Signs of the season
It’s holiday time. Know how you can tell? Well, if you’re a normal person, clues are obvious.
It’s holiday time. Know how you can tell? Well, if you’re a normal person, clues are obvious.
The regular Muzak in every public space is replaced with Christmas music; it’s the one time of the year when bills aren’t the most numerous items in the mail; and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a holiday decoration of some kind.
But if you’re a woodworker, there are other, more definitive signs…
• Paying projects and commissions take a back seat to cutting boards and decorative boxes.
• You use the excuse of making gifts to order supplies and tools. (And it works!)
• You use the excuse of making gifts to get out of watching Hallmark Christmas specials. (Ditto!)
• The whole house smells like pine – and you haven’t cut a single piece.
• Nobody questions that you’re wearing a plaid flannel shirt.
• Friends you haven’t talked to in 11 months ask you to make something for a relative.
• There’s suddenly a lot more sawdust and wood chips in the dryer lint trap than usual.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
