back in the wood shop

Today I was planning to continue rest and recovery from my sinus infection and overall ache. But the wood shop calls. If you have a wood shop, and you spend a bit of time away, it is an incredible refreshment to return to work where you left off. Today I am making a cherry base for the sculpture I started last week. The base will be sanded, routed, lightly textured and stained with black leather dye to provide a stark contrast with the red oak components it supports in the arrangement as shown, and called, Two Roads after Robert Frost's poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In this case, the work is defined by the path of the band saw, separating a single slab into two parts rearranged in separate planes. The black base will offer a dramatic contrast to the highly polished red oak as you will see in a later post.