December 15, 2004

• Up On the Roof

  Yesterday,
  I climbed onto the roof as Doug slept.  I would have left it for
  him, but it was looking as if he would sleep through the daylight
  hours, so as I noticed the sun starting to get lower in the sky about 1
  PM, I grabbed the Mutt® and climbed the ladder.

  I had noticed that smoke was coming out of the woodstove when I opened
  the door, instead of going up the chimney.  That could only mean a
  creosote clog in the stovepipe.  A thorough cleaning is not a
  one-person job, so I was just going to take the Mutt® up there and
  break through the clog.

  The clogged area proved to be below the roofline and I had to lower the
  tool down into the stovepipe for the full length of its handle. 
  This left me with ugly black smears of soot and creosote on my formerly
  clean fleece-lined leather gloves.  I guess they had to get broken
  in sometime, but now I no longer have a clean pair of warm gloves.

  I poked around in there just long enough to clear the pipe, then
  started taking pictures.  It’s the same old view from my roof that
  I’ve shown you in all seasons already, same old blue sky, same trees
  except for the missing three that Charley cut down this fall:  two
  sick, dying poplars that were leaning over the trailer and a
  beetle-killed spruce in the front yard.

  The
  lighting was nice though.  I think it was worth taking the camera
  up there.  As I was shooting the view to the east toward the
  Talkeetna Mountains (right, with the mountains almost lost in the haze
  beneath that cloud on the horizon) Doug stepped out into the yard and
  called up to me, “Mom… what are you doing?”  I told him I was
  taking pictures, then said there was new snow up there to be shoveled
  off after breakfast.

  Yesterday evening when I opened the stove to put in some more wood, the
  surge of flame ignited the creosote I had knocked down onto the baffle
  at the top of the firebox, and we had a nice hot creosote fire for a
  few hours.  What with Doug heating water in the kitchen to do
  dishes, the temp in there got up to 80°F, briefly.  It was about
  67°F in the living room.

  It had not been a lot of creosote, so the metal of the stove and
  stovepipe didn’t get glowing hot this time.  As the creosote
  burned I used the handy rock hammer that has been the “fireplace poker”
  ever since Mark lived here, to knock down more of the accumulation from
  the stovepipe.  That kept the fire small and confined to the
  baffle at the top of the stove. 

  No flames climbing up the pipe and blazing out the top this time. 
  Just a nice, safe creosote fire that got rid of most of the existing
  accumulation so I won’t have to clean the stovepipe again for a
  while.  Now there’s an accumulation of ash and supposedly some
  unburned creosote chips and flakes on the baffle, blocking the flow of
  smoke.  The next step is to let the fire burn low and then use my
  bent coat hanger tool to scrape the ash down into the firebox. 
  That job is going to let some smoke out into the house, but after it’s
  done there’s a fairly good chance that the stove will draw properly for
  another month or two.

  ---

  Backwards is how I often do things.  I was born butt-first, and
  Liz Dexia is my lifelong friend.  Much of the planning that goes
  into whatever I do gets done while I’m in the process of doing whatever
  it is.  My twelve days of Christmas is no exception to that. 
  I had a few things about Christmas I wanted to share, and just assumed
  I could make it fit into twelve blogs.  I have no outline. 
  It’s all pretty much free-form thus far.   Having started out
  with day one, I’m now switching to a countdown format for the rest of
  the series.

  Today my plan is to get in some recipes, doing that early-on in case
  anyone wants to try them for their holiday treats.  Along with the
  recipes, I intend to do some reminiscing about Christmas sweets in
  general, since reminiscence is the only contact I have with candy and
  cookies at this stage of my life.  I went on a web search for some
  pictures to illustrate my sweets blog, and found a couple of pictures
  that don’t really fit the format, but are too sweet not to share.

   **OMG!  Don’t look, boys and girls.  This is adult fare.**

  The first one, I found under “fruitcake”
  

  …and this next one came up when I searched for “frango”.
  

  • 5:47 pm
  • 3 Comments