Saddle’s Still Warm

That’s to say I am doing well, great, better than I thought I would be by now, my hands have been fixed by the surgeon and staff at Pulvertaft Hand Centre and so I thank them and thank you for all of the support and well-wishing over the past few weeks. The Dupuytren’s contracture on both hands is no longer visible and I feel a happier man even though I did not think I could ever be happier than I did before the procedures. My work has led me to a lifestyle of fullness I might well never have had any other way and nothing beats that. The fingers align nicely now and I anticipate that this will be the long-term solution even though the Dupuytren’s never actually hampered or hindered my work in any serious way at all. Why then did I have the surgery? I had the procedure to halt its progress because it might well have done so in the coming years and my work in teaching and training is not yet finished.

I’ve given it long enough now to allow myself a softer life and both hands and fingers are working amazingly again. Today, I return to a full week creating again with new content and videoing my work flitting in and out of my brain. I plan to ease into the workshop, combine art with photography and making; I have no hesitation and, as before, if I do feel any twinge telling me differently I will change my approach. Over the weekend, I enjoyed some softer work organising things and creating drawings along with some woodblock for printing at some future point. That went really well and was very easy on my hands. I also spent time in the wonderful Ashmolean Museum here in Oxford where I wanted to see the new colour exhibition along with the work of Flora Yukhnovich. She created six stunning and massive art pieces many feet long and wide and the colours from her pallet are just so stunningly bold and sympathetic in creating depth and dimension in each composition. https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/ashmolean-now-crews-chubb-yukhnovich

The museum is filled with the works of diverse cultures along with all of the elements creative museums should be known for and invested in. Spanning the centuries and millennia, it’s also important to live with new currency too, so that content includes art created in recent weeks and months. With the paint almost still wet with the slightest aroma of linseed oil lingering, the works were hung to view and I felt a gratitude to the Ashmolean creativity for commissioning the works. It made my half-day rewarding.

Some of my new working, and this is more for myself in the illustrating of a book on hand work in wood, involves different methods of individualised printing using wood. I suppose currently I have around three books in the offing as manuscripts that I plan to complete in the coming two or three years. The wood block will be for a unique book combining writing as in poetry with woodblock prints combined.

A more important one necessitates my return to the USA and spending time in my second homeland of Texas. Did you know that back in the 1980s, Texas had a Texas Embassy in London where they physically issued a Texas passport? There are some gaps in memory along with needed artwork and pictures I need to gather and dwell on between my arriving to live just north of Uvalde in the South and following the cattle trail on up via Fort Worth and Dallas in the North. Did you know that you can follow this cattle trail by following the existing remnant in mesquite forested areas on that route? Yes, cattle fed on the mesquite beans, plopped their dung with seeds embedded and created the ideal environment for the seeds to thrive. The cattle drives were to get the longhorn beef cattle across Texas to the railroad for distribution so I followed different parts of the famous Chisolm Trail in my moving across Texas over my 23-year period living there.

Chisolm was a trader of Scottish-Cherokee descent and owned the trading posts to where the cattle were driven in Oklahoma and Kansas where the cattle were sent East. I often thought about my harvesting 100-150-year-old mesquite trees that started their growth during that period of history. Indeed, I have some of that mesquite in boards right here in England with me and you have seen me use some of it in my projects of late. When I return to Texas I find time to accept a couple of speaking engagements as I travel, time permitting, as long as I am not too distracted from my main reason for taking the trip. I am planning this for some time around late April and hope to rent a small campervan for the tour. I have friends in the Hill Country I’d like to see and thank for the support they gave me but we will see how that fits nearer the time.

Making the new handle for the tenon saw was quite a surprise for me. perhaps it was because of the nature of the project, the fitting of something so rugged and angular to fit into my hand with the intention of enclosing it in a grip. It was in creating the comfort of shape where I found the work transporting me through a task I found increasingly more comfortable and that after just a week after the surgery. The rasp slipped over the angular corners and reduced the square awkwardness quickly and evenly, making me thankful for Auriou rasps from France. Yew is a dense-grained, hard wood (1520 lb on the Janka, so harder than white oak at 1350lb) with a fine and uniform texture that finishes beautifully. In appearance, Yes, at first glance, Yew might at first be mistaken for a soft softwood like Scotts pine when in reality, working its density is comparable to many of the mid-range temperate hardwoods. Yew is a toxic wood. In wood turning and using industrial equipment like belt sanders, random orbit sanders and such, make sure that you take all of the precautions. I have heard of serious consequences happening to those who thought they knew better or indeed did not take any of the usual precautions we woodworkers should take. Did you know that random orbit sanders are very, very bad for your hands long term? They are. Take lots of gaps between use. Like weeks! When your fingers start tingling even an hour after use you know something needs to change.

This is Monday. I feel the same enjoyable feelings about working this week as I always have on any Monday. Working physically and mentally is, of course, part of the healing process. My tools are still sharp and set aside from the work I left before hospital two weeks ago. Christmas is but two and a half weeks away and we will take our usual break between Christmas and New Year to say bye to 2023 and welcome in 2024. My plan today is to start a new piece and to prototype it first; whether corrugated cardboard or spruce pallet-wood (not a species really) I don’t yet know. But the gang will be together filming tomorrow and they are as excited as I am about the coming work and the coming week.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!