During the last few weeks, I've been working primarily on the computer making "buttons", tiny icons for Forte (Tom's software co.)--specifically, for their new iPhone app. It's slow work when one is a mostly-self-taught Photoshop user (with significant help from Dylan from time to time) and lacking in a few critical PS skills (when it goes prime time, I'll post the links).
Beginning Wednesday, the 2nd, though, life started to become uncharacteristically dense--
First, there was choir practice Wed, Thurs, & Fri eves to prepare for a concert Saturday evening (great concert--Copland, Kodaly, Biegal: all challenging and quite stunning works--we did good!).
I attended two poll-worker training sessions to prepare for Tuesday's elections.
Friday, Rachel, Mike (in town from Chicago) and Walker (Rachel's roomie) stopped for a visit on their way to a bluegrass music festival in Truckee (a great time--but, who makes that much food as a "snack" for 5 people? sheesh).
Saturday morning, we talked with Dylan, receiving a big SOS for his Sunset table project (details to follow), so we scurried around for several hours to prepare to be gone for a few days.
Concert over, Sunday morning we arrived in SF by 10am to transform ourselves into woodshop elves. We all worked hard for two long days, making excellent progress, I must say.
I had to drive home Monday night (arriving around 10:45) to prepare next day's food, irrigate parched seedlings, etc., in order to be ready to get to the Nevada City polling place to which I had been assigned by 6am (we, ourselves, live in a mail-in-only precinct). Election day (all 14 1/2 hours) went quite nicely this year (different set of folks at a different location this year=much better experience, thanks for asking!).
Also, on Wednesday afternoon (yesterday), I received an SOS from Music in the Mountains (the org of which our choir is a part) to get more warm bodies (for free) into a concert that evening for which too few tickets had been sold--it was a wonderful instrumental ensemble (The Third Angle), just back from a tour to China, playing Beethoven, Stravinsky, Chinese something and something else. I was struggling to stay awake, but called Tom at intermission and I discovered he was close to home, so I left.
Meanwhile,Tom had stayed a couple more days to help Dylan finish and deliver his tables and get the rest of his life put together so that he and Emi could leave Wed afternoon (yesterday), on time, for two weeks in Italy. Last night, then,Tom headed for home after dropping them off at the airport, mission accomplished (whew!).
So. Why the big SOS from Dylan? You might recall that about two months ago, he had hired a part-time wood-worker to help him with a big load of work that he'd contracted. We had all known that, eventually, he would need to hire regular help if he was ever going to be able to turn out enough pieces to sustain the business. That time had come. Coincidentally, a friend knew of a guy who needed work and seemed to have at least some of the skills Dylan needed. They met and Dylan hired him for two months as a trial period. Lets just say that it didn't quite work out as planned. Nice fellow. Some good skills, indeed.
But he couldn't catch on to the kind of work Dylan needed from him. It turned out that Dylan spent as much time trying to teach him and fixing his mistakes as he received in real help, especially for the fairly high wages he was paying--all without any sign that things would get better. That trial period ended last Friday with Dylan's biggest project not even close to being finished, deadline looming.
That project, for Sunset Magazine, consists of two tables. Dylan had made the acquaintance of the designer that oversees the Sunset Idea Houses each year. This year, the house is a remodel in Los Gatos and will be featured in the October issue of Sunset. The Guy (forget his name) wanted a kitchen island, the design of Dylan's choice, and the Stink Tree table, which he'd seen on Dylan's website (http://www.dylangold.com).
This is the fourth "Stink Tree" Dylan has made. They're a bit of a pain to make, but people seem to like 'em. For the island, Dylan designed a beautiful wood/stainless steel piece with two two-way drawers. The top is a version of his signature "Wasted", a random lamination pattern of scrap wood.
When we arrived Sunday morning, the Stink was in pieces, still needing veneer and finish (first photo). The island was in many pieces still needing some tricky assembly (especially the drawers) and finishing.
Dylan set me to work veneering Stink while he and Tom worked on the island drawers (second photo), which had to hang from the under the top on aluminum t-bars--all new territory. Tom is so great at helping to arrive at complex solutions, step-by-step.You can see me finessing veneer in the third picture, after which there's a shot of the veneered and assembled Stink before it had to be disassembled, again, and stained (pics in next post). The last photo is of Dylan doing a final sanding of the island top before applying a finish of walnut oil. Those are work-table legs, not the real legs.
Next: Finish and delivery...
