Remember when recently I wrote about being able to smell cedar in the air because of a log processing plant nearby? (I used the term log processing plant because I really didn´t know what they did.) Well this sawmill has been processing cedar the entire 12 plus years I lived here and today it was time learn about it.
It started this morning as I noticed a barge full of red cedar being unloaded in the inlet. Sure I see the logs floating around in their corrals all the time (see the right side of the photo above), but a barge of logs was something new. (In my defense, this work´s done during business hours and until last fall I wasn´t around to see it. However, that doesn´t explain away the last year.) Anyway, I watched as a flat boat with a crane rushed up to the logs and started unloading them. There was a smaller tug in the area apparently ready to line the logs up to be corralled. This went on for hours. (Yes, here at the Jan Paul home things can get really exciting. Watching logs being unloaded is so much more fun than watching paint dry.)
All this activity made me wonder about the mill, what it does and how it does it. After spending some time on Google I had the start to some answers. The name of the plant is Flavelle Sawmill and it has be working with logs since 1905 at its current location. It closed twice, 1966-1995 and 1998-2000. It currently has between 60-80 employees, makes revenues over $10 million per year and pays annual taxes over $1.5 million. Most interesting to me was how these logs are transformed into cedar shingles. This video makes the process pretty clear, even though it is not shot at my local mill. Those jobs at the Flavelle Sawmill are not the typical type of jobs; this is physical, dangerous work done in noisy surroundings with sharp equipment, as the video shows.
This mill site is right on the waterfront as you can see above making it a prime target for developers. Apparently there is interest as I found a developer´s website describing their intention is to ¨knit the community back together and provide public access to the oceanfront.¨ Isn´t that a truly altruistic goal? What it fails to mention is in this rather small website is the one or two 4-12 storey buildings it plans for the 34 acre lot. When I moved here 12 years ago there were only two high rise buildings to be seen from my deck. Today I counted 22 and I know my vantage doesn´t allow me to see all the new construction. Apparently there has been much discussion about this change while I was away this summer. Progress comes when public transportation aligns. This site is only a few blocks from one of the new Skytrain stops.
After my brief look at my own surroundings, I moved to looking for knitting news and found this post on Knitting Paradise.
Curious I clicked and found plenty of interesting knittery things. There is now a new read for me each month since I subscribed to get the newsletter which includes a list of all discontinued yarns and another of brand new yarns. All good stuff to know.
Perhaps you´ll find something of knitting interest in the eleven newsletters currently on the site. I particularly enjoyed the article about knowing the twist of your yarn found in the January 2015 newsletter. (Although that article about natural wool gave me a whole new perspective regarding superwash wool.) The previous article offered a reasonable explanation why the yarn with a cabled or crepe construction or twist I was using last year to knit a cabled sweater didn´t work quite the way it should. That sweater will be coming out now since I learned the problem with the knitting has to do with the yarn´s twist and not my skills in knitting.
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| The crane is tucked into the left side of the log stack |
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| This shows the tug near the center and another in the upper left-hand corner. Note how neatly everything is lined up on the far right. |
All this activity made me wonder about the mill, what it does and how it does it. After spending some time on Google I had the start to some answers. The name of the plant is Flavelle Sawmill and it has be working with logs since 1905 at its current location. It closed twice, 1966-1995 and 1998-2000. It currently has between 60-80 employees, makes revenues over $10 million per year and pays annual taxes over $1.5 million. Most interesting to me was how these logs are transformed into cedar shingles. This video makes the process pretty clear, even though it is not shot at my local mill. Those jobs at the Flavelle Sawmill are not the typical type of jobs; this is physical, dangerous work done in noisy surroundings with sharp equipment, as the video shows.
 |
| A photo from the Flavelle website |
This mill site is right on the waterfront as you can see above making it a prime target for developers. Apparently there is interest as I found a developer´s website describing their intention is to ¨knit the community back together and provide public access to the oceanfront.¨ Isn´t that a truly altruistic goal? What it fails to mention is in this rather small website is the one or two 4-12 storey buildings it plans for the 34 acre lot. When I moved here 12 years ago there were only two high rise buildings to be seen from my deck. Today I counted 22 and I know my vantage doesn´t allow me to see all the new construction. Apparently there has been much discussion about this change while I was away this summer. Progress comes when public transportation aligns. This site is only a few blocks from one of the new Skytrain stops.
After my brief look at my own surroundings, I moved to looking for knitting news and found this post on Knitting Paradise.
Want to know why you should be knitting with natural wool not treated wool? Check this out
http://yarnsub.com/articles/news/2015/09Curious I clicked and found plenty of interesting knittery things. There is now a new read for me each month since I subscribed to get the newsletter which includes a list of all discontinued yarns and another of brand new yarns. All good stuff to know.
Perhaps you´ll find something of knitting interest in the eleven newsletters currently on the site. I particularly enjoyed the article about knowing the twist of your yarn found in the January 2015 newsletter. (Although that article about natural wool gave me a whole new perspective regarding superwash wool.) The previous article offered a reasonable explanation why the yarn with a cabled or crepe construction or twist I was using last year to knit a cabled sweater didn´t work quite the way it should. That sweater will be coming out now since I learned the problem with the knitting has to do with the yarn´s twist and not my skills in knitting.
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| A diagram from Yarn Sub regarding yarn twist |
It is indeed a privilege to have time to follow an interest or curiosity. There seems to be so much more to learn and so little time. Excuse me, there are more things to find out about today before Knit Night begins.
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