Summer winds down on the meadow.

These are busy and beautiful days ~ I'm still behind with my emails but working hard to catch up with folks while David builds rings for our oh so awesome touch wood friends!

We are in the midst of haying our fields and the rain hasn't let up since it was cut. That's not the greatest situation but it happens. Hoping for some warm dry days to get that job finished up.

When we first moved here, we supplied hay to our neighbour for his small herd of cows. He lived fifteen miles to the north east and was a fountain of local knowledge having lived here all his life. He cut our twenty five acres of hay with his workhorses and a ground driven mower. It was an amazing experience to take part in the daily harnessing and care of the team and get to understand some of what goes into their training. We took lots of pictures and videos of something we won't ever see done again.

With the highly efficient haying machines our neighbouring ranchers use these days; the meadow is cut in one day, raked in one day and baled in one day making the whole process five or six days counting some drying time and moving the huge bales to the feed area. That's if the rain doesn't slow it all down.

The method has changed but the result is the same ... the meadow hay will be fed to brood cows' that will grow new calves over the winter to be born in the spring... the hay from this meadow has been used for this purpose since at least 1890, so we are just the latest participants...

Here are a few pics from around the homestead on these late August days.

  

And some of the commissioned rings David made this summer :) 

Jack's Hawaiian Koa Wood Ring with Maple interior

Greyed Maple with Magnolia interior for Alex

Ally and Gordon's Choke Cherry, Madrone, and Burr Oak rings

Kenneth's Black Walnut wood ring with a featured knot and Cherry interior liner

Ian's Black Walnut, Willow with a center inlay of Amethyst mixed with Kara's stone

Laurent's Hawaiian Koa, Walnut, Birds eye Maple and a braided inlay of Yucca

Mary and Kevin's designs incorporate Juniper Heartwood, Walnut and Bamboo

We've also been building a stone circle. Taking a hour some evenings just before or after dinner to move the next boulder down to the clearing we choose for stones.  It's something I've always wanted to do and we have the property and the big stones so it was just a matter of choosing the spot and making the time.  Well, and enlisting my honey's help with his trusty skid steer and his smarts. It's coming along.  Going to be beautiful!!  A sacred space built with stone that should outlast us by many hundreds of years.

Talk to you again soon and thanks, as always for dropping by.  If you haven't already, please visit our Facebook page and follow along.  My updates there are much more frequent :) 

Hawaiian Wood Rings

When we work with folks through the design process I often send emails with mini-showcases of one particular wood to show a range of colour and figure in a wood that someone is considering using in their design.
The 'figure' of a particular piece of wood is, in part, due to its grain and in part due to the cut, or to innate properties of the wood.  Here is a good example of 'figure' in this Walnut wood ring with birds eye maple interior and Koa wood inlay. The Koa in this inlay is highly figured.

I've put together an extended showcase of David's work with Hawaiian woods and primarily Hawaiian Koa wood.

David introduced Koa in his earliest wooden rings.  We have always asked that folks choose this wood mindfully.  The Hawaiian Islands are a unique and fragile ecosystem. The same can be said of our whole planet of course. We treat all the woods we work with as precious. Woods that aren't from our own property or from pruning piles in friends orchards, come primarily from our clients. 

We have a client friend on Hawaii who is an arborist and so we have been the happy recipients of a variety of Hawaiian woods that would otherwise be  landscaping waste, or some other woodworkers treasure.  Such a tiny bit of wood is used in the creation of a Touch Wood ring, that a little goes a long, long way. 

Hawaiian Koa Wood, in my humble opinion, rivals any precious metal for beauty! 

Koa varies from a gold and reddish brown to very dark brown with streaks of black. Finished Koa is lustrous, with beautiful hues of gold, red, and brown. There is tremendous depth to this wood. 

Here's a little Hop-Scotch array of custom designed and hand crafted Touch Wood Rings featuring Hawaiian Koa Wood ~ Enjoy!  

Another Hawaiian wood that I just love for it's figure and depth of colour is Kamani. 

David created this set of rings using Kamani and Hawaiian Kou woods.  Here is a close up of how they began; two uncut boards and a bag of sand.

As always, thanks so much for dropping by.  

We love to hear from you ~ please drop us a line anytime at nicola@touchwoodrings.com

Hawaiian Koa wood ring with an oak band.

"Just got back from the UK to find the ring here waiting for me, thank you so much it looks stunning! She’ll be thrilled with it. Thank you again for all your hard work and kind emails."

This pretty ring now lives in New York City. It was lovingly designed using a dark Hawaiian koa wood and a grainy oak inlaid band. It's a size 5 1/2, 4mm wide and gently rounded.