This one was a long and (in my mind) wierd story.

The very sweet and talented CelticGoddess of Etsy.com had gotten to know each other a little in the forums, and she was hoping to commission a traditionally themed bracelet display for craft shows - something that would be a bit more difficult to shoplift from than the regular “capitol T” shaped commercial bracelet displays. This is the end result.

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And just before it was finished, a producer from an Home and Garden TV show called “That’s Clever” wrote me and asked if I’d like to be on the show. I actually thought it was a scam at first, but it turned out to be real, and they came out to film me carving in July of 2006.

It’s currently March of 2007, and the episode is expected to air in June of 2007. Things move slow in the TV world, apparently.

Here’s a link to the episode I appear in, and one of these days, it will have an air date posted on it. - Season 3, episode 46 of That’s Clever. So, read on, if you want to know a little of how the display was made, and what it is like to have a camera crew invade your house.

Andee, the CelticGoddess sent me a very basic sketch, and I began to detail some suggestions. This was one of the latter ones. She liked the knotwork but wanted some subtle changes, and decided she wanted it to have horse heads, perhaps in homage to Epona. So a final sketch, I photoshopped in some wood grain to give a slightly better sense of what it would look like. She had asked the pupils of the eyes be a certian dimension, and slightly recessed, so she might glue in jewels if she chose.

After she approved, I used the usual technique. Draw it, trace it onto wood using typewriter carbon paper, and begin to cut. And carve, and carve, and carve. This image shows my rather cluttered workbench with the two horse heads mostly carved. (See the hgtv episode if you want a lot more visual detail).

If you look, you might notice the horse design on tracing paper, to make lining up the transfers easier, and the pattern for the stretcher bars that connect the horses on graph paper, taped and ready to transfer. Here’s the piece, assembled before gluing and stain. It is made of rock maple for strength and durability to endure abuse.

Here it is drying after staining. A little clearcoat and it was done.

So, here’s the finished product, and in a second, I’ll go back in time to an email from a tv producer.

See, right as we began staining, I got an Email from a TV producer from a company called “Weller Grossman". She had been wandering around Etsy and saw the faldistorium, tuam and stargazer chair. She liked our work, and wanted to feature us to the “episode selection comittee” if we were willing. There was a snag though. They needed to film a project start to finish in under 6 hours. Did I have something smaller I could show? and thus began the race to deadline.

I frantically wrote to the kind soul that comissioned the piece to ask if she would allow the filming to take place. She kindly said yes, and so I wrote back to the producers. I had this bracelet stand thingie almost done. Would it work for their show? The answer was “yes, it’s beautiful. Have it finished before the weekend, so we can show it to the people that pick who is in each episode.” Ugh! S othose sanding and gluing steps, the staining I mentioned a bit ago? All that finished after an all-nighter, and we sent the pics off at 5 a.m. the morning of the deadline. And what do you know, they liked it.

You can imagine the dances of joy done when I was told I had been selected. And then the crushing ache as reality set in. You know those cooking shows? You know, where they say now we’ve got all the ingredients together, and we bake for 45 minutes, and then they magically pull a precooked dish out of the oven that was just waiting there the whole time? Those are called “swap outs” and they allow the film crew to skip waiting for the entire uninteresting phases to finish. I had to make swap outs. For this complicated project, I needed, in fact, every step to have an illustrative piece. So, I needed a raw block of wood and they’d show me cutting some of it. Needed a cut out piece to begin tracing some of the design on. Needed a lined head to begin carving on… needed a carved head to finish up on… over, and over, and over. Each single little step needing a new piece. By the end of it, I had enough swapouts to make two an a half *more* celtic knotwork bracelet stands. For reference, that’s about 8 hours of solid carving on each one. Imagine 24 hours of carving the same pattern over and over and over into blocks of wood. This way, madness lurks.

But I got it all done in time (just barely) and the crew showed up on a warm June day.

Let’s see, in yellow, sitting down is Christine, the impish producer, and backup camera person. Behind her is my beleoved, Elizabeth. I’m next to her in grey (hiya). In red is Chris the basketball-playing director. Lowell, in the blue shirt, handles sound and works with Richard the camera-guy extraordinare, wearing the sony logo shirt. Richard apparently owns his own production company, but sometimes leases himself out as a hired gun (camera?) to HGTV, and Discovery, and The History Channel work on occasion. And so. They came. They rearranged my basement to make it more camera friendly. They set up several amazingly *hot* lights. I had heard TV lights were hot. everybody has. But I had no idea *how* hot… ugh. I was covered in sweat after a while. My basement has no ventilation. Christine, with a merry grin, strapped on a tool belt filled with colored electrical tape and scampered around the shop, covering up every brand label on every tool and supply I had. (Liz and Jason were hiding in the garage with a camera, trying to see, and still be out of the way.)

A year later, I am *still* finding things with tape on them that I was unaware of, or forgot. It amuses me. I actually keep the tape covering up the “flexcut” logo on my gouges as a little reminder. (stray shot from much later)

Filming took about 6 hours, without much in the way of breaks. There were a lot of “hold it, do that agains” called out. two differnt cameras swooping around in my peripheral vision, trying to get artsy shots as I worked. It was hot and oddly exhausting, but it really was a great deal of fun. The entire crew was nice. It was one of Christine’s first shots in the field, so she was hyper and funny. Richard had a lot of interesting stories to tell of things he’d shot. This was not long after the Katrina hurricane and he’d been down to help some documentary crews. Chris, the director, who apparently used to play college ball did a few trick shots to distract the local children, and keep them quiet as we filmed outside. And the laconic Lowell was quiet, and skilled, and has seen everything a million times over. He apparently was a woodworker too, and we talked a bit. It was a blast, and if offered the chance, I’d love to do it again. I sincerely hope the editors do not cut the segment in a way that makes me appear lobotomized. but I suppose we shall see in June.

Here are some more images - me, looking bemused after another request to repeat what I had done.

Lowell, Richard and Christine setting up a shot.

A discussion of sound, as they have me spin up a circular saw and yell “yeargh” at the camera for no good reason. I figure if I appeased them with one silly act, they’d let me skip other silly acts… and really, yelling “yeargh” is getting off pretty lightly in the silly department.

On the workbench is the camera monitor, so the director can see all that is being filmed. Here he stands and illustrates a shot he wants to Cristine, the new-ish cameraperson/producer.

Director Chris, and producer Christine studying the monitor as filming goes on… and on…

It’s kinda funny, six hours of film, spliced into 6 minutes of a 30 minute show. Weeks of hard work carving, all of it boiled down into those few seconds… it kinda amazes me. I am told that it is not uncommon to get 500 emails or so, after an episode airs, and to expect a few more as reruns air. I have no idea if this will result in anything, but it was fun, and I was fascinated to watch it all occur.

Finally, jason takes an artsy shot of all the assembled swapouts after the crew went home. What a day.