There's a women's woodworking course offered by a workshop around here, which seemed appealing. With shift work though it's a bit of a bugger to do any kind of actual course that requires you to be there on a fixed day. What I should have done, probably, before I started work, is to look at my The Amateur Mechanic which certainly has a fine section on woodwork*. Bit late now though. My dad was an excellent teacher, and didn't ever seem to mind teaching. In fact, I think he rather enjoyed it.

I think he was passing on the knowledge he got in school, which was obviously back at a time when making good joints at school related to woodwork and not pot ;)

You can just *tell* that hours of human attention have gone into it, y'know?

Yep. There is just something about a beautifully constructed piece of hand made furniture that is quite simply a joy. I get that quite a bit with our kitchen (being as it's bespoke), the joints are all beautifully made, and it just feels... special. I have, I think, rarely produce anything that compares. But I continue to optimistically hope that I'll get the chance to. One of the character's in a book-series I read spends her relaxation time making furniture, and it has some discourse on her planing, I think it is, the wood, and the smell of it. It quite makes me want to sprint to the garage.

Although, it also makes me want to up the quality of my tools. The jigsaw is quite lovely, and my dad's planes, they're very nice, but most of my tools are cheap B&Q/Homebase/Whatever own brand, and you can feel the difference. The jigsaw is a joy to use, everything else is... well, it sort of does the job. :-/



* Also a super section on 'How to finish a new pair of boots'.