Better to give than receive

This saying comes up quite a bit this time of year and seems to really go well with today’s experience.

I made another pen today. This one was for my father-in-law. I gave one from the first group to my mother-in-law and apparently the father-in-law felt a bit slighted. I designed this one differently from the rest. One of my favorite aspects of making these pens is that every single one is different.

So while my wife was making dinner, I trotted off to the dungeon and began turning some wood. Everything was going well. The shape of the pen came out just how I had pictured. There are a few things that I think could be improved, but let’s not forget, this is only pen # 6. I know I’ll get better, so I’m really not sweating the small stuff. AND I think the pens have been coming out fairly nice so far.

After snapping a couple of pictures and showing the new pen off to the wife and my little assistant, I headed to the in-laws. They live right next door, so it wasn’t a long trip! I handed the pen to my father-in-law who was, as usual, in his recliner watching six different TV shows all at the same time. I told him this was his pen. Apparently this is the perfect example of how “it’s better to give than receive”. I felt pretty good about giving him something that I made specifically for him. He didn’t seem overly impressed with the shape I went with…

So here’s what it looked like:


who knows, perhaps I'm just reading too much into his reaction...