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The day started cold as the temperature dropped dramatically last night. I had planned on breakfast at Eli's but it was already packed at 8.10am. As I drove to the shop I was amazed by the wonderful reds and golds and ambers of the autumn season and could see a little why Americans call Autumn fall instead of Autumn. It was lovely down by the pond and I was glad of my first visit here last Autumn. This has been a wonderful year of fulfilling my personal goal to establish our second school. My life is indeed a work in progress and I often think back to periods when the greatest leaps seem now like no effort at all. I was glad to complete my book last year and also the DVD series. I still have many of the original drawings and plans from when I wrote the first pages that would define a foundational course leading to masterclasses. It's nice to look back and see that from those first steps there are now thousands of first rate woodworkers continuing the tradition.

Here in New York and indeed North Wales, we have had unprecedented success. The classes seem always full or close to and my mail box is too. Tomorrow we finish the last US class of the year and look forward to Spring next year when we start over. With legs and aprons united we must now shape and them before we glue them up in the morning. We glued up the tabletops this afternoon and that went well. These guys have all progressed well and really have so few questions now I feel redundant. Not so at the beginning workshop; now they have greater levels of confidence because of their newfound skill levels.

Here s my new compliment of tool boxes and my creative workspace fully developed. These chest will accompany me on my tour starting in January. that's true of the bench also. To be honest, I have enjoyed this year more than any other. The trials have been very real, but on the other side the trials seem minuscule to the successes in people's lives.