Like an octopus trying to put on pantyhose

Quite by chance this link to a guy called Blaine Berry, Windsor chairmaker, turned up on Woodnet. He has a nice turn of phrase and the video is worth the waiting for downloading IMO. But best of all, he's coined a most excellent post title in his description of the glue-up of a Windsor chair.

Much kudos to my reader (well one of my readers - scarily there seems to genuinely be more than one of you ) who pointed out a copy of The Chairmaker's Workshop was listed in Axminster's end of line list. Unluckily, or maybe luckily given the obvious requirement to get the order up to £45 to qualify for free delivery , Amazon has pulled its finger out with unusual alacrity and the order had reached the point of no return. There's now word of actual despatch so the arrival date of next week should, with luck, be unduly pessimistic.

But lest you should think my current, most unexpected, run of good luck is at an end, 'tis not so. I had to go into that Cornish Mecca, the City of Truro this morning - principally for a new alarm clock. Now Truro, for a tool-, wood- and currently chair-obsessed woodworker, as a rule has all the allure of Guantanamo Bay. But occasionally the flea market (all of 6 stalls) has some decent books in amongst all the war-related stuff written for the benefit of persons who subscribe to War 'n' Ammo in 79 monthly parts with free plastic binder (real hand grenade effect cover). Viz: before Christmas I got hold of one on inlaying. This morning was "half marked price", so I took the trouble to trawl my way through "Napoleon's Cavalry" and "Monty's Victories" and found Beds by Jeff Miller and The World's Best Storage and Shelving Projects from Popular Woodworking (always nice to see a title chosen to under-sell the book like that, don't you think? ) Anyway, £4 for the two. And before you say "But Al, you're not going to make a bed are you?", I'd like to point out I wasn't going to make a chair until very recently...

Other than that, what with one thing and another, the workshop and all things woodworking have been a closed book to me today. Which means another night for the writing to come to the boil, which is a blessing. Although it starts to crystalize a trifle more, so I have hopes.

Oh, and I gather congratulations are in order to Philly, Gill and Dave on suffering mental aberrations and agreeing to become mods. Am I allowed to inflate my ego to alarming proportions because apparently it takes three people to replace me? No, I didn't think so. Good luck to you, chaps and chappess.