Garden Benches & More Beyond

The weeks pass quickly as I make, write, film, draw, plan and design. Behind the scenes other things go on too. I design for other situations too. A birdhouse here, possibly other simple things for others to make there. Across from me someone is making a table, beautifully, like poetry. Someone else new to woodworking is redefining his life and he is making his very first dovetailed box. The dovetails remind me of how we cut away waste wood in the form of shavings and chips, to get rid of the excesses, and we end up with a box and in the same way our woodworking somehow enables us to remove the waste of our past in our own lives to leave us with what we really want and see as best future for us.

I am in the middle of filming the Oak garden bench too so it seems my life revolves around benches of one kind or another at the moment. We had to postpone some filming because of sickness but it looks like we are over that now. While we were waiting for recovery we filmed and wrote and kept up with zillions of questions.

I have been building a working desk bit by bit, to incorporate my oak cupboards additional shelving etc. It's on some very substantial wheels and rotates 270 degrees from its hinged corner. That way I can disappear from the more the public office area to any position on the arc to all the way around the corner and into my office proper.

This week too I am off to visit a very unique teaching facility for autists about an hour from where I live and work. We've met to discuss options from my own specific realm of hand tool woodworking to see how we can develop opportunities for young adults on the Autism Spectrum. I think it is especially adaptable for those towards the high functioning end as autists because it is so much less invasive to say nothing of safety and noise etc. In past classes through the decades I have seen how with the right tools, wood and workbenches, woodworking can develop and channel thought processing more directly and tangibly and thereby more understandably in many people. My friend Allan, a consultant paediatrician specialising in areas of autism, introduced a craft facility as part of his clinic to help autists and parents come together to understand more about how hand work can have the right rhythm for many of those on the autism spectrum.