These brilliant blue days, the warming sun, and… leaving for Savannah in the morning, lead me to believe in the loveliness of February.

ROCK.  A lump of sandstone that I found in the garden a few years back, and saved thinking I might someday carve it into something, or teach a grandchild how to chip rock.

WOOD.  A small bit of Curley Ash, cut a hundred years ago from a wide, thick plank that had a sharp bend in it. A crook. A sharp bend that was the reason a long ago farmer cut the tree, milled the planks and kept them safe in his attic. Those planks were destined to be shaped into runners for a horse-drawn sled. There were three such planks, all cut from the same tree tree trunk, all crooked and saved in the attic, and all sharing these delightfully tight curls in the grain.  When that portion of the old farm house was torn down, forty years ago, I saved the sled-crooks for myself, until yesterday when I cut into one of them.

ROCK & WOOD.  I created a sculpture from the hand-split ash chunk and the rock. I call it “Sailing in Vermont.” Here it sits, a gift for my friend Justin on his fortieth birthday. It sits on a table I made for Justin and his family ten years ago out of thick hand-plained boards from the walls of yet a another two-hundred year-old farmhouse.

When treasures like these come together, I am glad for such gatherings.

A few tunes for bridging to the New Year, while playing with light.

I have a love affair with the simple pencil. Pencils help me design and describe nearly everything I do. I prefer to talk about ideas with a pencil in my hand. There must be over a hundred yellow pencils waiting in jars and old cans around the shop, ready when I need them. I was not born with an ear shaped in a way that allows for tucking a pencil behind it, much to my disappointment. I do have a pocket in my apron just for pencils. I favor the yellow octagonal ones and I prefer them to be sharp. I know I press too hard on the poor things and regularly snap the leads, hence the multiple locations for fresh pencils. The end of my day often consists of gathering the scattered pencils for a short crank in the sharpener and a return to their jars. Instead of a video showing me sharpening pencils, which, I think, would be very satisfying, here is an ode to these essential tools.

New Pencil

An octagonal wooden shaft
Wrapped in yellow paint.
At one end, a soft, pink jewel
Set in a silver ferrel.
A streak of stardust runs through the middle
to a sharp point on the free end.

Randy Leavitt