September 15, 2012 at 8:56 PM
Post No. 21Anyway – what happened was this – we moved to a new house, finally our very own, at the beginning of August. That's all. It's really as mundane and as boring as that… Only it didn’t feel mundane nor boring. It felt like one of the most stressful and hectic periods of our life. And my blog is what fell through the cracks. Actually that's not even true. What fell through the cracks was Yonatan's poor quartet, which was put on hold for almost three months, while Yonatan used all his considerable talent and experience to oversee the construction of the house, and if that's not enough, he also decided to do much of the woodwork himself. So instead of using the saws, scrapers and varnishes in his workshop for violin making purposes, he used them to restore, renovate and build some major wood-elements of our new home. Here you can see two of the six (!!) doors that he renovated, but he also prepared the butcher block that makes up half of our kitchen, built our son Itamar a new bed etc. etc.
It all came out extremely beautiful, and obviously much more exact and refined than doors or beds were ever intended to be, but I guess now you understand why there was basically no time to advance the quartet, and thus basically nothing for me to write about.
So – now our life has finally calmed down, the new house feels like a home, kids are all back to school and kindergartens, and work on the quartet has resumed, as has my blog…. I hope some of you have missed it at least half as much as I missed writing it :)
So as a teaser for next week's post, (which will deal with tanning, if you can believe it), here's a picture from this week of the four instruments together. Looking at this picture I see that what I wrote was too pessimistic since Yonatan has actually managed to make quite a lot of progress during these past weeks: three of the instruments are closed and ready, while the last violin will be closed in the coming few days.
But now, we will begin the really hectic period: we have exactly one month to finish the entire quartet, so that it will be ready in time. The four necks have still to be prepared and fitted, all instruments need to be varnished, and all four setups need to be fitted as well. It's true that most of the work is behind us, but wow – doing all that in a single month will be one hell of a challenge!!
As a side remark, tomorrow is the Hebrew New Year. So keep your fingers crossed and continue to follow us as we embark on the final stage of what is now already a 10-month process of Yonatan turning blocks of wood into four beautifully-hand-made, playing instruments, while I turn this amazing process of creativity into …well… words!
I too have missed you. Looking for your blogs from time to time, in case I missed them.
You will look at your house from time to time for years to come and talk about the work that YOU did to make it so beautiful. It will have been worth it.
I'll look forward to the instrument progress in the coming month--especially the varnish!
May the quartet be as successful as the house so clearly is.
Still hoping for that coffee-table book. :)
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