Three Days Before the Beginning

And three days after the start.

I've always said that woodworking reveals the personality of the woodworker.  Whatever holes you may have are shown, the solid areas are seen as well.  The negative and the positive.


The slabs come into the studio and I study them just like the I Ching says to do.  Walk around them, eye them, put them together in the various combos, make the plans, work out the steps.  And wait.  And do it all again.  Three days before the start.

You think you are ready to start so you tentatively take the first steps.  And stop again.  Is this the right way, is the plan still sound, should you change anything?  Three more metaphoric days after the start.

The wood didn't go down without showing me my weaknesses in my personality.....a couple of times actually.

Like the I Ching says though, what has been screwed up by man (not being sexist here by the way) can be made right again by the actions of man.  At one point I doubted this wisdom.  Didn't know if I had the giddy-up in me.  But I stopped again and did the three day contemplation thing and found the way back.

The glue-up, oh...the glue-up.  So so fraught with anxieties.

A preview of some of the grain.  Like angel wings.  Golden Brown ones.

 And for some synchronicity in the Carl G Jung's original definition of the word in the preface of the Richard Wilhelm's German translation of the I Ching....1949.