Giveaway! And the magic of spoons.

About a month ago, I went totally spoon crazy. I bought a hook knife on ebay and a chunk of walnut at the lumber store, and started carving my first spoon. I thought I'd get through one, maybe, then toss it aside, move on, and never carve another spoon in my life, but as you see... apparently that did not happen.

What followed was an inability to put down my hook knife. There was just something about being able to carve hardwood like it was butter, scraping out the inside of the bowl and being left with these long, curled up shavings of walnut, that put my mind at ease. The spiraled shavings looked like chocolate and filled up my work tables and my living room coffee table like I was baking an elaborate cake. I wouldn't even sweep them up, because the more that were there, piling up, the more accomplished I felt. I started calling them Therapy Spoons. Need some head-shrinking? Start carving a spoon instead. Seriously. Do it.

Yes, I carved a LOT of spoons {I've since banned myself from carving more for the time being}. What am I going to do with all of them? Well, I plan on keeping a few, and giving away the rest to friends and family. These spoons are an amazing thing to have on hand -- did someone do something nice for you? Here! Have a spoon! Did a friend invite you over for a really lovely brunch? Here! Have a spoon! Oh what, it's your birthday? Here! Have a spoon!

And then came the whining. Yes! I'm talking about YOU! What's a girl gotta do to carve a spoon around here in peace, eh? There was, ahem, a lot of whimpering that taking pictures of hand carved spoons that were unattainable was insanely unfair. *gasp!* How rude of me! My statements of sorry not for sale were met with both sweet understanding and a bit of WTF. Hey, I get it! I'd be mad too!

So, to appease, I'm giving you a spoon. This spoon, to be exact.

It's carved from reclaimed maple, measures 11.5 inches long, with the bowl measuring 2 inches across. It has no intended purpose, so use it as you wish! Scooping coffee grinds? Stirring something yummy? Sitting in a jar on your counter with your other spoons looking pretty?


TO ENTER: Leave a comment here, not anonymously of course. If you have a name that's fairly common please leave your last name, or something distinguishable, so I'm not left with eight Kate's and fifteen Erin's {ya know what I mean}. Entry will be open for one week, ending Monday, May 27th at 11 am EST. 

TO WIN: I will draw a random number {out of a pretty wooden bowl of course!} and the corresponding comment number will be the winner! I will announce the winner on my blog and on instagram next Monday.

{Oh, and I forgot to add that this is open internationally as well. I'm happy to pay for shipping anywhere unless it is somehow ridiculously expensive! In which case a humble Paypal request will be in order. Capiche?}

Fun Fun! I love giveaways! Good luck all!
Ariele

happenings

{small updates on some new things, and a mini adventure}

The studio is hanging in there nicely and dust is never under control -- a decent problem to have for a woodshop. I've been building things at my usual pace of slow-and-steady, always hunting for more lath and popping my head into every dumpster I pass, just in case. What's the news? Well, I have an assistant now! Just super part-time but he's been such a help in taking over some of my least favorite parts of the building process. *Ahem* {sanding!}.

Lately I've been noticing that every pattern I make feels like a landscape. Some more literally than others {like this black-mountainous coffee table}, but even the more abstract patterns make me feel like I'm outdoors, painting the scenery expanding out before me. Perhaps this is an important part of living in a city, finding the little ways that we can still see the space around us.

And adventure! I had a thrilling week of lath scores and exploring, two of my favorite things and it's even better when they are all rolled into one. I was tipped off that an old church down the street from me was being gutted to be turned into condos. It was gut-wrenching to hear about this, and to see it happening, but! One can't spend too many hours sad about unchangeable things, so we found the positive twist in the form of kindhearted demolition-crews who let us inside the towering old beauty to check it out, before it was all gone.

It was stunning and awe-inspiring and sad and thrilling. I was lucky enough to be allowed to take two giant bundles of hundred year old lath from the premises, and the guys helped me stuff it in the back of my car -- utterly perplexed of course, for what on earth could she want with all this crap?

Well, you lovely dust-covered, hard-hat-wearing, cake-eating men {yes, it was one guys birthday and they were chowing down when we arrived} THIS is what I want with all this crap.

Thanks boys! And if you'd like to see more beautiful photographs of the church, taken with a proper camera {as I only had my phone on me} look here.

{Also, go pick up an issue of Kinfolk, Volume Seven! I have a little interview in there and some beautiful photographs by the lovely Nicole Franzen. Go check it out! You can also see some more gorgeous shots of my studio taken by Nicole, right here!}.

projects at home

{in which I went mildly insane}

Yes yes! That is a rubber stamp! And yes, I carved it myself and printed it on fabric! I tackled this project a while ago over the holidays, as I tend to go a bit cabin-fever-esque and the crafty side of me comes pouring out during that festive season. Once a year I really need to recharge with a few materials at the opposite end of the spectrum from wood. Let's say... a glue gun, some fabric, maybe some paper, and a sewing machine. Crafty crafty. Switchin' it up. Plus, it's been a while since I did any makeovers or before-and-after funness and I was generally getting the urge to make something for myself --- for a change. So this time around I tackled a big guy: the biggest chair in my fleet whose current upholstery made me feel like a grandma, complete with cat scratched sides and all. Though I think we all know who's fault that is. Ahem.

I really had nothing against this chair until I got it in my head that it could be improved. The fabric never bothered me much, it was simply an homage to it's era. Era being the late thirties, according to it's label hidden inside the upholstery. It certainly had great texture, I'll give it that.

Of course, I assumed this whole process would take about two days, but it took me three hours just to design and commit to the pattern I wanted for the fabric. So even before I started I was already behind. An omen to how the rest of the project was bound to go.

First order of business: remove the old fabric. Yeck. There's lots of dust, grime, and greasy, disintegrating horse hair in chairs from the thirties, I will tell you that. Second order of business: realize that you hate the weird, old, oddly greenish finish on the wood and decide that it looks horrid with the new linen you have spent good money on. Now you are in a pickle. You are left with a torn-apart, fabric-less, unusable chair and you must suddenly commit an extra ten hours at least to stripping off the old finish on top of everything else. Damn.

So I got an old chisel and went to work. You gotta do what you gotta do. Am I gonna half-ass this project when I'm already going so far as to print my own fabric? No.

And whaddaya know, after hours of back-breaking scraping, a lot of sweeping, and some serious pain in my hand, underneath that green old mess appeared some beautiful maple. Raw wood! Love it. Okay okay, so I might be doing a teeny bit of half-assing as I'm only scraping off the minimum -- in the areas that are relatively easy to reach. I'm letting some of the old finish stay in a few places and I'm cool with that. Good enough.

Then on to printing! I used the old fabric scraps to trace and cut the new pieces and printed them all individually, as I wanted to control exactly where the pattern went on the chair. For lack of a better idea and the energy to hunt down that idea, I used black acrylic paint. I've got that stuff on my clothes before and it never washed out, so I figure I'm relatively safe on it lasting. But let's not say that I recommend doing the same, just in case I'm utterly wrong and it smudges all over someones ass in the next month. I'll keep you posted.

I ended up re-using the old upholstery nails pulled from the chair to tack the new fabric back on, and when evenly spaced I realized that I liked them exposed {originally the nails were covered over by a corded-trim, stapled on}. Nailing on all those nails took a good three hours, and pulling the fabric tight was a test of patience, but hey, now I fully understand why upholstery is so damn expensive. Next time you see an upholsterer, shake their hand for me would ya? What a job.

Anyway, after all this work, the chair ended up sitting, unfinished, in our living room for... forever.  Since late December. I did all the fun parts and then couldn't bring myself {nor find the time} to upholster the damn seat cushion. I have a lovely tendency to leave some projects half finished and let them stay that way for months {I still haven't grouted the kitchen tiles from like a year ago, and one of the bathroom doors only has one scratchy coat of paint on it. Yikes!}

But at least I know myself and I know that if I wait to post this until the chair is finished, it will be next year, and my poor neglected blog is already falling by the wayside.

So, still cushionless, here it is: TA-DAAAA!!!

I'm SO happy with it! And now we have a new goal in life: don't let the cat get his grimy little claws on my damn LINEN.

2012 has been fun

{wishing you all a late happy Christmas and an early merry new year}

I've been taking a break from the wood and doing a little cake making instead. And a lot of cake eating. And as a last minute thought I figured it to be the perfect time to wrap up the year with a few of my favorite instagram moments. Wishing you a year full of succulents and cactuses and cake and whatever your hearts may desire! Cheers!

 Happy New Year!

tables and time

{on not forgetting how it all started}

Many of us are probably feeling a bit of nostalgia right about now, with all these holidays full of memories and whatnot; Family recipes, pulling out the old ornaments, the yearly hustling of furniture to try and squeeze a pine tree into your house. For me, I felt nostalgic when I built this table. This little dining room table is a near twin of one I once built a long, long time ago in an apartment far, far away. Those of you who have been with me for a while now may remember {though I don't assume you would remember!} that there was once a table quite similar in pattern and size alike, that was, in essence, the beginning -- the first decent-sized commission I ever got. Hot damn. This meant that there was actually a person out there who found my work and liked it enough to want it. Other than my mother. And I remember feeling like "wow, is this a thing? People give you money to build things for them?". Whereas before I was pretty sure that you just built things and they would sit in your own apartment taking up space and collecting dust. And nobody needs three coffee tables laying around. Unless you have three living rooms. Yeah, it was a good day the day I got this commission.

What has changed since then? A lot. Sometimes I forget that I started out building things in the middle of my living room. Sometimes I forget that I couldn't cut a single piece of wood without getting sawdust on my couch. Sometimes I forget that I ran power tools six feet away from our dining room table and only had eighty square feet of total space to move. Most of the time, I forget that there was once a time when I didn't own a chop saw. *gasp!*

Yes. We forget things. And it's good to remember them. With this new year that approaches it's the perfect time to remember where you came from, where it started, and to appreciate where you are now -- wherever that may be.

Happy holidays! And what are your plans people? We are celebrating with our new-found tradition of Quitsmas, where we don't go anywhere or do anything in particular except a whole lotta nothin'. Which is exactly what I need right about now.

 
Merry Quitsmas!