The things you get used to.

I've managed, for a little bit, to mislay one of my knives. To be more precise: The knife I use for cutting notches into spindle sticks.

This cutting is something I do periodically, whenever one of the shapes runs out. Then I stock up on all the combinations: horizontal and spiralling notches cut into beech, pearwood and maplewood sticks. There's a simple, small knife that I always use for this, and as mentioned, it was mislaid.

So I was searching for it, at the places I suspected it might have gotten to. Now, there's no dearth of knives in this household, and for the two most urgent notches, I used another knife... which worked, but felt weird, and not as nice and comfortable as I was used to.



Because with the knife I usually cut the notches with, the process is familiar, and the knife fits my hand just so, and the blade has just the right shape, and I know exactly how much pressure is needed, and what angle to hold it, and how to scrape and cut and work. I am actually not sure whether this little knife is, objectively, the perfect tool for that kind of cutting. I am sure that it is very good, but there might be a shape even better suited, so using a different tool for the two "I need these right now" notches might theoretically have brought a revelation. (It didn't. I think I'm good with the old knife.)

Things like this are what absolutely fascinates me in regards to crafting. We use tools, and we use them often, and we get so familiar with them that they start to feel, at some point, not like tools but like extensions of our hands. In some cases, they are not perfect - or not perfect anymore - but the crafter has grown so accustomed to the specific tool and its vagaries that it's not getting changed out for something else. Maybe it is not getting changed out even past the point where a new tool might make more sense than going on with the old one... but because things develop (or deteriorate) slowly, and over time, and with the crafter adapting, that point does not get noticed.

Getting a new tool for something also always means a process of familiarising oneself with the thing, getting used to it. Breaking it in, so to say. I remember being told about how construction workers go about getting a new shovel: You fit the shovel to the wooden shaft, and then you work with it a while. Once it has all settled, and you feel comfortable with your tool, then - and only then - you take a hammer, and a nail, and you fix the shovel head to the shaft. Because if you do it straight away, it might feel crooked, and then you always have this weird feeling about your tool.

The little knife has turned up again, by the way. So now, soon, I'll sit down and do some notch-cutting - and I already know that I will enjoy the process more than usual, because it will feel so nice to have the knife in my hand that fits it just so!