Suddenly, Serendipity.

A while back I was talking with my neighbor Tom, the master baker. Another neighbor had just taken down a big ol' cherry tree and folks were making a point of stopping to tell him how disappointed they were in him.

Well, had they bothered to look further, they would have seen the poor tree was rotten to the core and could have come down on its own at any time. In its youth, it had split in a storm and never recovered. Interesting to see how nature had tried to grow around the wound and continue on.

But I digress.

This led Tom to mention he had done the same thing several years back, and he still had some of the wood in his garage. (insert drool sounds starting here...)

He was keen to part with a piece, so I told him I'd return it in better shape than I got it. And happily, dragged an old chunk back to my garage and set upon it.

As I got closer to a shape that I liked, the inclusions made it darn near impossible for the piece to dry without cracking. I was surprised a piece of wood this old, stored in a dry garage, still wanted to move as it dried further. And so it cracked. And kept on cracking.

Probably wouldn't have cracked so much if I didn't let it sit so long between sessions. But, as I've alluded to before, sometimes Life gets in the way.

By the time I got back to it seriously, I figured it was shot. There was no saving it. And I showed it to Tom with my regrets. He wanted it anyway.

A few hours after I handed it over, I got an idea. An idea so strong it literally made me stop what I was doing and go back to fetch that wood back. Luckily Tom hadn't thrown it out.

"Carve the outside," I thought. Why not? It'd certainly cover up a lot of the imperfections; the inside was pretty close to done anyway. Might make for an interesting juxtaposition. (I'm not really a fan of that over-used term, but can't really think of a better one.)

And voila!

To think, I was just gonna chuck it. Goes to show me, I was so hung up in my failure, I almost missed the opportunity to see a real opportunity. Wonder how many other times I've done that?