Finished Christmas presents

So I was finally able to finish my chainsaw art, here is the bear.  His eyes may look a little wonky but that’s because I used some polished Lake Superior agates that were found at my father in laws house. His head didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted, but it was better than the first one I made years ago. I haven’t finished the signs he will hold.  One is going to say “welcome” and the other will say “go away”.

The next one is the first eagle I made.  I think it’s pretty good, but compared to what I wanted to make.  At least compared to the second one.  The problem with the second was that the log was smaller so I had less room for the body.  Next I want to make one with its wings stretched out, it would be flying sideways, so all the feathers are stretched out.  Probably a few levels beyond my skill, but it would be fun to try.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

I keep coming back to thoughts about how we reflect our thoughts on to others.  I don’t always see it right away, but it becomes obvious after the fact.  For example, my wife and I had an argument today and she ended up calling me an idiot.  Later after we argued about it, she admitted she thought herself to be an idiot for what she did.  She didn’t necessarily mean to call me that (at least that what I’m telling myself!).  In the heat of the moment she fired that at me, my feeling were hurt and I got angry at her.  The anger she had was towards herself, but what I saw was the anger directed at me.  I see more and more that many times the thoughts and actions I see from another person are not always easy to interpret and instead of mirroring what you see, like yelling back at a person who is yelling at you, it helps to remain calm and try to see what is behind the thoughts of the person in front of you.

I am not good at this at all, the person who I end up confronting the most is my wife and it’s easy to fall into old habits of argument that I quickly lose this introspective view.  It is only in hindsight that I am able to calm down and think through what happened and then go back and either speak my disagreement or apologize for something.

Another example is American politics at the current moment.  I do my best to take a neutral stance for one good reason.  None of it is worth getting that worked up about.  I listen to one side accuse the other of the thing they are doing.  That side denies the accusation and throws something back at the other that they are guilty of doing.  It really is quite the show when you take an observer view.  I’m not interested in forwarding either a Democratic or Republican viewpoint in this forum.  I will say that deep down somewhere there are good ideals that are put forth by each of them, but it is such a muddy mess right now that neither is worth my time.  The reason I brought them up is because the mirror blindness that they have is so striking that there are few examples I can think of that illustrate my point any better.  I hear them calling each other hypocrites and what I see is that they should be calling themselves hypocrites because they can’t see that they are guilty of they very behavior that they accuse the other of.  They are unable to see beyond the fact that while both have good ideas, they both can be right.

I’m right and therefore because I’m right you must be wrong is the human thought that we all seem to have written into our DNA.  Even I’m right, so you must be slightly less right is still creates the same problem in the end.  Essentially it sums up politics and the argument I had with my wife this morning.  If you’re not for me, you’re against me.  If I’m right, you’re wrong.  If you don’t agree with me, then you disagree with me.  It’s very hard to see without the detached viewpoint that black and white are rarely the only two choices,  there are a million shades of grey or whatever color you want to choose.  Immediately assuming that you know what someone else is thinking based on what you are thinking is most often a way to keep conflict going.  Someone might be yelling back at you because you scared them and that’s their defense mechanism kicking in.  The assumption that they are wrong or that you know what they are thinking is hard to stop.  I need to continue to work on this, I think it is a key to making this world a better place.

One more project almost done

I’ll continue on my seemingly endless parade of projects I’m working on.  My daughter needed a new set of drawers for her clothes.  I’m not a big fan of buying stuff like that when there is such an overwhelming supply of furniture in this world that can be fixed up and look like new again.  So for about 75 dollars I am going to fix up and refinish my parents bedroom set that they no longer need.  As I said in the last post they are moving and their house is a bit smaller, so they were looking to get rid of some of their bedroom furniture.  The two pieces I took have been empty for 14 years.  They bought new pieces when they moved last time and just put the old ones in their extra bedrooms.  Now the new house has smaller bedrooms and they don’t need such large pieces in the rooms anyway.

Here is the partly finished product.  I used a chalk paint and then lightly sanded the edges.  I am in the middle of applying a wax coat to protect the paint and then all I need are a few handles and some grease for the drawer slides and away we go with updated furniture.  You can see the original brown that they were by looking at the taller piece in the back.  They also had some ugly large handles, whic I plan to replace with darker thin ones.  My daughter, even though she picked the color and helped paint everything is not liking this change.  She likes her old kid sized dresser and is not liking this much.  I’m pretty sure she’ll come around when it’s all done.  It’s going to be very nice looking when I finish.  I probably could sell each one for a few hundred after the work I put in, but I like them too much!

Art

I’m continuing with my steady progression of hobbies and interests that never seem to stop.  Today I started working on some chainsaw artwork for my parents and and my father in law.  If they turn out like I hope they will be the perfect Christmas presents for them.

I’m not quite ready to show my progress yet, but here is one of the logs I’m going to be working with.  Its actually going to have some meaning hopefully for my parents as this is from one of the trees they cut down a few months ago.  This was a tree that was in front of my grandparents house and it had to go to make room for the new house they are building on that site.  So far I’m working on a half eagle and a bear.  So we’ll see how it goes, maybe I’ll have some time to take some better pics tomorrow.