look great now… Dark yes, moody yes, not for everybody?
Yes…..They now appear “historic”, as if  dipped in a glaze of asphalt.Kind of cool!


As an aside…Please check out my blogroll and links area…Some inspired art/ jewelry/architecture links there…