Shuffling the deck chairs

I’ve been doing the equivalent of shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic in the shop. I did the layout for the carving of a clippership carving about two weeks ago. As initially conceived, it was to be a diorama carving. I cut out the wood for the hull. Planed it down so I’d be able to carve it with a dramatic amount of foreshortening, and there I stalled. I just decided that it was going to be too much like my last carving as I planned it.

So I’ve spent time looking at the wood, looking at the drawing, and otherwise shuffling things around in the shop.

No Shows This Fall

On another woodworking front, I made about seventy-five blanks for spoons, but packed those away after I decided not to do fall shows. Most of the shows, in my area, have come to resemble Etsy fairs rather than true craft shows. Lots of what I consider trash. I tend to believe in a craft version of Gresham’s Law. The original states that debased, worthless currency drives good currency off the market. Why exchange a good gold coin for change composed of trash metal with no value? In my version, junk crafts, mass-produced items, and cheap imports eventually drive good, handmade materials off the market at shows. People can be rather indiscriminate shoppers, and cheap goods are alluring. The simple fact is that quality costs.

The ideal show has a sort of trinity of value: motivated clientele, good sales, and, most important of all, after-show contacts. Boat shows offered all of those and were profitable. But they are three-day sales affairs with a four-day commitment because you have travel, pack-in, and pack-out to account for. Since the pandemic, I’ve stopped doing those as being too energy-intensive for my age.

So my determination after looking at the offerings of the shows I did or visited in Spring and summer, was to make the blanks against future needs, but not do any fall shows. I received invitations, but nothing rang my chimes – said, “Oh yeah, here’s a quality show doing a jury for craftspeople!” Being that I almost never receive commissions out of shows like that, only rarely sell more expensive items, and normally only sell smaller items, it’s not worth the effort put in. The soft spots in the economy added resolve to my decision to pass on fall shows.

Prospects?

I am not quite dead in the water as far as the shop goes. After abandoning the shadow box concept, I decided on that the blank I had prepared was thick enough for some of the perspective work that I originally planned and some additional pieces will be added to increase depth at strategic places. So I’m compromising with my original concept. The primary stall right now are the masts. carve them in place. or add them in. And how to make them look like masts rather than sticks. I’ll combine some of the three dimensional techniques on the water. So I think there will be some dynamic action, and sense of movement in the portrayal.

If this spell ends like others have, I’ll have, in the words of a favorite saying, “Made haste, slowly.”