At the beginning of this year (2021), I enrolled in a Certificate in Construction Trade Skills – Joinery course at Ara Institute. It was a very interesting course, and I greatly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the course got cut short before we could make the Macrocarpa outdoor chair, which I was really looking forward to.

Ah well, we got to make a lot of good things — even if most of them were just small items to give us experience with a technique or tool. I will put pictures of some pieces here - some I am proud of, some not so much.

After the course, I was dead keen to get into doing some work at home — first thing would be to sort out the workshop and build some cabinets and storage. Turns out is isn't so easy when you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery lying about and a selection of well made jigs and so on. I made a cabinet, but have had to hold off on the drawers until I get some better methods of securing pieces while working on them.

Also get a little held up with the school holidays, junior sport and an inability to leave my computer alone. Sigh.