A Chilly Day in May

Today was raw. The ocean was choppy and dangerous looking.

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The wind was out of the North Northwest all morning, and it was drizzling much of the time. In other words, just the way I like it. However, as it is May 25th, I know many folks do not share my peculiar tastes in weather. In addition, it was the second weekend of the Holly Hill plant sale and I know they would have liked warmer, and perhaps sunnier weather, if not both. For me, however, it was just fine. Instead of having my furniture out in front of the shop and hanging out in the morning sun, I moved most of my stuff back into the shop and enjoyed my thermos of coffee under the cover of my ancient ox barn. It was all very cozy, and I had plenty of visitors. Despite the rain, many seemed more interested than usual in chatting about the furniture and farm. So for me it was an excellent morning.
I finished up the big armchair I featured in my last post. Foolishly, I didn’t take a picture of it completed. (I’ll try to remember next week.) Almost every visitor I had took a turn sitting in it, and went on about how much they liked it. I began to worry someone might buy it or ask me what I was asking for it. How’s that for being a businessman? I seriously worry that folks will buy the pieces I like. On my drive home, I spent most of the drive trying to figure out how to go about pricing my work and why I worry more about selling some pieces than others. I don’t have to worry about the cost of materials, so the only cost is my labor and creativity. I don’t keep track of how many hours I work on anything, so even if I wanted to I could base prices on an hourly rate. And charging for my creativity seems oddly conceited. So sometimes it is about how much time it takes to build them, but not always. The first piece I sold that I really regretted saying goodbye to was a table called

“crazy legs”. It didn’t take long at all to build, but I have yet to find twigs like those I used to make it. And I think the moment I sold it I knew it would be all but impossible to duplicate it, or at least to duplicate the aspect of it that I most enjoyed. So, the conclusion I reached is that it is not the difficulty of building a particular piece, but of duplicating pieces that I really like. As pleased as I was to sell the big cedar bench I sold at last year’s Holly Day Fair (I very was happy with the price I got, and that the buyer was so happy with it) I knew that I was unlikely to ever find a piece of cedar like the one it was made of, and therefore it would be all but impossible to duplicate. I know that finding the materials for another armchair will not be that hard (nor will it be trivial) but it will be fairly challenging to duplicate, because it was a fairly challenging chair to build. And so it is absurdly scary to see so much interest in a piece that I completed less than 12 hours ago.
The one type of furniture that has consistently sold since I began this has been benches, and the last of mine sold this morning. It was a small one that I built a few years ago. But now I have none, so I guess that is what I’ll work on next, at least after I finish up the table I started after I finished the armchair the morning.
As I was leaving the farmer asked whether I had seen the huge tree that had come down in Peck’s meadow. On my way out, I took a look and at first glance it appeared to be an impressive and possibly useful chunk of wood. But as you can see from the second picture, it fell down for a reason, and I don’t know whether I will be able to get anything out of it (especially since it is nearly incased in poison ivy vines).

And so I drove home in the cold drizzle, and pleased to see that the lights were on at Fenway. So I turned on the radio to listen to the game and thought about all those poor soggy people sitting in the weather that I like so much.

p.s. Every now and then I see or am directed to videos or websites in which people do things that are so cool, or brilliant, or in some way amazing that it pisses me the hell off. I know i should just look at them and say, “Cool!” or “Brilliant!”, or just be amazed. But all i can do is think, “Damn, i am never going to be able to do that.” Well, here’s another one of those sites. Enjoy.

wooden wristwatch

Now that i have looked at this again, i see that it doesn’t really explain that the only metal in these wristwatches are the mainsprings. Everything else is wooden. (The mini clock mechanism has a few metal parts) By the way, he’s self taught.