To My Lovely Wife

Pennie and I have been married for 43 years. Yesterday was her birthday. In celebration of that momentous event I made a bowl, of course. She likes miniatures so this one is pretty small, just about 3” in diameter and 1” tall. It is big leaf maple burl from the Pacific Northwest. It has beautiful chatoyance and is deep rust in color, unusual for maple.

Pennie has been my shop partner since we started Sanders Woodworking back in 1977. She shies away from the big stationary tools but is otherwise qualified on lots of equipment. She is eagle eyed at spotting sanding marks (scratches) and so is often assigned the task of finish sanding cutting boards and puzzle boxes. I do the puzzle pieces on my 6” X 164” stroke sander.

Pennie is also a master organizer and spends a lot of time helping me arrange things in the shop. I can’t tell you how many hours she has spent in the wood room re-organizing when we get new wood in. I save all my shorts and have thousands of pieces stacked in there. She always finds room. We decided to put the new compressor in the wood room to isolate the noise and because it’s central to all of the shops. To do that, she moved tons of boards and sheet goods.

She has her own tools. She’s very proficient on the scroll saw. She has a mini table saw and chop saw for making wooden earrings and jewelry. I slice burl scraps on the bandsaw that she sands and finishes.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been partners so long. I’ve loved her since the very first moment we met. We had a whirlwind romance from April to June 1976 and were married in a cow pasture at our home in Raleigh. We used hay bales for seating and had a classical guitarist as our music followed by a barbecue and a keg of beer.

Happy Birthday Pennie!