I made a cane today,
it took about fifteen minutes.
My foot was acting up and I had to visit Abby at the farmers market.
Before the visit I popped into the shop, ripped a few scrap boards and planed them to rough higgledy-piggeledy octagons by hand. I traced on the hexagons, cut a rough mortise and screwed it all together.
I hugged Abby still smelling of Linseed oil.
I don’t think it helped my foot all that much. It didn’t not help, but it looked rather silly while it was doing the helping. Rather dramatic, too.
There being no sanding whatsoever might be my favorite part about it.
While it might not have helped my ambulations terribly much it did something far more important. It crystalized a fact I’ve been rather too reluctant about: I’m increasingly confident in that shop.
For a long time I’ve had to 3D model and scheme and measure and re-measure and double check and worry endlessly before I can even begin a project, let alone finish it. I think the next thing, the real thing, is the doing thing. The not trying thing, the accepting thing, the easy thing.
When I reflect on some of my favorite things about, say, Romulus, or my time spent in the craft havens of Tennesse or North Carolina, or Georgia, Vermont, the things I loved most were not the worried over things that hide very well the tumult that lead to their creation, no. My favorite things are the no-second-thought scrounged together jury-rigged, I’d really quite like this right now, type of solutions. The type of solutions real people do in their homes, with their hands, that stick around for years despite not being perfect, or perhaps they’re left unimproved exactly because of that charming imperfection.