I deleted the Instagram account on Tuesday when I got home. Not deactivated — deleted. If you read this month's essay you maybe saw it coming. If you didn't, here's the short version: seventy-four posts over four years, zero commissions, and a growing suspicion that keeping it was a vote of no confidence in everything I'm building here. So it's gone.
Anyway.
To the workshop. The folding drinks table commission that's been on the bench since August finally left the workshop this week. Six months on a piece I'd quoted eight weeks for, because I designed myself into a hole so deep I could barely see daylight.
The brief was simple — a folding table for a few glasses and a bit of cheese. And then I decided the legs needed to pierce the top rather than attach from underneath, which sounds like a small change until you're the one engineering a folding mechanism through a solid panel. Every cut is permanent. Every measurement is final. And all of it from an absolutely irreplaceable piece of Western Red Cedar the client has been nursing for decades. No offcuts to practise on. No second chances. Just the timber, the plan, and the knowledge that if I got it wrong I'd be explaining to Chris and Anne why their heirloom cedar is now firewood.
There's a lesson in there about preparation and knowing when a design is finished before you pick up a tool. I haven't learned it yet. But the table is beautiful, the legs do indeed fold, and the client is delighted. Sometimes the obstacles are the work. And sometimes, I'm the obstacle.
In the kitchen: a baked pineapple and vanilla ice cream for dessert at the in-laws on Thursday. All you need is a ripe pineapple and an oven, and you'll look like a genius.
The garden continues its annual zucchini hostage situation. We're eating them at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you're drowning in them too the recipe site will have you covered shortly. In happy news, the first red tomato has finally appeared!
And the Heavy Table — the tableware is ready, the menu structure is locked in, and council approval... well, that's an evolving situation.
Monday I'm back at the bench starting a desk for Leonie. No post about it. Just the work.