Despite ongoing gentrification, the warehouse district surrounding Oakland’s Jack London Square remains a muscular commercial hub. Nestled between a major highway and the bustling Port of Oakland, the waterfront district is a town within a town, an island of urban opportunity appealing to anyone who values the authentic remnants of a working city- barges and […]
Category Archives: daily handwork
The Gopher Guy
Gregg Crawford, aka The Gopher Guy, at Harmony Farm Supply Just like anyone with open land in West Sonoma County, we have a gopher problem. We have been able to keep them out of our kitchen garden’s raised beds by lining their interiors with 1/2″ galvanized hardware cloth, but have plans to cultivate a 1/2 […]
Trivium
Allegory of the Seven Liberal Arts, Marten de Vos, 1590, oil on oak panel I am one of those with the affliction of getting words and songs stuck in my head, sometimes for days or weeks and longer on end. I had the song Midnight at the Oasis repeating in my head during most of […]
Harris Tweed
I keep my favorite Harris Tweed in the wood shop for chilly mornings, the pockets loaded with cedar shavings to ward off moths. My father bought this one new in the 1950’s and handed it down to me when I was in college. It has served as my armor ever since, whether I am building […]
Frati Portico
Most Sunday mornings I cut wood with my friends Richard and Pierre on Richard’s homestead outside of Occidental. I call it chainsaw yoga and it is perhaps the only thing I do with such regularity. The routine is triply rewarding- we manage Richard’s woodlot by removing dead oak, supply ourselves with fuel to fire our […]
Shopmade Tamales
I love having a kitchen in my woodshop, especially during the rainy season when I often have something bubbling away on the stove while I make things in the shop. As I was making my prototype Windsor Longboard over the weekend, I prepared tamales for about twenty people coming over for our monthly ‘dinner club’. […]
Handstone Family
Over the years I’ve been collecting stones of a particular shape on local beaches, particularly during winter months when storms pull away the blanket of sand. Stones of this shape are rare but seem to represent an ideal, one that most beach stones tend towards, given local conditions. The stones fit snugly in the hand […]