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She came to the studio today. I've been sending her photos for like two years but she's never actually touched any of it until now. She picked up this lopsided little vessel with a face pressed into the side, one I almost scrapped because the glaze crawled weird, and she just held it for a minute. Then she said the glaze looked like the old robes on the figures from her village in Extremadura, the ones they'd bring out for Christmas, all blotchy and wrong but full of something. I don't think she knows how much that meant. She's the one person who never made me feel stupid for doing this, even when I was living off tortilla de patatas and rage. I made her take a piece home, the one she liked. She tried to say no. I won.

There's a fella in the market who sharpens things for a living. Kitchen knives, secateurs, shears, he's there every Saturday with his stones and his strops and a little whetstone wheel rigged up to a bicycle chain somehow, and sure it's an education to watch him. I brought him my best carving gouge last week because I'd nicked the edge on something stupid, a staple I'd missed in a bit of lino, was raging with myself, and he handed it back and just said "whoever taught you to sharpen taught you right." And I thought about that more than I expected to. I learned from an old printer up in Sligo, man who could carve a heron's wing feather in a single cut and make it look like breathing. He taught me to sharpen dry, no oil, on a fine arkansas stone, and to feel the burr with your thumb rather than look for it. He'd say "you're not grinding metal, you're coaxing an edge out of it" and I used to think that was gas altogether till I realised he meant it. Anyway it got me thinking about how much of how we make things is just passed hand to hand like that. Little rituals. The way you hold your knife. The angle you trust without measuring. Someone showed you once and you've been doing it their way ever since, maybe without even knowing. I still sharpen dry. I check with my thumb. And I think of him every time.

my youngest, three years old, got in here last week while I was making tea. found my good carving tool, the Pfeil No. 11, the one I've had about twelve years, the handle's worn to fit my hand. took it out to the garden and carved his name into the concrete path. just scratched it in there, lovely and deep, like a little viking. I was raging for about thirty seconds before I realised that's the most permanent mark I've ever seen that gouge make. sure I'll never move house now, there's a signature on the place. the worst of it though is I spent the next hour hunting for the gouge I was actually using before he came in, the 5mm V-tool, I'd only put it down for a second, and I still haven't found it. it's gone. the kids have their own dimension where tools go. I'll find it in a welly boot in three years. anyway the path has beautiful lettering now, fair play to him. kid's got a steady hand.