The second board

The second board was much easier.  I knew exactly what I was doing and only needed two grades of sandpaper, 100 and 220.  I didn't waste time strapping the paper into a sanding block; I just sanded with a piece of the paper in my hand. The problem now is that I need something more difficult to make, but not too difficult so as to get discouraged.

Board

I completed my first maple cheese board.  The wood should darken over time. All I did was to sand the surfaces and round the edges a bit, and treat the whole thing with generous amounts of mineral oil, so it seems an exaggeration to think that I made it with my hands. I'm going to have to think of some projects that aren't quite as simplistic.

Sanding

I sanded down my first cheese board. I dampened it and will sand it again tomorrow if the grain feels rough again.  They say that if you don't do this step then the board will get rough the first time someone rinses it off.

Then I will oil it and it will be done. It seems very easy to make, but the point of doing it is to see where it leads after that.  The surface of the board I got was already fairly smooth on most sides, so it was just a matter of rounding the edges a bit and sanding two ends.

The point of doing it is just to be able to make something by hand. It is a missing piece for me.  I delayed start on this for a while. There is something about confronting emotions here. We are comfortable with the negative emotions we have; we just want to keep them close to us. We are less comfortable with new emotions, even if they may bring positive changes.

Other new things I'm doing: going to free concerts at the music school. I developed a new style of improvising on the piano, consisting of playing very slow chords in the left hand and very fast improv over them in the right.  The slower the harmonic rhythm, the more room for super fast elaboration in the right hand. It is not really a way to play in the long term, simply a device to use to develop a lot of improv ideas.