I live on an island that boasts a world famous wooden boat building school. A few weeks ago, they offered a two day workshop called Woodworking for Women. I was all about that. Power tools! Yay. Seriously, I have a degree in theatre, so I’m somewhat familiar with the basic shop tools, but I’d never used the woodworking ones before like a planer or a joiner. Anyway, I know I promised you all some pictures of some things I’ve been making recently and one of them is below…the cutting board I made in the workshop (the other is a sweater for my husband which I still haven’t gotten a picture of).

The cutting board is made from rough lumber, which means I had to get it all the same thickness and make all the edges straight and square. Then I used the table saw to cut little grooves into it (there’s a more technical term, but I’ve already forgotten it) so that each piece is fit together with a little piece of flat wood that runs the length of it. So, even though I’ve forgotten all the technical terms, the gist is it’s three separate pieces of wood that I joined together. After that I sanded it for approximately a hundred years because apparently I was a little glue-happy and a lot of it had leaked onto the outside of the cutting board. Once I got the go ahead from the instructor*,  I then stained the two outside pieces with beet juice and oiled the whole thing. It’s pretty neat, if I do say so myself!

And yes, I made the bread too!

*The sanding was a lot like writing a book synopsis for my agent. I kept saying, “Am I done yet?” and she kept checking it out and saying, “Not yet. Keep trying.”