A Quiet Christmas

Here it is Boxing Day.  The turkey leftovers are stowed in the fridge; the stock is made for soup; there is a lot of leftover stuffing and gravy, and there are way too many sweet things in the house. When I was young the Christmases were huge, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins in the large house that had a staircase at each end so we kids could run up one stair across the upper floor and down the other stair shrieking and laughing.  I'm sure we drove the adults crazy.

In my late teens and early twenties we were adopted by my aunt's family and it wasn't unusual to have twenty or twenty five people for Christmas dinner. My uncle just kept extending the table with sheets of plywood. Some years we had skits and often we sang carols around the piano. For a couple of years we celebrated Christmas with Richard's sister and, again, there was a full house.

This year there were three of us. We made ragged music, stayed in our pj's as long as we wanted, watched old movies and laughed often and long. The size of the group has changed but the music and laughter remain as does the sense that this day is out of time, a day to set aside the regular routines, a day to pause, as the ancients did, and look forward to the return of the light which remains a few minutes longer each day. In the Christian tradition it is a time to celebrate hope, peace, joy and love qualities that our battered world sorely needs. As I prepare to pick up the regular routines once again it is with the sense that I have taken time to celebrate, reflect and rest so that each day I can take small steps to meet the returning light.

Looking Ahead

It's Christmas once again and the time between Christmases seems to be getting shorter and shorter.  I always take some time to think back to other Christmases and to look ahead.  June of 2016 will mark the completion of my eighth year of retirement and I can feel my focus sharpening.  I've tried all kinds of things in the last seven and a half years and the thing I look forward to more  than anything is woodworking.  I've gone headfirst into activities before and then gradually abandoned them.  For a while it was canoeing, then cycling; then running. I don't know how long woodworking will hold my attention but, at the moment, I want to learn everything I can and become as skilled as I can.

Nothing gives me more pleasure than being able to make an object for someone to appreciate and use. One of my repeat customers told me that, having received one of my ornaments last Christmas, her mother-in-law wants to collect enough of them to decorate her whole tree.  I grin inwardly when I imagine a Christmas tree in Nova Scotia  made beautiful by my ornaments.  Some of my boxes have ended up in Africa and several people have told me that they still use the pens I made for them several years ago. All of this gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction.

In our society money signifies importance. In truth, I would work wood without getting any money for it but there's a certain amount of validation that comes when people, not only express verbal appreciation, but willingly exchange money for something I have created. Recently I opened a bank account so I can take credit cards. I have two goals for the account: I want to generate enough income to pay the wonderful person we have hired to clean our house every two weeks. Neither one of us is particularly disciplined about cleaning and it's a delight to have the whole house clean all at once and on a regular basis.  My second goal is to make my hobby self-supporting. I have a credit card I use only for woodworking supplies and educational materials and I'd like to be able to pay it off each month using the woodworking account.  I feel a little like I did when I got my first job, excited and a bit apprehensive.  I'm very glad that I don't have to depend on my woodworking skills to put food on the table.  In teaching I exchanged my time and skill for wages.  In this venture I exchange the works of my hands for money and I want those works to be ambassadors for what is beautiful and cherished in this world.

I believe each of us has a responsibility to make our own small corner of the world a little bit better.  I hope the things I craft will make someone's life a tiny bit easier or more pleasant. I'll keep you posted as my life after teaching continues to unfold. I wish each of you a Merry Christmas and health, contentment, and good fortune in 2016.

Cats and Dogs

Maggie waiting for her people to come home

Many writers, cartoonists and videographers have made generalizations about how cats and dogs seem to view the world. Cats are snooty, independent and self-serving.  Dogs are enthusiastic and want to please. I've laughed many times at the cartoon in which the dog responds to every event with "Oh boy!" while the diary of a cat numbers the days of captivity.

I've always thought of myself as a cat person, not because I don't like dogs, just because I don't know dogs.  I grew up with cats and so I know their signals.  Some of my friends have dogs and it has been interesting to get to know a little about them. Dogs do seem to be almost permanently enthusiastic about squeaky toys,  kongs filled with treats, walks, scratches and pats,  chasing balls or barking at people walking past their property. In the cartoon about the enthusiastic dog the only negative the dog expresses is, "Bath, bummer" before he is right back to "Time with my human, oh boy!"

I was driving to meet a friend the other morning and I was late.  My mind was doing the usual spinning up about all the inconveniences that my being late would cause and how it would impact the rest of the day.  I was feeling anxious. For some reason I thought of the cartoon and said to myself, "Car ride, oh boy!"  That made me smile and I said it several more times as I drove. It was a beautiful fall day, blue sky, sunshine and no snow although it was late October. When I got to my destination I was still grinning.

What if, I wonder, I try to live my life in a more dog-like fashion? Of course, this won't always work but if the words, 'oh boy' and ground me in the moment and make me smile I'll use them and see what happens. Oh boy, time to go for a walk with my friend!

Yikes, Fall Already?

The colours on the hillsides are wonderful and the eavestroughs are filling up with leaves again so it must be fall. The autumn routines have started up and soon Richard will be back at  work most days. It has been an incredible summer.

Part of what made it incredible was that we had two separate holidays. The first was to Newfoundland and Labrador and I've posted photos of that trip here on the blog.  The scenery was spectacular; the people were interesting; and the opportunities to learn were abundant. Besides we got to ride in Zodiacs and that's always fun in my books.

The second holiday was very different.  We spent a week with a friend on his island. The pace was leisurely but we got a lot done. We helped with various chores around this island and when there was a two-person job rather than a three-person job, I got to sit in the shade and carve spoons from freshly cut wood. It reminded me of some of the canoe trips we once took during our summers, only this time, we had a cabin to sleep in rather than setting up a tent every night and if the weather was nasty, we could stay inside.




We cleared brush and stacked firewood. Richard and John worked on plumbing and wiring and roofing. I hid in the shade while they soaked up the sun. We started our days with coffee, tea and conversation, sometimes until noon; sometimes until early afternoon, a rhythm that suited Richard and me just fine. I sat on a rock near the shore and played my ukulele, a birthday present this year. I also did a few wood projects. I made a large handle and latch for the doors over part of the electrical system. It was an interesting challenge to improvise holding systems and figure out how to cut curves without a jig saw.

When the time came to leave the island we got to spend a few nights on the road in our new-to-us camper van. Despite the problems with Flopsy we had living in her pretty much down to a science and it will take us some time to attain the same comfort level with Vinnie. We don't quite know where to put things yet or how to best make up the bed. It's brilliant, though, not to have to kneel down on the floor and peer into a little gap to see whether or not the fridge is lit each time we gas up. Also, dumping grey and black water is a new experience for us. We want to take off and spend more time on the road but we also love being at home, seeing our friends, singing in choirs and taking music lessons, not to mention the days I happily spend in the shop. So, even though we're enjoying the start of a new term for many of our activities, we're looking back at the fun we had this summer, and looking forward to adventure possibilities for next summer. There is no shortage of experiences, remembered, lived and imagined and for that I'm grateful.

Newfoundland and Wild Labrador Photos

So I have finally finished selecting and organizing photos from our trip. At times it was an exercise in frustration. I hope I now have links that work and photos that are in the order in which I want them.  I'll attempt to put all six of the links below. Cross your fingers.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

There are very few photos once we reach Ottawa so the trip ends rather abruptly. I hope you enjoy looking at the photos. It was a fabulous trip and I enjoyed revisiting it as I went through the photos. Canada is an incredible country.

Trying out technology

When am I not trying out technology?  I'm still in the process of organizing photos from the NL trip and have just completed the day we spent in Hebron.  I'm trying to juggle between Picasa and Google+ photos.  For some people this may be a no-brainer but I'm still figuring it out. This doesn't really count as a blog post but for those of you who are following the photos, I hope the link works.  I will post the links to each of the photo collections (I think that's what Google is calling them now) when I get them all done.  I have five days photos yet to go through and there aren't as many in that batch so I'm hoping to finish them soon



I hope you enjoy them as I've enjoyed taking them and then looking back at them.



Newfoundland and Wild Labrador: Part 4 Hebron

Looking back on Newfoundland and Labrador

Richard photographing Google John

It's a weird thing but sometimes I think I enjoy a holiday more after I've come home and I have time to think about it.  While I'm there I'm truly living in the moment.  This was especially true of our holiday with Adventure Canada called 'Newfoundland and Wild Labrador.' It's amazing what we packed into  each day. We got to hike, meet people from the small settlements in NL, explore ancient sites with archeologists, listen to live music and sing with people from across the globe.

Our days were very busy.  They began at 6:30 with Stephan announcing over the PA, "Good morning, good morning, good morning.' There were always three, 'good morning's.' He next gave us the weather conditions and the times for breakfast. By that time we were awake, even if we didn't plan on eating breakfast.

We hiked in Gros Morne, visited the site of the Viking settlement at L'anse aux Meadows and the abandoned town of Hebron in Labrador. Hebron was once a thriving community whose people were relocated farther south with promises of houses and territories in which to hunt and fish. The people, thus displaced, lived their lives as outsiders in the new locations and there is an air of sadness in that place.

On days when we sailed for most of the day there were talks going on in various areas of the ship.  My regret was that I couldn't use Hermione Granger's trick and be at three different places at once. No matter which talk I attended I always felt as if I was missing out on something else. One day the seas were too rough to land so we stayed on board and some of the talks were repeated so I did manage to get in a few extra ones. I think Stephan was disappointed that we couldn't land and he made a point of speaking to everyone about the need for the decision. In some ways I didn't think too much about it because, having never been to the Wunderstand, I was blissfully ignorant of what I was missing.

As so often strikes me when on holiday it was the people I met who made the trip.  That may sound funny coming from a confessed introvert but the people on the ship were fascinating.  Richard has described the voyage as a floating TED talk that lasted for two weeks. We met archeologists, ornithologists, geologists, adventurers, artists, publishers, writers and you couldn't turn around without bumping into a professional photographer. It was a trip filled with intelligent and interesting people and my brain whirred with excitement after almost every conversation.

Margaret Atwood, Graeme Gibson, Scott Forsyth (foreground person unknown)

I feel a bit awkward about writing this next part because it seems a bit like name-dropping but I did meet and talk with these people and the conversations were fascinating. Billy Gautier and I talked about carving, and fell into the comfortable space of artisans sharing what they love. Doug Gibson told marvellous stories about the writers he published in during his career with McClelland and Stewart and Shirley Montague passed her guitar around the circle one night after most folks had gone to bed and only a few of us lingered to sing and play. Margaret Atwood took off her hood to reveal a marvellous hat with cat's eyes and ears on it and said that she bought it at a market in Poland, (I think it was). Terry Fallis sang and played guitar and helped push zodiacs off the rocky beaches into the sea. Gilles Gagnier hosted us at dinner one night and we talked of travels by bike and canoe, Sable Island and the beginning of Merlin bicycles since another guest at the table was one of the inventors of Merlin bikes. Initially we thought it might be tough to do without the internet for two weeks but we had so much to learn, so many stories to listen to and so much technology to play with that we only missed it in the sense that we couldn't share our excitement in the moment.

John Bailey from Google was there with his street-view backpack photographing the wild places to add to Google earth.  Billy was there from Fuji and he loaned out cameras. Both Richard and I borrowed cameras and now have a serious case of techno lust for the new Fuji mirrorless model.

David Newland the host for our trip described the Ocean Endeavour as a floating village. There were about 176 of us plus another 100 or so crew. It is only since I have come home that I have time to appreciate how truly spectacular an experience it was and I haven't even started on the people we met in the small settlements we visited. That, perhaps is a topic for another day.

Photos from the first part of the voyage NL 2015

Here is the first instalment of photos from our trip to Newfoundland and Labrador with Adventure Canada. I haven't used this way of uploading before so this is an experiment.

https://picasaweb.google.com/104135492874704004816/NewfoundlandAndWildLabradorPart1?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Fleecy clothing and rubber boots

Out on the land in the rain

I know a lot of people think that I'm out of my mind but I was perfectly happy the last two weeks travelling the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador where the daytime highs were around +5 or +6 celsius.  I was sometimes cold but never when we were out on the land and the only time I wore my long-johns was to bed one night. To me the temperatures were perfect for hiking. If we were headed up, which we mostly were having started off from a ship, we warmed up quickly and it was easy to unzip the rain jacket and pants to get some ventilation. If I then cooled off too much I simply zipped up again.

Modern shipwreck

One time I dashed out onto the bow deck to photograph icebergs without anything more than a t-shirt. By the time I'd spent 5 minutes out there I was happy to get back into the restaurant. The day we hiked in the rain I was glad enough to get into dry clothes at the end of the hike but the grey moving fog and the shipwreck made for marvellous photo opportunities.

Adventure Canada provided us with rubber boots

It would be different if I were out on the land with a backpack and a tent. Then getting warm would have been quite a bit more complicated.  As it was we huddled against the wind and the spray on the ride back to the ship and then went into a nice warm cabin, got a cup of tea which was always available and changed into non-sweaty clothing. It is a luxurious way to travel and, at this point in my life, I'm all for it!

Riding in the zodiac

The Chilkoot Trail 1984 and 2013

Up up into the fog and rain

The saying goes that you can never go home again. I beg to differ.  You can, but you must be prepared for an entirely different landscape, both inner and outer.  In my case I'm not talking about a literal home but about retracing our steps on the Chilkoot Trail between Yukon and Alaska that we hiked 29 years earlier.

In the spring of 1984 Liz, Richard and I decided to hike the Chilkoot Trail.  Liz was living in Whitehorse at the time and we thought we'd drive up for a visit and the three of us would do the hike.  Perhaps it's just the passage of time, but I don't recall a lot of preparation going into the trip. We had tents, sleeping bags and stoves and we went out and bought packs. I probably did some walking and may have even done some walking with the backpack loaded up. In those days we'd been doing quite a bit of canoeing and some hiking. 

Getting food ready for the trip meant heading for the grocery store and laying in a supply of Minute Rice and some boil-in-the-bag dinners. For breakfast we had instant oatmeal and powdered milk and for lunch we had apples, peanut butter and cheese. Oh, and we had curry powder to give the meals a bit of taste.

The weather was perfect, sunny and on the hot side during the day with cool temperatures at night. We quickly discovered that the rations for breakfast and lunch were okay but dinner left us searching the bottom of the pot to see if there was any more rice left.

Going over the pass was tiring and chilly.  When we got over onto the Canadian side a ranger met us and fed us mugs of hot chocolate to warm us up before we crossed the snow fields. I remember the flags that marked the way through the snowfields and that Happy Camp wasn't particularly so we pushed on beyond Long Lake to the next campsite. We were pretty tired by the end of that day but the sun continued to shine and we carried on.  Instead of going all the way to Lake Bennett, we opted to walk out on the railway track to the junction with the road where we had left one car. Just as we got into the car to head for Skagway to pick up the other car it started to rain, the only rain we encountered on the whole trip.

Fast forward twenty some-odd years.  Someone, and I might as well take the blame for this, suggested that it would be fun to hike the Chilkoot again and take Liz's two grown children Ryan and Leah with us. The five of us camped together while they were growing up and we thought it would be a brilliant adventure to crown the camping experiences. 

In the summer of 2013, 29 years after we first hiked the pass we were ready to tackle it again. 

Richard and I had long since sold our small tent and the sleeping bags we had on the first trip had lost their loft and we had given them away.  We had a decision to make.  Would we make do with the equipment we had, I still had the original backpacking stove and it still worked, or would we buy new equipment?

After some deliberation we decided that we weren't as young as we used to be and that we should think in terms of what would make the journey easier on us.  We bought new gear.  Since the first trip Richard and I had learned quite a bit about how to eat well in the backcountry and in January I started searching the net for recipes and began planning meals and drying food.  By the time we were ready to leave each person had a large bag containing a series of smaller zip-lock bags each holding a meal. We packed one extra dinner for each person just in case.

We had a new lightweight stove that boiled water in a flash and a great gravity-fed water-purification system. When it was time for supper we'd boil up the water.  Each person would select a meal and pour boiling water into the plastic bag.  Then we'd mostly close the bag and continue with setting up camp for about 15 minutes.  By then the meals were rehydrated and still warm.  We even had brownies two nights.  There was minimal clean-up and we put the used food bags in the garbage bag and carried them out.  That part worked well.

Although I had been running half marathons and was generally in better shape than when we first attempted the trail, it was hard going. I fell the first day and hurt my tailbone and my shoulder.  It could have been worse for as I went down I thought I was going to pitch onto the steep slope beside the trail. Not the way to start a hike but, at least, I didn't need a helicopter to get me out.

The weather was not as cooperative either.  We had rain and more rain and we were pretty thoroughly soaked by the time we got to the top of the pass.  I don't know what our time was on summit day the first time but in 2013 we were on the trail for 14 hours.  The young folks were very patient with the oldsters who couldn't go nearly as fast as either group wanted to.

The trail, too, was very different. There was a board walk through a huge beaver pond that hadn't been there. There had been some landslides and  the switchbacks of the 1984 trail had been wiped out so that we found ourselves clambering over boulders to get to the top of the pass. It was exhausting.  Happy Camp was much happier than on our first visit.  There was a warmup shelter and a shed to store food in order to keep it away from the bears.  We were able to get warm by the stove if not dry.

The next day it rained again and we squelched on through the mist. We were disappointed in the weather.  The first time we did the hike we were treated to blue skies and wonderful vistas and while there was undeniable beauty in the rain-shrouded forests, it was not what we hoped to share the the next generation of hikers.  By the time we got to Lake Bennett the sun was out and we had a couple of days to relax and dry out before catching the train back to Skagway.

I'm glad we had the opportunity to do the trail again and to share the experience that meant so much to the three of us with Ryan and Leah.  It was very clear to me the day we ascended the pass that I would not being doing this trip again.  The difficulty to fun ratio was simply too high. Apparently there was a 75 year-old woman who completed the trail that summer. My hat is off to her but I'm not about to try it again.  To my way of thinking, we cut it close enough to the line the last time. I was working at my full capacity most of the time and felt that I had very little strength in reserve and in those situations it's too easy for things to go seriously wrong.

I'm grateful we had the trip and I'm grateful we were able to share a part of the country that meant so much to the three of us.  I hope that someday the young people will return to the Chilkoot trail  and hike it at their own pace. I hope the sun will shine for them, that they will feel fit and strong and that breath-taking vistas will wait around each corner.  As for me, I'll think twice about returning to some of the areas I always thought I'd revisit. I'm not sure I'm up to the changes.

The end of another school year

What I did on the last day of school

Yesterday marked the last day of school for students and it marked the end of my seventh year of "Life After Teaching."  Thoughts of my classroom and my students cross my mind fairly often and I still have those nasty teaching dreams but most of it seems far away now.  It's on days like this, the beginning or end of school holidays that I give my teaching career a bit more thought.  In retirement I've mentally compared the years to the years I spent teaching at various schools. With the end of this year, I've passed all but one of those markers. I spent seven years at the last school in which I taught. The longest stint in a single school was ten years.

So, today, I'm thinking about all the teachers who have only two more days to go this year.  I'm remembering how exhausted I was at this time of year and how excited I was at the prospect of  being able to catch up on my sleep.  I'm remembering that Richard and I sometimes celebrated the start of the summer by sharing breakfast with a teaching colleague. I'm remembering the former colleague who used to stand up at the final staff meeting and announce how many days were left until we returned to class in the fall. It was meant as a joke but it always made my stomach tighten up just a little.  I remember letting go of the worry and the responsibility of trying to do what was best for students.

With each year those memories grow softer around the edges and today I'm thinking about how different my life is now. The main difference is not living on high alert anymore. The highs when I was teaching were incredible places and they occurred with predictable regularity.  Thanksgiving,  Christmas, Teachers Convention and Family Day, (four and sometimes five days without teaching,) Spring Break, Victoria Day. Odd for a teacher that the highlights of the year were those times when I wasn't in the classroom.  I didn't think much about it at the time.  That's just how it was.  Now, watching my husband and my friends who are teachers, I realize that I was different from them. I liked teaching well enough and I did my best.  I did not love it as some do, never felt I could hardly wait to get back into the classroom.

Of course, there were the in-class highs as well and those memories are still clear and sharp.  There was the grade 8 boy who rushed up to my desk after he had written something and asked me how a paragraph made me feel.  When I responded that it gave me the creeps, he grinned, said 'Good' and headed back to his seat to furiously scribble down more words. There was the grade 8 girl with whom I had butted heads all year.  At the end of the year she gave me a card that said "I guess I was a pain in the ass to you but you were to me too." Knowing her, it was an apology and a thank you all rolled into one.  There was the boy with fetal alcohol syndrome who, one day moved his desk closer to the others in the class to listen to a story. There was the young man who made me a lovely wooden box. I keep my chip carving tools in it still. There was the grade 11 class who, on a prearranged signal, threw paper balls at me, We all had a good laugh; they picked up the paper balls and threw them in the wastebasket on their way out. There were the grade 12 girls who cried when I told the class I was moving to another school.

There was also the outward recognition, the student who sought me out at a different high school and dropped in for a chat, the parents who requested that all of their children be in my classes, three awards for teaching, one provincial, one national and one international.

Despite all these highs there were the lows, the gut wrenching feeling that I had hurt a student with an offhand remark, the feeling that I could never do as good a job as I wanted to, that things could fly apart at any moment, that I could barely keep my head above water. I spent a lot of time worrying about the past and the future.

Seven years after leaving teaching, my life still has highs and lows but the difference in elevation between them is less.  I spend time thinking about the past and imagining the future. I spend many many hours in the present with tools in my hands and I continue to learn. I'm grateful for all the gifts teaching has given me and I'm grateful that I'm where I am today.

I wish all my teaching friends a restful and enjoyable summer. May you find the resources within and without to prime you for another year.

Out comes my mother

Honourable old hiking pants complete with pitch stains and patches

While nobody could ever accuse me of being up on the latest fashion, clothes are important to me. Above all, I want them to be comfortable and functional. I generally like my clothing unrestrictive and there's nothing better that having temperatures just cool enough to make fleece really comfortable. Over the years I have become very fond of particular articles of clothing and I'm unwilling to get rid of them even though they are a little worse for wear.

When I was thinking about what to pack for an upcoming trip I decided, once again, to take along my favourite hiking pants.  I've probably had these for ten or twelve years and they certainly show it. They are nylon so they cut the wind, keep the mosquitos from biting through them, and dry quickly from body heat when they get soaked.  They are also zip-offs so I can use them as shorts if the weather is hot.  I can't remember when or where I purchased them.  They came with me on the Chilkoot Pass two years ago and on the first night I sat down on the root of a tree and got pitch all over the butt.  I never did manage to get it out although it's no longer sticky.

A couple of years before that I was wearing them in some of the slot canyons in Arizona and ripped a hole in the pocket and one in the butt.  I wasn't ready to give up the comfort or the convenience of the pants so I shortened another pair on nylon pants and used the pieces I cut off the legs to patch the pocket and the butt of my favourite ones.  I didn't care that the pants are navy and the patches are black.  It's an indication of how much I like the pants that I was willing to actually get out the machine and sew.  The pants that I shortened might well have remained in my closet until I got fed up with them and gave them away but, because I wanted the material from the legs for patches, I ended up with two wearable pairs of pants.

Knowing my favourite hiking pants have passed the line between unique and disreputable, I recently went looking for a pair to replace them.  I looked in all the usual outlets and even looked online.  It appears that pants that roll up and fasten with a strap are in nowadays.  I couldn't find a single pair of zip-offs that would fit me. I even looked online and didn't come up with anything I wanted. I was grumbling away to myself when it dawned on me I sounded exactly like my mother.  One of her pet peeves was she would "just" find a cosmetic product or a style of underwear, she liked and then "they" would stop making it.

I had a bit of a laugh at myself and realized that the "just" could have been over the space of fifteen or twenty years. I also got to thinking of other items of clothing I'm loathe to part with. I have a pair of low hikers which are as old or older than my hiking pants.  I have other low hikers that I wear everyday but they are not as tough and sturdy as the old ones.  I use the old ones for shop shoes because, although they aren't steel-toed, they offer pretty good protection from falling objects. The lining in the heels has worn through but I just keep wearing them. Then there was the pair of sweat pants that had a waist casing for the draw string that looked more like lace than cotton fleece by the time I got rid of them. I did manage to find other sweats that fit and had pockets, one of my requirements, so I bought three pair just in case, "they" stop making them.

I've heard friends with children say they have been startled to hear their parents' words coming from their mouths when addressing their children.  Even though I don't have children, I'm not immune to sounding like my mother and, most of the time, I don't mind that. She probably wouldn't be delighted with my scruffy old pants but would be impressed that I actually sewed something.   I won't be wearing them on the plane but on the sea in a zodiac I don't think anyone will care.

A little spokeshave

Spoon in vise with spokeshave blade facing up

Spokeshave, blade facing down

The other day I was re-watching a video on spoon carving.  It's another Paul Sellers video and in it he takes advantage of the holding power of his vise to carve a spoon.  Instead of the axe and curved knives that are used in the traditional bushcraft method of making spoons, Sellers uses a carving gouge and a spokeshave.  A spokeshave has been on my tool wish list for quite a while but as I watch more and more of Paul Sellers' videos with his emphasis on a minimal set of tools and his preference for buying used rather than new tools, I thought I'd take out the small spokeshave that belonged to my maternal grandfather who died before I was born.

A few years ago when we built our shop, my uncle gave me three of my grandfather's planes, a marking gauge, a wooden folding rule and a the little spokeshave. Two of the planes are a set used to cut tongues and grooves in half inch stock.  The other plane is a wooden jack plane.  I tried all of them out and then hung them on the wall where I could admire them.

I didn't hang the spokeshave up with the other cutting tools.  Instead it went into one of the drawers in my tool box. When I decided to try Sellers' way of making a spoon I needed a spokeshave. I tapped the blade out with a brass hammer and used the same ceramic stones I use to sharpen all my carving tools to put a new edge on it. The edge was pretty chewed up but it didn't take too much work to get out the worst of the dings. Because the wood in the body of the shave has worn away, I can't set it for a really thin shaving but that didn't matter since what I wanted to do was smooth out the facets left by my chisels. I tried it first on the handle of the spoon and it cut very well.  Next I moved to the bowl and was surprised at how nicely it took off the facets and what a wonderfully smooth surface it left.

Geordie's name

I'm not much of a history buff, but it gives me a thrill to work with this delicate little tool that is over 100 years old. I don't know if my great uncle Geordie bought the shave new or even if he made it.  I do know that he passed it on to his younger brother Dave, my grandfather.  Both names appear stamped into the wood of the handles. Did my grandfather buy it from his older brother when he was an apprentice and was collecting his own set of tools?  Did Geordie give it to Dave to help his brother on the way to mastering their shared craft?  I don't know and I don't really need to know. I'm delighted that the tool, for the time being, is in my keeping.  I imagine the feeling of pride and gratitude I get when the blade bites cleanly into wood is akin to the feeling a violinist has when he draws his bow across the strings of a fine old instrument.

Dave's name

I wish the spokeshave could tell its story.  What did my grandfather use it for? Clearly not making spokes for wagon wheels; it's much to small and delicate for that.  Perhaps he made rungs for chairs and used it for other tasks I haven't thought of.  It has seen quite a bit of use over the last century yet the pins on the sides of the blade still fit snugly into their tiny square mortises. I've toyed with the idea of making a new wooden body for it but I know mine would fall short and it fits my hands so well in its current form. Did my grandfather have small hands or did he balance the tool gently using only his finger tips? When I pick it up I wish that, somehow, I could go back in time and meet my grandfather as a young apprentice and later as a master of his trade.  How I would love to talk with him about wood and tools. How I would love to watch him cut the dovetails in the sides of his toolbox, the one that carried his tools from Scotland to Canada in 1910. Since we are separated in time I can't have those conversations or watch him work but I can use his tools and so as I pick up the spokeshave to refine a cut I think, "Thanks Grandad. I'll take care of your tools.  I'm learning and I'll do the best I can."

The delights of peanut butter

Wednesday was cool and rainy.  I had  a list of places to go and things to do and I didn't do any of them. I spent a wonderfully relaxing day sitting around in fleecy clothes drinking tea and watching videos. Luckily there was enough spinach left so Odie could have his regular dinner. Grocery shopping could wait until Thursday.

Somewhere along the line I thought it would be a good idea for me to go back and read all my previous blog posts.  I've been worried that they might become repetitive. Once I started I became immersed in the task. They provide a pretty good record of what has happened in our lives since I retired and of how my focus and my thinking have changed. The most repetitive theme has been, "Oh dear, I should be writing more often."  That shouldn't surprise me since I've been singing that song for at least the last 35 years.  Note to Self: Just shut up and write without comment regardless of how frequently or infrequently the writing actually gets done.

The birds have hit to blog quite often and this might be a good time to reflect on Odie's progress. At the vet's Christmas party I got talking to a couple of people from the parrot club.  I asked if they knew anyone who worked to help owners train parrots, or more properly, who helped train owners. I got a name and spent quite a bit of time crafting an email about our life with Odie.  I didn't want to sound like I was whining and I did want her to know that we were serious about achieving a better relationship with our little feathered companion.  Robin answered with  a very encouraging email. She said we had done a lot of the hard work in that we had specific goals and that we seemed good at observing Odie's behaviour. We were thrilled.  Regardless of how well-meaning the people who had tried to help us were, we usually ended up feeling frustrated, stupid and inept. Robin suggested that she come to the house
and we arranged for a visit in January. Robin spent about an hour with us and worked with Odie pointing out some of the body language we hadn't noticed.  She also gave us specific suggestions to help with the training. For the first time since we got Odie I felt it really might be possible for Odie and me to get along.

Robin paid us a second visit which was invaluable. She said that what we needed to do was to find a treat that Odie loved so much he would do almost anything to get it.  We tried apple.  It was okay.  We tried millet which was also okay. One day I decided to give peanut butter a try.  Bingo!  It didn't take Odie long at all to touch the target stick when peanut butter was the reward. It because very easy to get him out of the cage by offering the target stick for him to touch.  Getting him back in was a bit trickier. How could I get him to understand that he had to be inside the cage to touch the stick and get a treat. After a few attempts where he went around the outside of the cage to touch the stick, I positioned my body between Odie and the door of the cage and put the target stick so the tip was just on the inside of the cage by his food dish.  Odie doesn't usually want to go past my whole body when it blocks his path.  Then I looked pointedly at him and then at the end of the stick which was inside the bars.  I stared at the stick for maybe 30 seconds and then Odie got the idea,  went to the door, climbed into the cage and touched the stick from the inside. I gave him a long lick of peanut butter off the end of a chopstick.

Since then I have had no trouble getting him in and out of the cage and have no worries about feeding him and cleaning his cage when Richard isn't home.  Occasionally Odie still lunges at the chopstick but when he does the treat and the target stick go away for 10 seconds and then we try again.  If he lunges again I walk away and stay away for a few minutes.  He still lunges occasionally but he doesn't often do it more than once. The downside is that he now waits outside the cage for the target stick and the PB.  When we've done a couple of touches outside the cage I can easily target him in.

We have many more goals.  I'd like to have Odie reliably step onto a perch so I can transport him to various locations in the house.  If we can get that down, he can spend much more time out of his cage and can hang out with me in my study while I work on the computer or in the living room while I practice piano. He likes to be with the flock so and I think he'd enjoy the change of scenery.  I'd also like to be able to put him into his travelling cage without trauma for either one of us. I don't think we'll ever be best buddies but I'm more hopeful that we may be able to come to a better working relationship.

Cross your fingers and pass the peanut butter.

Driving long

A few years ago I did my first solo drive of over 1000km one way. I had a friend visiting from the UK and we took several days to drive through the Rockies camping at various points along the way. She had an international driving license but I wanted to do the driving to see what it would be like. Many of my friends did long drives when they were in their 20's and early 30's - Calgary to Las Vegas without stopping 4 of them taking turns at the wheel while the others slept. Trips like that. I drove often from Banff to Calgary in all sorts of weather, but that's a drive of only an hour and a half. Once I drove 350 km by myself and had painfully stiff shoulders by the time I finished.

On our trip out to the coast we listened to an audio book, chatted, drank tea from a thermos and lit campfires each night.  We slept in a borrowed tent and got our feet wet in the deep snow at the top of Roger's Pass. We had good weather and both of us enjoyed the trip.  My friend had arranged to fly home from Vancouver so, at the end of our workshop, I drove home alone.

True I had done all the driving on the way out but I had company and someone who could take over in an emergency. I was a bit apprehensive about the trip home all by myself.  I left on the ferry from Bowen Island at 5:30 a.m. With me in the passenger seat was my iPod, loaded with 2 new books and a thermos of hot water to re-steep my green tea. Some people say they would be terribly distracted by listening to an audio book while driving.  I find it enables me to relax just enough so that I tire more slowly.  With the story going through the speakers and the mountain scenery unfolding around me, I didn't think about the fact that I was driving alone.

I identified certain vehicles and thought of them almost as friends as we passed each other and then passed again after one of the other of us stopped for gas. I never knew who was driving and yet I felt a kind of kinship with them. I fell into the habit of setting my cruise control a couple of kilometres below the speed limit so that I didn't have to do much passing. Once in a passing lane I feel as if I'm on a treadmill needing to keep ahead of the cars in the slower lane without slowing down those in the faster lane. I prefer to just find a spot in a line of traffic and stay there. Vancouver to Calgary isn't an arduous drive in that there are many places where the road is twinned and when it isn't, there are passing lanes every few kilometres.

I decided to stop as often as I wanted to and to let my energy level determine the length of the breaks.  Home was at the end of the drive and if I got tired and wanted to stay the night somewhere I had a credit card. I considered camping by myself but Richard was less thrilled about that idea so I agreed if I stayed overnight on the road I would get a motel.  I stopped for tea a few times, for fuel and for lunch and each time I walked around a bit.  When I got back into the car I adjusted the seat slightly and found I wasn't getting stiff. The weather was rainy in spots but nothing worrying so I just kept driving.  About 15 hours after I left, I pulled into the garage at home.  I was tired mentally and was quite pleased with myself. I felt more self-sufficient, almost as if I had passed some kind of test.  I enjoyed the solitude. In a strange way I felt fulfilled.

I'm not going to seek out long solo drives but I am no longer intimidated by them. It's a good feeling to have that confidence.

Taking another look

 I had some incentive a while ago to clean off bench #1.  Richard and his dad were planning to clean the grandfather clock and get it back into working order. When I made my new bench my first bench technically became Richard's but since I spend considerably more time in the shop than he does, it wasn't long before I was using both benches. We have a deal though, if he wants to use the bench he lets me know ahead of time and I clean it off.  That's what I was doing when I came across a couple of spoons I had started and then earmarked for the burn pile.

The one in the picture didn't look quite like it does now when I rediscovered it. I picked it up and was going to toss into the burn bin and then I hesitated. I didn't like it because the handle was too flat and the bowl was too thick.  I hadn't wanted to spend a bunch of time on the bowl if the handle was just going to be ugly.  As I held it in my hand I felt how light it was and I began to wonder if it might be worth another try.

I finished cleaning off the bench and got on with my day.  After supper I went back into the shop and found the spoon.  I got out my carving tools and went to work on it. It was much easier to carve than the cherry spoon I just finished. I worked on the bowl and as I did, I started to see possibilities for the handle. It wouldn't be like any of the other spoons I've made but then, no two of them are alike anyway.

As often happens when I work wood I became unaware of time passing except that somewhere along the way it got dark outside. I shaped outside of the bowl and thinned it out considerably.  When I was reasonably happy with it I started on the handle.  I rounded the end and thinned out the neck of the spoon. Sometimes I draw lines on the spoon to let me know where to carve next.  This time I didn't. I kept feeling it with my fingers for rough spots, for thick spots, for places where the grain changed direction. After I finished with the knife I worked at it with card scrapers, thin flat pieces of steel that have a hook turned on the edges so that you can use them to take fine shavings off spots where a plane might tear the wood. The spoon isn't silky smooth the way it would be if I spent hours sanding but the scraper smooths out a few of the carving facets and makes it a bit friendlier in the hand.

When I decided that I had done enough and it was time to oil the spoon two and a half hours had passed. While I don't think it's the best spoon I've made, it's good enough to throw in the kitchen drawer and use to stir the chili. It will get dinged and stained and it will be washed and re-oiled many times. If it eventually breaks or if I simply get tired of it, it will make the trip to the burn bin.  Before that, though, I think it will see a lot of use. There's no need to be precious about something that was intended to be firewood.

An anniversary of sorts

Beano the 1993 van

It's a rather strange anniversary.  I don't even know why I remember that date but I do.   Twenty-two years ago today we picked up our brand new Toyota Previa van.  There was a literary celebration at the school where I was teaching at the time. I was wearing skirt; perhaps that's why I remember the date. I had tendinitis in my ankle and I was limping when Richard picked me up after school and we went to get it.

We went through an auto broker on this particular buy because neither of us likes to bargain. Just tell us the price and we'll either pay it or we won't. Driving Kermie the green Volkswagen camper with no cabin heater had become problematic. We weren't canoeing anymore, having started cycling instead, and we thought it was more important to have a vehicle that was reliable for every-day transport than it was to have a camping vehicle  in which the steering would freeze up in cold weather. The plan was that we could still camp in the new van because the middle seat came out and there was room for us to put our foamies and sleeping bags down on the floor.

Klingon bird of prey

We test drove a few mini-vans. My dad had liked Chrysler products so we checked out one of those. It was okay.  We also checked out Mazda which we liked the look of but when we got to the dealership we couldn't get anyone to pay attention to us so we wrote that one off. It was a rainy day when we test drove the Toyota.  We drove around for a bit and then stopped by a park in the north east part of the city and turned off the engine.  We looked at each other and knew without saying anything we were going to buy it. Richard jokes that we wanted it because the shape of the dashboard reminded us of a Klingon bird of prey from Star Trek. The van was amazingly free of traffic noise as we sat there in the rain.  It had air conditioning, a big plus, and it had cruise control. It was an automatic which disappointed me a little. I enjoyed driving a standard but only low-end or sporty cars seemed to have the standard option.

We've slept in the van, which we christened Jelly Bean or Beano for short, only a couple of times when we arrived late at a campground and wanted to get an early start on the bike tour the next morning. Beano has been out to the coast with us a few times and into the Okanagan Valley. We haven't had it on any really long trips because we've always had a smaller vehicle and if we just needed to get there and back, it made sense to use the more economical  car.  Beano has been an old reliable work horse though.

It has helped Richard's parents and his brother move and has hauled our tandem many miles to the start of rides. When I became addicted to audio books on my iPod, Richard had a new stereo put in  as a birthday present for me so I could hook my iPod into the system using the aux jack. I have used that system almost every time I've driven the van since. For a long time the cigarette lighter didn't work but we had that fixed so we could charge electronics.

Beano has also had its share of excitement. It's been rear-ended, the guy paid for the repair upfront.  I think he fell asleep at the wheel while we were stopped for a red light.  When we went backcountry hiking and left Beano in a parking lot near the Trans-Canada highway, someone broke into the back. When we took it in for repairs, we got one of last 3 right tail light assemblies left in North America. Beano was the victim of a car prowling when I was working late one night.  I came out to find the passenger's side window smashed and glass all over the seat. Nothing was taken in either case.  There was nothing worth taking. Beano has had the windshield replaced at least twice, maybe three times.

As vehicles go, we haven't driven it a lot.  It has just over 200,000 km on it. In the last year or so it is starting to show signs of rust.  It has a crack in the windshield well below eye level and I'm not going to bother fixing it. It also has a ding in the bumper that I gave it one day in a parking lot. That's not going to get fixed either. The steering wheel is larger than most and every cover I try tears when I put it on.  The current one has memory foam in it and is patched with hockey tape, much easier on the hands than duct tape.  Occasionally I go on line and look at newer models but as long as I can still get essential parts from the dealership where we get our maintenance done, I'll continue to drive it.  After all, it's an old friend.  I carries lumber and tools although it won't take a full sheet of plywood. It's a bit scruffy around the edges but then so am I.  We suit each other. I don't know if it will make it to 30 with us the way Flopsy the Dodge camper did but, I'd give it a pretty good chance. In the meantime, I'll often think what a good old van it is.

A Rant for the Early 21 Century

Okay, I admit I spend time every day on Facebook and I spend some time each week on Instagram.  I read my email first thing in the morning and I use my phone to text my husband so we can find each other in Costco. If I have a question, an answer, at least a superficial one, is as close as my phone.  I don't have to look in book 12 of the Encyclopedia Britannica as I used to do when I was in junior high school.  All I need to do is type in a search term. My phone which is usually in my pocket also tells me the number of steps I take in a day giving me a measure of how fit, or unfit I am.

I always have a camera with me and it takes decent pictures if my goal is to post them or just show someone the two crows in a tree that I saw on my walk the other day. I've even used images from my phone to make Christmas cards and they turned out pretty well.

I can see my friends in BC and England when we chat on Skype; it doesn't cost me a bundle in long-distance charges, and when one of them calls me and I don't hear the call, I get an email message to alert me.

I always have a book in my pocket and I can always play a game if I'm waiting for an appointment. I can listen to books when I'm cleaning the house or working with hand tools in the shop. I enjoy all of these perks of technology.

What I don't enjoy is when Facebook starts telling me what to do or what kind of a person I am based on what I do with a post.  "99% of people won't repost this."  The implication is that 'good' people, 'worthy' people will repost and the rest of the readers won't. I'm here to tell you, upfront, that I will likely not repost something with such a message attached. Maybe part of it is just being bloody minded, or my toddler-self speaking,"Don't tell me what to do 'cause you're not the boss of me!"  I think more likely though, it's the idea that a relationship or a person's character can be reduced to what she does with one post.  Really?

If you are my friend, or part of my family (and you won't likely be looking at this post unless you fall into one of those categories) you understand that our relationship is based on mutual interests, shared experiences, shared laughter, admiration, affection, and respect - among other things. At the heart of it, what irritates me about these posts it that they are demeaning, designed to evoke feelings of guilt or inadequacy. By now I can hear the eye-rolling, "You're overreacting, don't take it so seriously, get a life!"

For me, it's a bit like the tiny pebble in your boot at the beginning of a hike.  At first you ignore it, manage to shift it around so it doesn't cause too much discomfort.  As the hike progresses it becomes harder and harder to take a step without hitting that annoying pebble. You don't want to be bothered taking off your boot so you keep going. Soon you have a hot-spot, then a blister and you have to take the boot off, shake out the pebble and patch up the damage as best you can. Others on the hike aren't bothered because they don't have pebbles in their boots.

So, I'm acknowledging the pebble and taking my boot off.  In most cases I choose not to play the repost game because, 'No one reads my Facebook page' and "99% of my friends won't repost this' are 2 of my own personal pebbles. Other pebbles include: "You won't believe what happened next." "She applies make-up to half her face. When she's done my mouth fell open." It isn't only the lack of verb agreement that bothers me, but that's the subject of a separate rant.

Playing 'What if?'

Bench in the basement prior to shop construction

Paul Sellers, of whom I spoke, in an earlier entry writes a regular blog. In the one that came today he mused about a contingent of young Danish apprentices who came to see him in his shop. As I've mentioned before, I admire Sellers' sense of reverence for his craft so I won't go into that again.

The track my thoughts took this time was more along the 'what if' line. It's a game I enjoy playing, not because I regret life choices I made, but because it's fun to imagine other alternatives and, looking back always gives a different perspective.

Looking back I realize that I had an apprenticeship in working with my hands from my mother. From the time I was very young we would sit together at a card table in the 'hobby room' and make things. Money was tight for my family and Mum subscribed to a magazine called Scrap Craft. In high school I took art and loved to make models. In theatre school I got to build models and props.

When I started to teach my focus became ideas and people rather than things. It was a productive career that has enabled me to now do what I truly love. As I look back I realize I was always finding projects, large folders of cardboard for student work, boxes where students could hand in and get back work, and various forms of a door stop for a classroom door that would not stay open when students were entering or leaving the class.

Some days I like to imagine myself in an apprenticeship program instead of a university classroom. Never mind that power tools scared the living daylights out of me and never mind that I work so slowly that I probably would have been kicked out in the first semester.  That's the beauty of playing 'what if.' I imagine myself surrounded by other people making things. I imagine teaching my hands and my eyes to work together so that I can make a perfectly straight, perfectly perpendicular cut with a hand saw almost every time I pick one up. I imagine making furniture, which is something I remember saying I wanted to do when I was very small.  Now I am bigger and my shop is small. Making furniture isn't a primary goal although I do have plans in my head for a headboard for our bed and a couple of stools for the shop.

I imagine being able to construct kitchen cabinets and intricate railings on stairs. I imagine myself in a job where I showered at the end of the day to get the sawdust out of my hair, instead of at the beginning of the day. In my imagination it is the perfect job and I love going to work every day. In reality, if I had taken that path I would be much more skilled by this point in my life but I doubt that I would enjoy woodworking any more now than I already do.  I am very fortunate to be able to heed Joseph Campbell's advice to, "Follow your bliss." Had I acknowledged my bliss earlier I would have spent more time there but that doesn't really matter. The only moment I can  live in is the present one and I'm delighted to fill so many present moments with fragrant wood, sharp tools and objects that please me when I finish making them. And, of course, I can always play a round of 'what if' when my hands are clumsy and the tools just don't seem to behave.

Here's a link to Sellers' blog should you be interested in reading it.
Apprenticing is alive in young Denmark

To post or not to post

On the mouse pad beside my computer I  track woodworking episodes on the channels I regularly follow. When I've watched and episode I cross off the number. This year I decided it would be a good idea to use the mouse pad to also keep track of my blog posts. I thought I could manage 2 a month. (Oh silly person!) It is now June and according to  my optimistic schedule, I should be on blog post  #11. This is #2.

Now let's be clear about this: nobody is going to beat me if I don't do 24 blog posts this year. It won't affect my income one little bit and I don't expect I'll get any hate mail if I don't post. So why bother keeping this limping little blog alive? For one thing, it's about the loyal readers. Most times when I write a post they leave me a few words of appreciation and that feels good.

For another, the blog format is attractive to me. When something strikes me as interesting I can type it; throw in a few photos; push a button and it's out there.  I don't have to print copies. I don't have to collate, staple or mail. One email lets people know there is something new to read. It's also interesting for me to look back on how this chapter of my life is unfolding.

I'm going to try something different. Setting myself a schedule hasn't worked, and feeling guilty about not writing hasn't worked. So, I'm going  to make a deal with myself: I will sit down and write a post as soon as an idea for one comes up. There have been many many ideas and I've thought, "Oh I'll write that later." By the time I get around to it, the idea no longer interests me.

Trying something different calls for new guidelines. The post can be long or short.  It can include photos or not. At times I've failed to post because I didn't have any photos.  A writing colleague posts every two weeks and she never uses photos. Her blog is interesting enough without.

I've been thinking about the "to post or not to post" question because I've just returned from a writing workshop on Bowen Island. The Freefall workshop is the one time in the year when writing is my first priority. This year's workshop was particularly productive, not because of what I wrote but because I gave myself permission to write for a while and then stop instead of ploughing ahead to fill time. Writing was a 'want to' rather than a 'have to' or a 'should.' I carved a spoon while I was at the workshop and attending to writing and woodworking was hugely satisfying. I loved the balance between what was going on in my head and what I could do with my hands. Maybe that's the way I work best. After all, I listen to audio books while I work in the shop.  Something for the head; something for the hands.  I don't know where the blog is going from here but keeping a balance between head and hands seems to be an idea worth storing carefully so I can return to it later. Whatever direction the blog goes I'll keep you 'posted.'

And, by the way, here's a photo that has nothing to do with the topic. I took it one afternoon during a walk around Killarney Lake on Bowen Island.

Back to the Basics of Wood and Tools

A modern Lie Nielsen plane. This one is slightly larger than the one Sellers used to build his bench.

I've had some good days in the shop lately. Not as many as I'd like but that probably never changes. I've been struggling with hand tools for about 12 years now, couldn't seem to get cuts with a hand saw both plumb and square at the same time. I'm an avid watcher of woodworking videos and, in addition to subscribing to 2 paid channels, I'm always on the lookout for ways that other people work wood. In one of my searches I came across a British woodworker named Paul Sellers. I would guess he's in his mid sixties and his workshop is in a castle in Wales. The only electrical tool visible in his shop is a cordless drill.

I don't remember which video of his I watched first but I liked it and searched for more. Sellers is one of the few woodworkers who came up through the apprenticeship system. His craftsmanship is impeccable and his attitude to his craft is anything but precious. His enthusiasm encourages you to pick up the tools, whatever tools you have, and work with them, learn how to sharpen them and then make things. There are places where absolute precision is necessary and other places where it isn't.

Unlike a number of hand-tool woodworkers, Sellers doesn't have the latest and greatest tools from Veritas or Lie Nielsen. His tools are old. He has Stanley planes with the original irons and chip breakers, no replacement irons that are thicker and heavier than their predecessors. In one of his videos he drew the camera's attention to the button on the hand saw he had just picked up. The date was in the 1700's. Of another saw he commented “This saw is 90 years old.”

I recently watched fascinated into the wee small hours of the morning as he built a workbench from spruce construction lumber using a hand saw, a chisel, a couple of hammers, glue, clamps, screws, a cordless drill and a #4 Stanley smoothing plane. A Stanley #4 is a relatively small plane and I was very surprised to see him straighten and flatten boards 6 feet long with it. I thought you needed a much longer heavier plane for the job.

For a work surface he plopped a piece of medium density fibre board onto a pair of saw horses in his back yard. At times he sat on the work to hold it. Other times he clamped a board to one of the saw horses. Of course this is the way woodwork used to be done before table saws, chop saws and routers.

What struck me most as I watched him work was how simple the process was. When I use the table saw I need to set it up correctly, get the blade to the proper height, adjust the fence make a test cut, use a push stick to keep my hands away from the blade. Often I need to make a jig to put the stock in the right position during the cut. This involves more cutting and checking and testing. When working with hand tools Sellers measures the board, strikes a line from a reference surface, picks up a saw and makes the cut. The actual cutting takes longer than it would on a power saw but with the skill that resides in his hands, eyes and muscles he is surprisingly efficient and the sounds of his day are not the various whines of machines. Sellers' bench videos are filled with the shouts of children from a nearby school, sea gulls off the coast and the occasional police siren.

Sellers uses machines in his shop for doing the repetitive dull tasks. When he teaches classes he machines boards so they are ready for students. To hand plane each board foot of the thousands he needs for a class would be absolute madness. Although I'm not about to get rid of my table saw or my bandsaw, more and more I find myself looking at a machine and thinking, “It's too much trouble to set that up. I'll just do it by hand.” Each time I make that choice I practice and my skills improve. I don't produce a huge amount of product and, for me, the joy is in the doing. I have the luxury of being able to work slowly and as my skill level increases I'm more and more inclined to reach for a hand tool rather than flick a switch.

Now I'm off to the shop to make some more shavings.