I was poking through my audio plugins and discovered that somehow I had installed Cardinal Synth. It’s a “free and open-source virtual modular synthesizer plugin”. It acts like a virtual synth rack and has hundreds of built-in modules to arrange however you want. In this one plugin there’s a whole world to explore!

So I started exploring. I know only the basics of building synths but was able to come up with this:

It looks complex but that’s the magic of it, you build one thing at a time and just patch ins and outs. Before long you have created a monster. This whole thing uses about 5% of my processor. I ran it all night just for fun, no memory leaks or performance hiccups.

What does it do, you might ask? It’s an ambient music and ocean sound generator. Here’s some sample audio of what it does forever:

Not perfect, but for a first effort I’m proud of it. I’ve learned a bit about VCOs, VCAs, and oscillators – far more than I would have if I had to buy all this stuff! The only thing that isn’t actually generated is the seagulls (you did hear the seagulls, right?).

I know a ton of you were asking about how my archery practice was going. And by “a ton” I mean “not one”. But still, I’ve made a short video of my progress. I keep tweaking my technique slightly with new information, and each change requires practice. I noticed that in the video I’m looking at every single arrow, and I’ve stopped doing this to rely less on sight and more on the feel of the nocks.

I’ll be working more on it this winter. I practice indoors at close range with cardboard boxes. This does nothing for accuracy or power, but is conducive to speed practice!

For the last two years or so I tried to get modern and use a camera from a smart phone. I thought its portable nature would allow me to bring it more frequently and capture more photos. However, it seemed to be the opposite. Plus, it smoothed out everyone’s faces and imperfections and that feature could not be turned off. Now, I am reunited with my point and shoot, my beloved find from the dump, and it feels good to take pictures again with a camera of weight and substance! Feels good to capture some nice pics again. 🙂

We’ve also been getting back into the woods for walks and exploring. A curious sight is all the GREEN leaves that have fallen. Have the trees just given up? They have fallen without turning color, pretty unusual.

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The type of family life we have is becoming rare these days. We homeschool, love spending time with each other, have a happy marriage, and each of us has several hobbies. We are not that “productive” in an economic or worldly sense – we have zero debt (and therefore pay no interest), don’t buy a lot, and don’t work full-time.

But we are blessed and thankful. Not because we deserve it, but because God “richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment”. We are simultaneously under the poverty level and exceedingly rich, because we have what the rich want and cannot get.

We are rather “productive” in our own way. If all wives were housewives like Jill, our country would see a renaissance of delicious, healthy, home-cooked food (and better education than the public schools). And if husbands worked less at corporate jobs and more at their hobbies, perhaps we’d see more innovation and fine craftsmanship come out of homes everywhere.

But I digress; this wasn’t meant to be a discourse on family life 🙂 Here’s some things we’ve enjoyed making in the past few months.

Homemade “mounds”, these are way better than the store version. Dark chocolate shell over coconut filling. Delicious.

Fruit leather, like the “fruit roll-ups” we ate as kids. These are 100% fruit (unlike the originals) and can be made with almost any kind of fruit. The ones in the picture are peach. Chewy and good.

Fudge is tricky to master. This particular batch is perfect, one of my go-to desserts.

Made from scratch, like most of our food, this is homemade “cracklin oat bran”. It’s not in a baked “O” shape but it tastes better, and has no artificial flavors. I can eat large bowls of this stuff, and it doesn’t need sweetening.

After years of making bread, Jill has finally stumbled on a recipe for the perfect white bread. It’s far better than the store, especially hot out of the oven with melted butter. Light and fluffy and even good for days, with no preservatives.

This past week Alice and Jill made butter. It’s delicious and we can’t tell a difference from store butter. The second batch was made just now. We intend to make all our butter from now on, Alice says it’s easy!

Alice and I made these together. They came out so good. The second time we dunked them in a boiling solution of baking soda and water – that is the secret to delicious soft pretzels. I like slathering them with spicy mustard.

Alice made these homemade “donuts” using a makeshift deep fryer. She’s become quite the cook, I do not know any girls her age who can make just about anything in the kitchen.

Jill borrowed a dehydrator from our friends, this delicious beef jerky went quick.

On the left, a lavender-scented true “castile” soap (100% saponified olive oil). On the right, a coconut oil soap with 20% superfat and rosemary/clary sage blend of essential oils.

My latest batch of strawberry wine, bottled today. These 23 bottles of wine took 18 pounds of strawberries and 10 pounds of sugar to make, but it’s amazing. Wine in its purest form – no sulfites or flavors – just fermented fruit.

Since I now have so much homemade wine, I’ve been making it into brandy. Above are my masterpieces, I’m rather proud of them. Strawberry, peach, and grape brandies from fine homemade wines. Aged in toasted white oak. No preservatives, flavors, or colors. They taste amazing.

Not my first foray into woodworking, but my first major furniture project. I met a guy at the dump getting rid of some nice 2×4 because he was moving, so I took it home and looked up some project designs.

I borrowed some tools to make this happen – a table saw from my nephew, a shop vac and belt sander from my brother-in-law. The top is made from cheap pallet wood my nephew was going to throw away. Alice and I trimmed, sanded, and glued it together to make a nice seat. She had fun sanding and using my small circular saw.

The joinery is all dowels, which was quite time consuming since I don’t have a dowel jig. A lot of the dowel holes were imprecise, so some pieces fit together badly. But woodworking seems to be largely damage control – making mistakes and imperfection work for you.

The end result feels sturdy, and with a ton of sanding it’s not even that badly aligned. It’s something we can all enjoy. Jill’s using it as I write this for quilting!