New growth (about time!)
Home dedication gifts | To build a shop
Greetings and welcome! This week’s newsletter is some new growth in the form of photos and a few words. Our family is still settling into our new home and community, which is a bit like being a transplanted seedling, exploring new soil with our roots. That’s the end of this analogy though, because it’s brutally cold out in Minnesota right now, and I genuinely can’t imagine any kind of anything green sprouting from the ground. I hope you’re staying warm!
Home dedication gifts
In 2023 I collaborated with Habitat for Humanity of Winona County on a project to make eight home dedication gifts for new homeowners in their program.1 The first gift was just given to new homeowners last week. I made this cutting board set out of Cherry, hand shaping the corners and small handholds on the backs of the large and medium cutting boards. For me it was great practice with hand tools. For this new family, I hope these boards are useful gateways to many good meals with friends and loved ones.
Below are a couple of newsletters from last year about the project:
Crafting gifts & building community
On April 20, nearly a year's worth of work comes to an end at a presentation I'm giving. I'm going to be talking about and showing the items I made during my project with Habitat for Humanity serving Winona County.
Stories behind the project
Today I wanted to share the notes from last weekend's presentation about the project I've just finished working on. While I didn't follow these notes exactly, most of what is here was conveyed (at least, that was my intent).
To build a shop
Our new garage is under the tender care of carpenters, who’ve been ministering to its transition from a somewhat sketchy structure with four walls and a roof to a small shop that might just fit a car, too. The ceiling joists were overworked and needed extra support, the whole place needed a good deal of insulation, and just a couple of days ago a gentleman came in and sheet rocked the ceiling and walls. Soon it’ll have heat and the large concrete cracks in the floor will be mended. And then we’ll bring all my equipment up and see if there is any space remaining for a vehicle.
Repurposing something old into something new
We had an abundance of built-in bookcases in our last house. Not so much with our new house. So we took three of the shelves from my oldest kid’s bedroom and turned them into a bookcase, as well as vertical stretches for a shoe rack.
Back when Dad and I were initially making the shelves, we’d come across to nice pieces of Red Oak that had some significant cracks. We used it as a chance to try inlaying little rectangular blocks to help keep the board from splitting. I believe the block featured in the photo above is feathered Black Walnut. You couldn’t really see them on the shelves, because of their height on the wall. Nice to get to repurpose them into a form that shows off the little inlay.
Craftfulness
I’ve been reading Craftfulness by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin. Their aim, they write, is “to encourage you to indulge in being creative for the sake of it, for the joy of doing and making exactly what you want; to suggest that reconnecting with that childhood state of play through craft will return more benefits than the piece of work we have knitted, sewed, drawn, thrown or woven.”
Back in December I wrote about craft as medicine and I’m working on a project with several artisans in Winona to bring it to life through key aspects of their work. I’m quite curious to read more about the research that’s been done in this area, which Davidson and Tahsin mention in their opening chapter.
That’s all I’ve got for now! I hope your next couple of weeks find you planting some useful seeds, whether they be setting aside time for making something by hand or going for a walk with a friend. ❤️
This activity was made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.
