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