As I described in the book, we often searched on the beach for nice redwood, and then KW would use a chainsaw to cut slabs from them. After we sanded and put a finish on the slabs, KW would route a small depression in which I glued the photos. Still today they hang on the walls, wonderful reminders of my travels, encased in beautiful redwood. We had several inexpensive power tools to accomplish this, but we had only a very small balcony for a workspace. So when we bought our house in 1976 and we had a whole carport to work in, we unleashed a tiger that I never realized was inside me.

Of course it was a gradual process, and started with our first Christmas in our new home. We put up our tree, but it was winter again, and KW was on his usual winter layoff, so we didn’t have much money to spend on decorations. Deep down I must have known there was a crafter buried inside me someplace, because for years I had been collecting costume jewelry, hoping to someday make a wall tree from them as I had seen in a magazine. So that Christmas Eve evening I decided to make my tree from a scrap of thin plywood that we had laying around. I cut the shape of a tree out of newspaper, and then traced it on the plywood Then KW cut it out with a sabre saw. I had bought a small string of mini lights earlier to put around the front windows. I realized that they would be perfect for this project instead, so I asked KW to drill the holes and install them. After a coat of forest green paint had dried, I began to “decorate” it, with all the jewelry I had accumulated. But it was still very bare.

So I dug through my sewing basket and found lots of colorful buttons, large sequins, and other shiny items, and fastened them to the tree. When I had used everything I could find and I considered it finished, together we hung it on the wall next to the front door and plugged in the lights. It was 2am Christmas morning, and that evening had taken its place as one of my most pleasant Christmas memories. The tree survives today, although I only put it up occasionally now because the mini-light strings of today do not fit the same way as the original one that has long since perished. My plan is to refurbish it when I move to my new house where I will have a large room devoted to crafting.