Doing hard things, together

It’s been a full day, a full weekend, a mostly full week, and I’m doing alright. Tired, but in a satisfied way. Shovelling ourselves out from the snow contributed, but so did pushing myself to build a stand for my planer over the weekend (with design inspiration from the Apartment Woodworker and Naked Woodworker). Happily, it’s done, and the shop continues to feel tidier—even slow progress is progress!

I’ve been trying to find ways to do woodworking more socially. I don’t make it out to the community woodshop much anymore—the ease of just dropping downstairs at home, though a very different kind of woodworking (my planer is my only stationary power tool), tends to outweigh the many, many benefits I get from heading out. But being in the basement is also isolating—there are times I’d like to woodwork in parallel to someone doing something else nearby, socializing by presence. For example, while T’s reading or knitting or while visiting with friends doing art.

Peter Follansbee points to spoon carving as one option. Done right, it can be like knitting: ‘Many years ago my mother-in-law was visiting and as we were all sitting in the kitchen, I got out my tools to carve some spoons while we were chatting. She looked at me and said “Oh, you’re getting out your knitting.” She’s a knitter, my wife’s a knitter. Our daughter Rose is a crochet-fiend. My friend Heather is a knitter. And that’s another aspect of spoon carving that sets it apart from furniture work. You can sit with friends and carve away and be social at the same time.’

(Follansbee’s post led me to this delightful series of videos on knife grips for safe carving. Session 10 is a “silent session” where Sundqvist just carves for the whole video, it’s soothing to watch.)

It might be spoon carving. One day, I want to build a low bench that could pass as furniture, while also giving me a space to do low intensity, relatively tidy woodworking upstairs, in parallel to family and friends doing their own thing.

One day!

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• Friday marked thirty-five years since the Montreal massacre at the École Polytechnique. Five years ago, in “Thirty years later”, I shared links and some of my own research I’d done into how politicians responded to the violence in the House of Commons. This year, Jana G. Pruden wrote a special for the Globe on the massacre, revisiting that day and reflecting on how little has changed.
• It feels we’re living through too many significant events at once. (Including, as I open the news while writing this, regime change in Syria!?) Mike Monteiro on how to maintain hope and optimism, despite it all.
• Yes, there are many ways this much money and effort and attention could’ve been spent in ways that benefit far more people. But, it’s pretty incredible the pace and success with which France has restored Notre Dame (via Jason Kottke, though everyone seems to be sharing this around). Symbolism matters, and, it turns out, we can still do big, hard things.

All the best for the week ahead.

Lucas