Students leave and we renew

The shop was empty today, with all the students now returning home. John put the tools away in the drawers and I started building more storage cupboards to store the filming equipment and some of the recent tools I have acquired for the classes. I decided to include #4 1/2 smoothing planes and #5 1/2 jack planes in addition to #4s.

It seems funny having the benches filled one minute with tools and projects, people, and banter back and forth throughout the day and then seeing them waiting for the next batch of enthusiastic woodworkers.

We have many visitors passing through throughout the day and there is always someone interesting to talk to from Israel or Germany, Holland or the USA. John and I worked together all day, he on drawers and me and the on cupboards we can now wheel out of the studio when we are filming or doing photography. My new book will be on the market in a matter of weeks now and I look forward to the reaction from people.

I walked through the formal walled garden for a while and enjoyed the bright colours and wildlife that recognizes no such physical boundary. I appreciate a creative sphere in which I work, walk, live and imbibe from.

I use the term 'imbibe from' carefully in that I draw sustenance from creation in the same way seeds absorb moisture as solution into the fibre of their ultramicroscopic pores in order to stimulate growth. A walk away from working, even briefly, helps us to recreate in the sense of remake, rework, rethink and reconnect with our resource. How is it possible that anyone believes they can grow without connecting to the source of life itself. Man is absolutely incapable of creating the kind of beauty surrounding us. He can in some minute measure appreciate how it looks and what it means to him, but inevitably I conclude that I can make good things from wood, but I cannot create the tree.