The Toy Store in Mount Horeb

There's a hardware store in Mount Horeb that has a small section of fine woodworking tools. Its the only time I've ever seen Two Cherries chisels at a Do-It-Best. My guess is that they are catering to all the troll carvers that don't want to drive all the way to Madison. I like to stop there when I'm passing through and buy myself a toy. This time I picked up a little Kunz spokeshave. I had to regrind and polish the chip breaker to keep it from clogging, but after this and a quick sharpening, it worked beautifully. It turned out to be the perfect tool for shaping the profile of the stick shuttles I've been working on.

Many Hands Make Work Light

A call for volunteers surprisingly yields a Saturday crew of 5. Touching up paint, installing light fixtures and laying out the kitchen floor in the ongoing renovation of the upstairs apartment. Grilled beer brats for lunch and the mood is festive. This is how work should be done. With friends helping the drudgery fades away and the work becomes enjoyable. Bartering labor for labor, I head over to Julia and Annushka's to help rebuild the corner skirting. It feels good to be working on someone else's place for a change.

Mahogany Shuttle

For our Iron Anniversary, I got Shana an enameled cast iron pot (because it had to be iron), but the present I was really excited about was this little pair of stick shuttles. Shana recently scored a loom, so I'm working on outfitting her with the necessary accoutrements. I wasn't exactly sure what these were for when I started making them, but a visit to Susan the master weaver set me straight. It was my first time working with mahogany and it was a dream. I tried to do as much as I could with hand tools, so I resawed and planed it by hand and shaped the arched faces with a cabinet scraper. However, the thought of cutting out the mouths with a coping saw and filing them smooth made my head hurt, so here I used a scroll saw and a spindle sander. The little oval hole with narrow saw kerf was my addition to the standard design; a place to hold the end of the thread as you start wrapping it. Next, I'll tackle the warping board.

Cold Frame Revisited

With winter approaching, it's time to reconfigure the old cold frame so we can keep fresh, late season veggies growing long past the first frost. The original design incorporated a salvaged storm window, but it was too long to face south in the new raised beds and it's paint was flaking badly. I was worried that there was lead in the paint so I decided to build a new window out of raw cedar. Note the bridal joints and through tenons. I chopped the old box down to fit the new window.

Memories of Dreams (or Dreams of Memories)

How much can you glean from a dream that you think that you've forgotten? One that you can barely hold, just an image, perhaps a place, or a person. The plot fades, but the scene remains. What was it that happened there? Focus on the details. All specifics are only guesses. What is more real - a dream or the memory of a dream, both so ephemeral?

I am in the driveway of Grandma and Grandpa Haroldson's house in Iola. I'm with my wife, Shana. Everything is painted white - the house, the garage, the shed. The time is the present, or perhaps the future, and my grandparents have long since past, and maybe my parents as well. And now here we are, Shana and I, and we have inherited this place. We are in the driveway between the shop and the three-season room, discussing how we will use it. There is a jumbled mass in the driveway; a trailer piled and strapped together with objects like an Okie truck bound for California. We're sizing up the garage for a possible studio. This feels good, feels right. We are not upset or annoyed with the burden of the inheritance. We are happy to be there. And the nostalgia is sweet.

Remembering the dream, I ache with the knowledge of this place of my childhood being taken into foreign hands. I no longer have the right to go there, only to drive by slowly when I happen to be in town and burn with the injustice of a stranger's car in the driveway and the trim painted the wrong color, and so many flowers missing.

The Gardens

All work around here either comes in a whirlwind of activity or a series of small pecks that make progress excruciatingly slow. With a week and a half off between the end of school and the beginning of our artists' residency in Utah, we've seized the opportunity to dive headlong into the landscaping, and the results have been fruitful. We are watching the weather closely and tomorrow we will decide whether to have a truckload of dirt delivered before we go. But rain looks likely, so we'll see.



Working around industrial design students for the past few years has made me see every problem as a design problem to be weighed out equally in terms of aesthetics and utility. As a result, our new compost bin is a marked improvement for the one at our last house. It was made from repurposed cedar spindles from a carpentry job that, due to a calculation error, yielded a couple hundred extra (it was a big job). This composter features removable front slats that individually slide out to allow access to the compost.



Gathering stones on mother's day from the pile up at the 20 acres in Iola, where my father is engaged in a massive landscaping project of his own. He is "weeding" the woods, attempting to eradicate them of two invasive species; buckthorn and bayberry(?). Its a daunting task, as these two species seem to make up about 80% of the underbrush. Looking around, the task seems almost futile, but we walked through the woods where he had cleared large areas and the progress was quite impressive. He hopes to reintroduce native species that will compete and hopefully keep the invasives at bay. Its interesting to see my father following in my grandfather's footsteps, spending his days up in the same woods. For grandpa it was chopping wood, planting trees, driving the tractor, and sipping on blackberry brandy. For dad it is clearing trails, planting more trees and planning the construction of a cabin/workshop which may begin to take shape this summer. Back at home I'm on knees trying to eradicate the ever-invasive dandelion, one by one because I refuse to use chemicals.



After a year, a housewarming gift from my parents finally sees soil. Three new trees have been planted along the south side of the house; a redbud in the front yard and two apples; a Courtland and a Jonathan, in the side yard. The drainage was not what we had hoped in the side yard, so we may have trouble with the apple trees, but we mounded them up and buried gravel underneath them and now we will keep our fingers crossed and hope that there is pie in our future.



Raised bed of white oak 2x10's with Greene and Greene inspired joinery.

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Hello? Is anybody out there? Whats this? Could it be? The Sun!

'What of miniature boats constructed of birch bark and fallen leaves, launched onto cold water clear as air? How many fleets were pushed out toward the middles of ponds or sent down autumn brooks, holding treasures of acorns, or black feathers or a puzzled mantis? Let those grassy crafts be listed alongside the iron hulls that cleave the sea, for they are all improvisations built from the daydreams of men, and all will perish, whether from ocean siege or October breeze.'

- Paul Harding