What Weekends Are For

This chest of drawers is from the 1820s, meaning that it's even older than my own chest ha ha. Thus I knew I should exercise care in replacing its one missing knob.I had bought it just last Monday in a used furniture store and nicked and flawed as it is, I could still see its beauty. It reminded me of the sort of chest where our girl Emily Dickinson might have hidden away her sewn-together packets of poems.This past weekend I was up early both days in my quest to find the true artist who coud use his lathe to 'turn' a new knob for me, out of mahogany like the other nine knobs. Ad didn't I find him thanks to a series of recommendations  that brought me at 9am on those two days to two different parking lots in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. The first day the man studied one of the intact knobs that I had brought along and less than 24 hours later here he was again with what looked like its exact replica, which he had made with his own hands.Lately I've been trying really hard to focus on the fact that weekends are for stopping your antlike work a while and looking around some. I looked at the stats page for this blog and saw with some alarm that as of last Friday I had written some 1300 posts here. Ant indeed!So instead of writing, or answering emails, or responding to Facebook messages and besides making those two forays at knob replacement, I basically sat in one room reading and thinking and listening to music.I hung this print of a semi-famous Impressionist painting on the wall.I found I didn't like it much anymore and thought to give it a try in a new place. I decided that the problem was its gold frame which seemed a bit over the top to me so I borrowed the belt from David's bathrobe and hung it along the side to see if it would benefit from a darker frame.Then I read some more and thought some more and listened to music some more while 'auditioning' this look - well, that is until David wandered into the room to ask me if I had any idea where the belt to his bathrobe might be.I gave it back to him but that was fine: i knew by then what I would do.And so on my way back from meeting the wood-turning genius for the first time I stopped at the hardware store, bought some Espresso-colored paint and painted the frame. So much better, right?And while I was there I also got some nice dark woodstain to address the old chest with. I applied it as well to a chair that has grown pale and bald with 60 years' sitting in sunny rooms and is now darkly handsome again and awaiting only some fresh upholstery for its seat, the work of ten minutes since I have the goods already.So in short it was a pretty nice weekend. And if anyone wants the contact info for the gifted woodworker Steven Crane, well, just let me know and, with his permission, I'll get it to you right away. :-)