Broken Printer

I am having bad luck with technology these days. A week ago my laptop died, but my mother-in-law was nice enough to loan me her old desktop so I have something to play with. Then today my printer died. Now this may not seem to be an obvious link to Christmas ornaments, it is actually quite simple. I am not as creative as I like to think. You see, most of the things I cut come from my computer, either as other people’s patterns or as things I have created. My printer is also my scanner/copier so the dozens of magazines and books are sort of useless right now too. I could try tracing a pattern, but that sounds like a lot of work. For some foolish reason I had previously thought it would be a waste of paper to have a printed stack of “things to cut”, opting for the digital version. I should have known better then that, but it happens.
So back to the Christmas ornaments. Last week, or maybe the one before, I ordered a bunch of Christmas ornament patterns from Sheila Landry Designs (aka ScrollGirl) and tonight I was planning on cutting a bunch of those designs. I even dug through my cd’s to find Christmas music, since 80’s and sunshine don’t really bring my Christmas spirit. Needless to say I found myself in the mood to make something Christmasy, but was lacking any creative ability to draw even the simplest of Christmas icons (meaning I screwed up a tree) Then I remembered that I have a pretty good ability to draw words. I have gotten good at this because it is something my students love to do in their spare time in the shop. They find a scrap piece of wood and cut out names or words with the bandsaw, but they can’t figure out how to push all the letters together to still make them readable. I tell them that someday they can be as awesome as me, but mostly they don’t believe me.
The words are faith, hope, love, joy and peace. I had a tree branch that was about 2.5” diameter and I sliced off a few pieces to make these ornaments. I showed these to my husband and his buddy and went back to work in the shop, a while later there was a knock at my shop door. Greg and Joe had been busy cutting down a few dead trees from the back lot for me and had left a pile of branches. Now I have no excuse to not make sawdust for a while.

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