I realized today that I have not posted anything on here since last September!  Life has been busy and I talk about most of what I am working on in the MWA Podcast.  I have always had the idea that this blog needed to have a certain quality and just end up not posting if I don’t’ have just the right pictures or the right words. There are more blogs on woodworking than you can possibly read so what does it matter what I post? A blog should be about what you are doing, thinking, or just to share something you like.  So I am going to make a conscious effort to post more, probably nothing that you are going to learn from but just to occasionally say whats on my mind and it may have very little to do with woodworking at times.

So with that being said, let me share with you some thoughts I have had this past week. I have a great appreciation for things that are handmade and not just because of the quality but because of the story that goes with handmade things. There is always a story that goes with something made by a person and not a production line. I bought a belt buckle recently that the maker used recycled bicycle spokes for the hardware on the back.  The buckle is a nice buckle but not all that different from one that I could buy that was mass produced but it has a story and thats what I like.

In woodworking when we build something for someone its not the quality or the cost that makes it special. Some of us can build to a better quality than we can buy and some of us cannot, and almost none of us can build cheaper than we can buy. But go into anyones home that has a piece of furniture built by someone they know and that is the piece they will tell you about.  A table from Crate and Barrel doesn’t have a story.