On 14/12/2016, the server hosting this website will be moved to a new hosting provider. In consequence, the site will not be available on this day. You may experience trouble accessing the site in the following days, due to delays in the refresh of cached DNS records around the Internet (this can be improved by refreshing the DNS cache on your computer).
OK, so now it’s Wednesday evening and some normality has been restored. Time to provide an update.
Last week Thursday and Friday we had the removal company in the house. Thursday was packing day, only two guys, and loads of boxes. Friday they arrive with 6 guys and three vans. You see, our move is not straightforward. We started looking for a new house quite some time ago. Once we had found the right property, the danc with the mortgage company started. And what a dance that was (and still is!) Initially it all looked OK. Surveys done. More surveys done. And then they asked for mor documents. First I had to get all sorts of bank statements, even completely irrelevant ones, because part of the deposit came from Germany. Then more bank statements. Then they weren’t happy with the surveys and wants a proper structural survey. And after that they demanded an investigation and estimates for various perceived shortcomings of the building.
I am not going to bore you with the details. We lost patience and confidence, so we started talking to a different bank. That went even worse. Once they had received all the paperwork, they turned around and said: we are perfectly happy to lend you money, but not on this property. End of conversation.
Brilliant. Back to bank number 1. By that time, we had easily found a buyer for our house, and were getting pressure from them to complete the sale.
Eventually we couldn’t delay any longer. So now we have sold our house, but have not been able yet to buy the next one. In consequence right now we stay in a tiny cottage in Kinver. The entire ground floor here is about half the size of our lounge in the old house. And we only moved into here after staying in a hotel for three days, and only thanks to the good grace of a colleague of Helen. The good thing is that th cottage does not come with a minimum six month contract.
All our our stuff went into storage, including some things that shouldn’t have gone. On Monday we spent two hours at the storage place trying to find such essentials as the slats for our bed, the DVD player, and the new server for my websites. Found all except the server.
Which was very bad news indeed, because my old service provider has cancelled th service I am using, and the new server was meant to go to the new service provider in time so that the move is smooth. Now it looked like bumpy to say the least.
Luckily my old service provider has now agreed to extend my deadline to December. Phew!
I reckon that’s about enough for today, but I’ll keep you all updated as the story unfolds.
For the next few weeks and months, I’ll be unable to turn anything. A while ago, Helen and I decided to move house and, after many hiccups and bends in the road, things are now finally starting to come together. In consequence, I have started to pack up my workshop. All my wood is already stowed in a horse box at Helen’s yard (and it’s quite a lot, filled a transit van about half), most tools are in boxes, lights are dismantled. Still plenty to go, though.
The new house isn’t all that much bigger than the current one, and it needs a complete overhaul. At the moment it’s a bit like a time warp from the sixties or seventies. It does however have a major advantage: at the bottom of the garden (or let’s say: the far end) there’s a proper brick built workshop spanning the entire width of the garden, about 30′ wide and about 8′ deep. Mind you, just like the house it’s in need of quite some TLC. The previous owners used it for sign painting, and it hasn’t seen any maintenance for about 20 years. There’s electrics, but it needs replacing. The furniture is probably only good for one thing: a big bonfire, with the exception of the radial arm saw which the current owners have agreed to leave for me.
Luckily, the new house is only about 1 mile from the current one, so the move shouldn’t be tricky. After all, both Helen and I have moved overseas several times, so this should be a walk in the park.
Getting a mortgage was anything but a walk in the park. After the crash of the housing market a couple of years ago, the mortgage lenders have gone completely doolally. There’s the usual stuff with a survey organized by them. Then they wanted endless paperwork to prove that the deposit did not come out of some money laundering scheme. And then they really got stuck in on the survey and insisted on a structural report. Once they had that, they wanted drilling of trial holes and deep ground inspection with estimates of fixing any possible issues. All of which costs money. Makes me think that this is all some sort of organized self-helping circus, where the property owners (current and future) are being milked until the udder is dry. No surprise then that young people find it difficult to get onto the property ladder, what with all the obstacles put in the way by the lenders.
I mean, who’s got £340k to buy that kind of property with cash? Really.
Anyways, we are almost there. So for the next few months, it’ll be general ramblings and musings, maybe with a few discussions about other artists I have seen and admire. We’ll see.
… waste a perfectly good piece of wood. Or maybe how to waste a perfectly good Sunday. Well, in fact neither, but it got pretty close.
Last Saturday night, while watching a late romcom on TV, I started doodling around in my scratchbook, and when the movie was finished (and I was ready to go to bed) I had something approximating the drawing in the top half of this image.
Obviously this is only one half, but I often end up with half a design, since my drawing skills seem to work better on one side than the other, and rather than faff around with the other half, I just figure out a way of mirroring it from the first half.
So on Sunday, after a late get up, some breakfast and some more faffing around the house, I finally went through the collection of half finished bowls (which I keep for precisely this purpose), and picked a cedar bowl, which only had the backside finished, and the top covered in blue spray paint, with two shallow grooves marking the space where I wanted to do some decorating.
Now the first challenge was tha5t the original design didn’t want to fit between the two grooves, hence the bottom drawing, where I marked the grooves first with a compass and then redrew the whole thing. I then copied it onto some grease proof paper, turned the paper over to copy the other half, and taped the whole lot onto my cedar bowl. The lines were then transferred with a ballpoint pen, leaving faint indentations on the blue surface. And then I spent most of Sunday carving the design into the bowl. And after several hours of work I ended up with this:
Now you might say, not so bad. But the reality is that in terms of quality this is so far away from I am wanting to achieve, it almost made me cry. There are so many problems here, it’s unbelievable. Firstly, the paint comes loose when you put pressure on, it flakes off in small little pieces, making all the edges look untidy. Secondly, achieving a smooth curved line across figured grain is unbelievably difficult (for a beginner). Thirdly, the resulting surface is in places OK, but in other places the fibres just rip out and it looks like I hit it with a hammer. Uuuurrrrggghhh. Indeed.
In addition, with all the cleaning up of lines, the design now looks a little lost on the surface. That’s down to the fact that all the blue areas are now substantially smaller than they were designed to be.
Helen suggested I should get myself a CNC router. That would fix the problem with the untidy lines, but it would stop the paint issues. And it’s not hand made (although Helen rightly pointed out that the design would still be mine). Plus: right now I don’t have the space or the money to afford a CNC router. Not even a tiny one.
Maybe I need to take some tuition on carving. At least now I understand why some woods are good for carving and others are tricky. Cedar (at least the piece I have here) belongs in the latter category. Probably not the worst, but definitely not the best either.
Or maybe I just need to stop fooling myself. You can’t be good at everything, and maybe carving is on of this things I am not meant to be good at. I’ll have to think about that for a while.
MInd you, I still just the whole lot off and do something else with it. Which may just include trying it all again.
OK, here’s the last ditch effort for this year, as far as shows are concerned. On Thursday we are setting off to the Chatsworth Autumn Country Show. From what I can see so far, this is very much the same as The Game Fair, i.e. lots of shooting, dogs, fishing, etc. If the game fair was anything to judge these shows by, it’ll be a total and unmitigated disaster in terms of sales.
On the other hand, it’s a few days out with my wife, and generally having a good time. Hopefully the weather will play along. The forecast is not great, but then, who believes those anyway.
I have made a few new pieces, and I am on the finishing straight with a nice commission, a clock in art deco style as a wedding present for some New Yorkers. I’ll post some pictures when it’s done, but here’s a preview of the assembly so far:
The main body is a piece of wild cherry, the foot is ebonized ash, the clock face is snakebark maple (thanks to Steve Earis) and the dots are ebony. The sides of the main body will be adorned with 2 pieces of wenge, slightly protruding on three sides and rounded off on then top.
I’ve got some very simple black hands, should go nicely with the rest.
The design was developed together with the customer, so there’s no danger of him not liking it.
We’ll see how the show goes, and I’ll post an update here.
