Custom Cradle

I recently made a custom cradle for a customer on etsy.  I wanted to highlight this piece, as it is a bit different than what I've offered so far.  I do enjoy this kind of finishing, although it is not my first choice.  I enjoy so much the beauty in a piece of wood and love to work and create a flawless finish to highlight the grain.  This customer wanted a distressed finish, which honestly took me outside of my comfort zone.  It ended up being a good experience for me and I'm grateful for the exercise.  Unfortunately, these pictures don't show the antiquing as well as I would like. 

The cradle is maple with walnut rockers.  

I did a paint grade finish with an enamel, heirloom white paint.  The antiquing was done with a pigment glaze

and then mildly distressed.

With this antiquing finish, this cradle already looks like an heirloom and will have the quality of finish that will last for years to come.  

Generations of Craftsmanship

Mandy, again, blogging for my dad.  

In my living room hangs a leaf that my Grandpa Hazelton carved before I was born.  Etched in the back, it reads "Hazelton 1967."  

In fact, in the home of every one of his children and grandchildren hangs one of his leaves.  They formerly hung in my Grandma's house--it was always just Grandma's house to me because Grandpa died about a year and half before I was born.  I remember knowing, as a small child, that when I married and had my own home, I could pick one of the leaves.  That felt like eons away!  

What a tender moment, as my husband and I opened our wedding gifts, to see this leaf nestled in between some beautiful bath towels that my Grandma had crocheted a lace border onto.  This leaf was the first thing we had to hang on our walls!

This is the leaf hanging in my parent's living room.   When Dad's dad realized he was dying and knew he wouldn't be around to meet many of his grandchildren, he thought of this project.  I have wondered often of the thoughts he must have mulled over as he sat carving.

I think it is natural to wonder how you will be remembered.  To review your life and, with full recognition of all of your failings, hope that the good in your character will be remembered.  I appreciate the kind of patient, skilled craftsmanship that went into these leaves.  Grandpa Hazelton did a lot of carving and other woodworking.  As the years pass, the former years seem sweeter and those heirlooms of his craftsmanship seem more precious.

A Visit Home

It's Mandy, posting for Dad.  Honestly, I get to do everything on the computer.  My Dad is amazingly talented in the shop and loves working out there.  The computer, however, is not one of his preferred tools.  I have no talent in woodworking, but enjoy being on the computer...so there you go!  It works!

As I've worked on this blog (and dad's etsy site), the fact that I live two states away from my parents is often an obstacle. I wish I could just zap myself to Kansas and snap some pictures, then do the blogging.  As it so happens, I did a sort of 5-hour airplane "zap" and got to visit recently.  

My parents live in a Victorian home that they are continually "beautifying."  I think that there is something that my dad has made in every room.  I stayed in one of the upstairs bedrooms, which happens to be the home of my dad's chess table.  

 As I sat, in a quiet moment with my baby, I marveled at the kind of craftsmanship that goes into everything my dad makes.  

My experience working in retail and our recent quest for new dressers gave me an appreciation for my dad's work.  It struck me that the principles that govern my dad's work (see the Bridge Builder poem in the side bar...) are at least as important the skills he has worked to hone.  He doesn't do anything halfway.  

Dad's hat rack is a good example of this.  My pictures didn't have great lighting, because I just snapped them quickly when the baby was napping.  I wish you could see the beautiful the grain in the wood.

Dad needed a place to hang his hats and he had some space in his office.  He could have just gotten by with a functional, quick fix but instead he created a solid and beautiful hat rack.    

As Dad consented to open up a shop on etsy, we've had long talks about what he envisions happening, what products he feels good about offering and how we could communicate all of that over the computer. 

I have appreciated hearing my dad articulate the kind of values that inform his work as I get everything up and going online.  I have a few other pictures of his things from around the house that tell more of that story, and I will blog about those in the coming weeks.  It has been an enjoyable journey to reminisce over these creations of my dad's that just mean "home" to me.

"Where we love is home.  Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes