I got a request from someone I know to carve some spoons as Christmas gifts for his wife and her sister. He said it would be nice for them to have something to pass down from generation to generation.

And so, it occurred to me that I’ve finally reached the age where someone actually came to me to ask me to create something specifically intended to reach the hands of people I’ll never meet – people who will only know me through my work.

This got me thinking about some of the things that were handed down to me: my father’s anger, my mother’s codependence. My wife and I don’t have any children of our own, so it falls to me to make sure they don’t go any further.

The work’s been long and difficult – a lot more difficult than setting knife to Butternut. It’s a strange thing to find myself in the process of creating new potential heirlooms, while doing my best to remove all traces of a few of the old ones…