Some stuff we did last month

In November, we took a trip to Antelope Island, on the Great Salt Lake.  

Tim decided to grow a mustache, as part of a fund raiser for work.  I think he looked really scary.  The mustache is gone now.

We purchased and put together a compost bin, as we've been wanting to make our own dirt for some time now.  Yay dirt.

One of the doorknobs broke going into the garage, so we replaced all three with shiny new ones that don't stick and actually use the same key.

I sewed mittens.  Here is the deal.  When you bike to work in the winter, it gets pretty chilly on the hands. I've figured out exactly what those chilly hands need.  First, they need a mitten, not a glove, so that the fingers can warm each other, rather than be insulated against each other.  Second, they need a warm fleece layer, to keep them snug.  Finally, they need a nylon windbreaker layer.  I've been looking all over for these mittens.  A couple of years ago I found something almost right in a boutique in Philadelphia.  However, the outer layer was knit wool rather than nylon, and the wind cuts right through them.  So finally I made my own.

Alas, I was inventing the pattern as I went along, and the outer nylon layer was a little too snug on my big bear hands.  So these mittens went to Jonathan, and I will try again.

We installed a new light in the bathroom.  When I say "we", I mean that I bought the light, read the instructions, watched someone else install a light on YouTube, brought in the ladder, pulled off the cover hiding the bare wires, and stared at the mass of colored wires in there.  On YouTube, they said I was supposed to expect one black and one white, and maybe a copper ground wire.  But we had four white, four black, a red, and a copper.

I consulted with Tim.  He pulled out our little wire tester to detect hot wires, had me run back and forth to the circuit breaker downstairs for about an hour, and finally figured out that the black and white wires should be left alone, the red wire was the one that would connect the light to the switch, but it needed to be reconnected at the switch....  Anyway, it was an interesting project.  But the result looks better than our camera makes it out to be.

That's all.