From wood to synth wool

I made this on Saturday. This is my first ever woodworking project. I took a "Women in the Workshop" course at good ol' LV and had a great time. Women were there for all sorts of reasons. It was a pretty talented bunch. Many of them were very crafty in other areas and some had taken the course before and wanted to make another step stool. The great thing about it was I got to use all the power tools from a table saw to a drill press. I can tell you that I'm hooked. I'm hoping to sign up for the next project and build something else. Now I want my own table saw -- well not quite, but there's this handheld version that the instructor brought in and it was just so cute.

My co-workers were so cute. They kept coming in and would check on my progress, encouraging me, giving me tips. I was a bit slow in my progress compared to the rest of the class, but I am a bit of a perfectionist (as some of you know) and I wanted to understand the why we were putting things together the way we were before putting it together. Afterall, I want to be able to do this again.

At the end of the class we did have the choice of finishing the project with Danish oil, but I thought I'd bring mine home and apply an analine dye (that's a water based stain) that we have a good supply of here since it's D's finish of choice. The picture here is the plain unfinished pine just sanded down. I'll try to remember to post the finished project photos later.

The project may have jump started my crafty side. The next day I picked up some synthetic wool and jumped into a new knitting project. just like that. I haven't knit in ages and frankly I've been concerned about having dangly bits of faux wool around Gigi, but so far so good.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?