Pegolation

You know how when you start a project it seems like such a complicated thing you will never get past all the technical difficulties?
And then you just put your head down and one thing after another, you just get into it?

And then one day you say to yourself "Holy shit, I'm almost done!"

You get a little twinge of separation anxiety when you think about not having more to do, it was such a part of your life.

That's me.

The cutoff scraps are piled up on the floor to the right. And my latest trip to the Devil Store yielded the cute little wooden boatbuilder's clamp which I always wanted one and I thought the guys who had and used them were pretty much the shizznit.

I did sweep the floor yestaerday, but I look around this place and there are planered-off curling wood shavings in every odd corner. I stuffed a giant paper grocery bag as full as it would get yesterday and the day before. With a pair of very sharp hand planes the shavings just seem to float off by means of the gesture alone, there doesn't seem to be any actual resistance work involved.

That piece of brown leather was given to me by Brother Bob for crafts but I like to look at it draped over the couch, and I only very reluctantly use any of it for actual crafts. I did split up the ropemaking jig he made me to make pegs out of, it was an early prototype that had been redesigned and reiterated. I did hate to cut it up, it was a beautiful thing on its own. But we must sacrifice for art.

Last night I whittled some scraps of red cedar into little pegs to tap into all the little nail holes in the, what is now clearly mast, which is no longer just a slab of used lumber, but a slender graceful thing of its own.
Somehow "mast-ness" has been incarnated into a slab of salvage, astonishing and beautiful. I'm thinking I shall take my time in these last stages and enjoy the sight and the feel of this fine thing, this blushing peach tinted thing revealed from the heart of some ancient forest giant..