This holiday, Madelyn and I are here on the lake alone, and the kids off with their own starting
new family traditions. Knowing I would
be home most of December, I had time to make a gift for Madelyn rather than buy
one. I had been thinking for a time that
I want to this, and now I had time, materials and opportunity. It all began this summer when I was doing
some yard clean up and found out that our chainsaw carved eagles had rotted and
had to be turned over to the campfire.
That same day my old ski chair started to collapse under my weight, so I
knew it was destined for the fire as well.
This chair I had made at least fifteen years ago and the materials are
entirely old Nordic, or cross country, skis.
For years this Adirondack style chair sat on the porch in the weather,
and when we moved to the lake, it came with us.
Now that it was sitting on a covered porch the chair lasted longer than
expected but I did know it would eventually need to be replaced.
Save it for the
solstice fire,” Madelyn suggested, and I agreed. What better fuel for a solstice fire than
wood that has served well in two functions.
Each year we have a gathering on winter solstice and celebrate the cosmic
event with friends around the fire. This
year we can’t have our solstice celebration so my old chair lie forlorn on the
campfire woodpile under the alders waiting.
Of course, I promised
to build another chair from the old skis collected in the loft of the woodshed,
but I am a hundred percent guy. Hundred
percent in or hundred percent out. Right
then I was out. The skis were stacked in
the woodshed, more than enough to build another chair. I had the tools — better than I had when I
built the first one — and I had a warm dry garage to work in. All I needed was the motivation. Instead of working on the replacement chair, I
planned. Madelyn was going to be laid up
after knee replacement and would need to be close to the house for while. She would be cut off from the garage. That would
be perfect time to build the new chair and I could make it a Christmas
gift. “Brilliant,” I said.
The new Solstice Chair |
Suddenly it was
December, Madelyn had the surgery, and we made it home a week before Christmas.
I suddenly found that the time I was
going to “be around the house” was taken up with nursing duties. In between servicing the ice machine, helping
with exercises, changing dressings, tracking and dispensing seven different
medicines, making meals, and giving my gal some company, I would sneak out to
the garage and tinker on the chair.
Timing was tricky because I worried about sawing and drilling being
enough noise to wake Madelyn when she was sleeping. Those first few days I got her settled on the
ice machine or the CPM she would fall asleep.
I was able to strip the hardware from the skis and get my cuts
planned. Eventually time worked out fine,
and two days before Christmas the new chair was finished and I was working on a
second. All the time I was working on
the first chair I was planning scheming and serving the web for different
designs for chairs. I found one I liked
and wanted to try, but I was committed to my own design for Madelyn’s
chair.
Now I had the bug, that hundred
percent thing had me working mind and body on ski chairs. I have a goal is to find or develop a simple
design that used the least non-ski wood in the construction, simplicity is also
important.
Test chair 2.0 |
Madelyn is healing
fast and we are on our way to a normal routine.
I can see now that it was a prefect timing to have a distracting project
like this ski chair to keep me engaged during this different kind of
holiday. Maybe this week I can set my
gal in her new chair on the porch and oversee life on the lake in the New Year,
2016 while I burn the solstice fire just a little late.