Growing up, my family took summer vacations to Lake Tahoe every year. My father would spend much of his time there whittling branches he picked up from the forest behind our cabin. When I was five, I was mesmerized by the coiling snake that year's branch was becoming in his patient and gentle hands and I convinced him to begin to teach me. The honor and pride I felt as my dad entrusted the pocketknife to me and trained me in its safe handling motivated me to spend the rest of that vacation striving to turn my branch into art.
Alas, my 5 year old skill did not match my vision and my patience was not up to the task of carving without splitting the wood. Once home I used a woodburner to put the faces I could not carve onto my would-be totem pole. Even this did not come close to matching what I had hoped to achieve and I never whittled again.
About The Whittler's Daughter
The knowledge that one could, with enough skill, mold wood to almost any shape imaginable and the wonder of that flexible yet strong material stuck with me, though. As did my love of the smell of freshly cut wood, the look of thinly curling shavings and the feel of a smoothly finished surface - hard and soft at the same time.
Decades later, I bought a 1913 craftsman in South Los Angeles. Being surrounded by woodworking that had held up and maintained its beauty for over a century stirred something in my soul awakening that 5 year old whittler's daughter within me. Somehow I just knew I could restore the built-in dining room hutch by building replacements for the doors which had gone missing who knew how many years ago. When I left my career to be a stay-at-home mom I decided it was time.
Studying the intact doors elsewhere in the house convinced me I needed at least some formal training. I took a joinery course from Emette Rivera at Community Woodshop and was hooked.
I have been working and learning in my garage workshop ever since and am proud to have finally learned what my father tried to show me long ago. With patience, practice, vision and the right tools you can transform living wood into a lasting and functional piece of beauty to be enjoyed for generations to come. I hope you'll do me the honor of allowing me to create something for your home.