Closing the Year at New Legacy New York

The cold snap yesterday came suddenly and leaves fell on the pond outside the school, creating a kaleidoscope of Autumn (fall) colour I just loved.

Today was a perfect close to the New Legacy New York year and I must now focus on the UK classes to do the same. This year has been a wonderfilled year and I cannot remember one that hasn’t been so. As I closed the door on an empty workshop I started contemplating our next years courses and setting the new 2013 schedule for both the UK and the USA. This year’s students carried many projects proudly home it’s true, but none of the projects meant as much as the skills they knew they had learned and mastered as they walked to their cars.

Scott was the last one to clamp up this evening. We worked together and Stefan from the next bench jumped in to help too. We filmed much of today’s workshop, which is something I wanted to do for some time. The laughter and the anxiety moments mingle with one another at different intervals. It’s an amazing charge in the atmosphere when yet another project goes into the clamps.

 

As I closed my cupboards and loaded my tool boxes and chests I felt the same contentment I have always felt when I brought a new piece to rest. Completion brings closure to a day’s work, a week’s work and for me a year’s work here in the USA. We now have two and a half months to the holiday season. Still much to do, but closing the shop this evening gave me true joy and satisfaction knowing that I had concluded what I started to do a year or so ago. Satisfaction can be an illusive thing in our digital world of nothingness. When a box stands on the bench full of my favourite tools, and I have just seen 10 or 20 new woodworkers walk away, it means something. It means that are confident now, that they understand that a plane WILL do what they want it to do. That sharpening a scraper is not intimidating and so too a saw or a plane. They are willing now to take risk, accept responsibility for mistakes, pick themselves up and get on with the job. That’s the end of another  successful year and one I feel proud of too. Thank you my friends in the USA. Watch for our schedule and of course I will look for you in New Jersey and Maryland, Florida, Colorado and Kansas too. We will be in Indiana and Texas also all being well.