With days getting shorter and nights getting cooler, the forecast for a few days of below-freezing nights had us diligently wrapping up the squash harvest. This is about 2/3 of the haul, I just forgot to take the last “all done” picture. Winter is a time of heavy soup and stew lunches, and one of my absolute favorites is her squash soup made with fresh raw milk and heavy cream. No need for dessert with that on the table.
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Combined with Mrs. Barn’s relentless earlier harvesting and canning, we are just about wrapped up for the season. There are a few more tomatoes in the greenhouse but we do not know their ultimate disposition.
When you live in heavily wooded hills like Shangri-la, the term “sunrise” can have different meanings. In the case of today’s post, it is the time when actual sunshine strikes the surroundings, or somewhere between 9AM and noon.
This tree exploded in chromatic brilliance once the sun was on it. Last week’s pic was from a grim, grey day that was followed that night with four inches of rain.
My oldest picture (very distant and blurry) of this tree was from 25 years ago and it was a sapling probably the size of my wrist. Now the trunk is the size of my waist.
Every Spring, Winterthur Museum hosts a Furniture Symposium, and I have been invited (again). I will present a demonstration on the making of Gragg’s Elastic Chairs during this year’s event, April 23&24, 2027. (I say “again” because I was invited to present five years ago but was then disinvited when I declined to comply with their Fauci Flu protocols.)
I think my presentation/demonstration will be about 75-90(?) minutes, which should be quite the adventure. You can follow the event developments at winterthur.org. Just go to the “Calendar” page.
I hope to see you there.
Once I get my teaching and presentation schedule finalized for 2027 I will post it here.
This video had been sitting in my “to watch” queue for a while, and once I watched it I was delighted I did. (this channel has more than a little whiff of hypercomputationality about it, a/k/a artificial “intelligence,” but the content is pretty darn interesting)
It brought to mind a couple unrelated items.
The first was the reminder this excerpt from the apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Then came the memory of me teaching bench skills to an intern. I demonstrated making a dovetail and left her to execute the same exercise from start to finish. After almost an hour-and-a-half, she came into my space and was clearly exasperated. She had cut several dovetail sets, none of them worth anything other than kindling. She asked me to show her the complete process again, and that was when she got really angry.
“I’ve been working on these forever and you just come in and do it in fifteen minutes,” she fumed.
“Not exactly,” I replied. “I did it in thirty years and fifteen minutes.”
After watching this video, I understand why I prefer to start out my day sweeping the floor. It’s what gets me going.
Just don’t ask me to work sitting cross-legged on the floor.
One component of my activities organizing and streamlining barn/shop space and function this year has been taking a page from the American political handbook, wherein electoral district has been reconfigured to render a permanent advantage. This process is known as Gerrymandering in honor of it first practitioner, early 19th Century Boston politician Eldrige Gerry. Ostensibly this practice has been attributed to partisan advantage, but in practice it has mostly been used to protect incumbents. (Actually, only one Party has this strategy figured out and the other is just spinning on its thumb.)
In my case the spatial reorganization has been centered on the question, “How often did I use this particular tool or supply?” If the answer was, “Not in several years,” the item(s) got moved from a place of relatively easy access into deep(er) storage.
Given the termination of workshop activities here, thus no longer needing classroom or dormitory space, I have plenty of available space to use for storage and archiving. Lots of stuff has been relocated to reflect more current usage.
One instance of that was removing the leather, mother-of-pearl, and veneer inventories in the giant map case in my main shop workspace. I had already reconfigured the top of the cabinet quite a while ago to serve as the location for processing beeswax and shellac wax, and the occasional batch of Mel’s Wax. The leather inventory consumed four drawers, the MOP four drawers, and the special veneers three drawers.
The mother -of-pearl went into two large storage bins now located on the shelves now ringing the former classroom. The specialty veneers went underneath a rolling worktable that is moved to wherever it is needed (I have a giant stash of walnut and cherry veneers up in the former dorm space), and the leather went into two giant storage bins and a large plastic trash can now relocated on top of that veneer stash.
Seriously, what in the work was I doing with a complete buffalo hide and a zebra skin rug? And a big pile of elephant hide?
Who knows.
The map case was about 90% empty, available for a large inventory of different tools that had previously occupied a nearby cabinet.
In what will almost certainly be my last long trip unrelated to family matters, Mrs. Barn and I hit the road for a Labor Day weekend toolapalooza in Amana, Iowa, for the fifth (?) convening of Handworks, a mondo gathering of hand woodworking enthusiasts. The trip was very long, two full days of driving each way (I took a full-to-the-brim truckload) and even though the gathering of several thousand friends old and new is a delight, it is just too much for us. Part of the problem is that Mrs. Barn’s CR-V is excruciating for me to ride or drive; it was not made for linebacker-sized folks. My large pickup is a perfect fit but Mrs. Barn hates driving it. Oh well. I still get many invitations to travel to speak and teach but at this point I decline them all. The Wood and Shop school fits my needs just perfectly as it is two hours away from Shangri-la. That I can do easily. Two days each way? Not so much.
We were joined by dear friends Mr. and Mrs. Ripplin’ John.
John was with me side by side throughout the event as multitudes of folks wanted to ask about historical wood finishing and we were delighted to explain and demonstrate. While we were doing that the Misseses were out and about doing gal-pal stuff.
We were among the first to set up, near the center of the giant Festhalle. I brought two of my smaller workbenches to use as display and demonstration space. Soon the place was filled with enthusiasts of every stripe. I was glad to see that the demographics of the attendees was becoming broader and especially younger. It gave me hope for the future of the skill set.
The Festhalle was only one of many venues for the event, I think the total this time was seven. They were all filled with a bajillion tools, old and new. I only managed to get pictures of about 10% of the goings-on.
On the second morning the packed house was regaled first with a stirring rendition of The Star Spangled Banner magnificently presented by Mike Siemsen followed by a recitation by Chris Schwarz of some old-codger-ish correspondence between a Welsh Stick Chair maker and an American host regarding some workshops. Very entertaining stuff.
One final note is a comment on the weather, which was a stark counterpoint to the first Handworks. At Handworks 1 the weather was absolutely frigid, a very cold and rainy Memorial Day weekend fifteen years ago. This year the air in central Iowa was stifling, temps in the mid 90s with a choking level of humidity. With every handshake, two hands stuck together. They day after the event was much cooler. Oh well.
My most recent conversation with long-time friend, broadcaster Brian Wilson, is now posted on his Substack, Brian Wilson Writes. If pungent conversation about the state of the culture it might not be for you.
It was not thePictures From An Exhibition but rather pictures from an exhibition of traditional wood finishing as last month I taught another iteration of my class at Joshua Farnsworth’s Wood and Shop classroom. Oddly, three days is barely enough time to scratch the surface of the topic while still changing the students’ mindsets pretty profoundly.
So I present, Pictures From An Exhibition of Historic Wood Finishing, featuring performers (students) from all over North America.
For many years I’ve been a fan of Herrick Kimball and his Planet Whizbang site. He is one of the most inventive guys on the interwebz.
I’ve posted occasionally about my fixation with the utility of clothespins in the shop, employing them for a whole host of uses. I’m always on the lookout for good clothespins and currently have a shoebox full of them on the clamp rack. Since even better ones are cheap, I use and dispose them frequently.
Even Mrs. Barn appreciates a good clothespin as most of our laundry is hung on the line. A while ago I bought her some of Herrick’s clothespins from his Classic American Clothespin website.
Holy cow! They are so different in quality that they are different in kind. I mean, who makes clothespins from kiln-dried ash, and oversized to boot (compare it to a pretty good quality clothespin from Ace hardware.)
Maybe my search for the perfect clothespin is over.
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