Yesterday Odetta and I were building tiny towers with her wooden blocks. Stacking and restacking in a hurry to build them before Roya who is 9 months old could come and knock them over. I singled out a particularly pretty poplar block with an interesting grain pattern. I pointed it out to Odetta, who is three, to study closer. “It goes swoosh!” She said excitedly. Indeed the grain did go swoosh proceeding out from a knot in the corner in a sunburst pattern of alternating dark and light browns.
This is part of what I will call phase two of my woodworking vision quest, which is to say working and studying woodworking at home around and with my children. This is one of the things that draws me to working with handtools. They can be with me as I am working sometimes and it is ok. It seems they will be while I am building stuff more and more as they grow older in a way they couldn’t if I had primarily machines. I sometimes have to tell Odetta she can’t go into the shop with me when I have to run some stock through the table saw machine. Then I have a disappointed girl.
This thing of being at home building furniture for our house is something I very much look forward to. Some of the projects I have coming up are a cabinet for our record collection, a table and chairs for our dining room, wooden brackets to hold the curtain rod I made, a pair of low couches and a folding table for the front porch with a couple end tables to go with it. So yeah I have my work cut out for me. I will share the process with these as I work.
Putting your hands to a piece of work is a good thing. It is a centering thing. May we all find work to do that puts us at peace with ourselves and the world around us. Peace out.
acorncarpentryandjoinery.com 