Winter is a quiet time for me, which isn’t to say that I’m not busy or working on things. It’s a time where I’m less public. I take a break from posting on social media, and with the market season over until Spring, I’m not directly interacting with my customers. Sharing my work with others in person is something that is really important to me, but I also need time alone to generate new ideas and new works.
I’ve been spending my shop time sweeping up the dust, spreading out the shavings behind the bushes in the yard, and resetting the grind on my gouges and chisels. The angle and shape of the bevel is critical for clean cuts and in the busy season of making, they got out of whack.
The Fall is so hectic that many of these maintenance tasks get pushed down on the priority list until after the holidays.
To give my creative brain a rest, I have been cutting a lot of cylinders. It’s the first step in a variety of things, such as vases, boxes, spinning tops and ornaments. I start with a rough sawn piece of wood, or sometimes a small log, and I round it out into a smooth cylinder with a tenon on one end. From this point, it will be faster to make one or two items from a single piece.
Exploring vase forms is one of my resolutions and I plan on making many more in the coming months. Another floral display item that I experimented with making last December was a flower frog, which sits on top of a jar and supports separate stems of fresh or dried botanicals. After receiving positive feedback from customers, I have started making more for the Spring.
Another resolution is to be more selective about the wood that I use to maximize unique character or grain. To that end, I have been throwing out chunks that would be difficult and time-consuming to work with to get a good result. My aim is to improve the overall quality of the items that I make.
Springtime markets are being planned out now and I’ll have more details on that next month. For now, I’m enjoying this time of year for re-centering my creative mind. It helps me feel ready to move forward into the new year.
I have been regularly writing this newsletter for two full years now and I have decided to turn on a payments option. If you would like to support the work that I do and you enjoy reading about my creative process, then you can chose to become a subscriber. For now, I will leave the newsletter free with subscription optional. A heartfelt thanks for all your support.
so wonderful!