A benign neglect has settled over the workshop. It’s December, and there is a normal seasonal diversion of activities. I’m busy at work, finishing Christmas preparations, gift-giving, and getting ready to bake the poppyseed bread. We’ll decorate the tree tonight – we’ll hang glittering objects above the reach of kittens, shining orbs, and family treasures.
The only things I’ve done in the shop are sweeping out the chips and sawdust and sorting through what I still need to complete.
There are some sample signs, an eagle, several cherry bowls, A ship portrait I’m unhappy with, and some boxes – actually not too much if I put my mind to putting in the shop hours.
With Christmas looming large on the calendar, I’ll tackle what I can’t get done in December in January. I am finishing work tasks at the television station before a few vacation days. Then, the holidays come.
My tradition has been to spend January studying and drawing up plans for new projects. But this year, I’ve decided that next year will be different. I’ll get rid of my backlog instead. Doing this will increase my happiness and remove the sort of nagging disgust from a pile of uncompleted items gathering dust.
I’ll bring order from chaos—sellable goods from partially formed work and space in the shop for more projects.
Discover more from Louis N. Carreras, Woodcarver
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I have a similar resolution — I usually start reading the books for the contest I judge as soon as they show up, but this year I’m waiting until January 8. Last year I had six categories and it evolved into 7 out of necessity (not mine). Now I have four. I don’t know why — whether it’s because I didn’t do a great job or because for one person to judge so many is unfair to the entrants because NO judge is unbiased and for the biases of one person to shadow so many categories is wrong — IMO. It doesn’t matter to me. It’s money, it’s interesting and I believe it’s useful.
One judge? I agree that is a situation which almost has to have a certain amount of bias built in. Not to mention a huge work load for the single judge. From what I’ve read that you’ve written I’d suspect that you’d bend over backwards tryng to be fair, but still what a load and responsibility.
There are other judges, a lot of them, but I think none of us should have categories that might overlap, things like that. But people wrote books out the wazoo during Covid and the contest was really overloaded in some categories. I read some categories that most people don’t have a lot of interest in, so… This year it seems things have returned to a more normal number of entries.
I try to be fair but I’m sure I’m not, completely. Sometimes I just love a book and that’s it. Last year was a beautiful book that was illustrated by a man’s kids. He wrote the story around the paintings and made the whole thing work. To me it was a masterpiece. Tucka-tuck Dragon is the title. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but man, I loved it.