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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.

Been sharpening my carving chisels the same way since my apprenticeship. Flat on the stone, edge up, standard grip. Did it a thousand times without thinking. Visited my old mentor two weeks ago. He watched me sharpen one for a minute and said nothing for a long time. Then he picked it up, turned it ninety degrees, and showed me he's been sharpening them sideways this whole time, using a different set of muscles so the stroke doesn't drift at the end. Said he's been meaning to mention it for about twenty-five years. Thing is, I can feel it. The edge comes off the stone cleaner. I've been fighting a wobble in my finish cuts for decades and I just called it the nature of the stone. Makes me wonder what else I've been doing the same wrong way so long I stopped noticing. You don't know what you don't know until someone who taught you shows you the better version of it. And you have to swallow the pride and take it.

I sharpen my own chisels. Nobody else touches them, not even the guy who apprenticed under me for three years. He's good with his hands, but his idea of sharp is where I'd start ruining stone. People don't get it. They think a chisel is a chisel. The edge is everything. I spend maybe twenty minutes on a stone chisel before a big cut, and most of that is getting the angle right on the flat. You can feel it in your wrist before you make the first strike. Dull is safer than bad, but neither one does the work. The old master I trained under sharpened his own until his hands shook too bad to hold the stone. Then he had me do it, but he watched every pass. Never said a word. Just stood there until I got it right. My daughter bought me one of those fancy electric sharpeners two Christmases ago. It's still in the box. Some things you don't hand over to a machine.

had this little brass sharpener, must've been twenty years with me. came from some market stall in ennis, cost a euro maybe. kept it in the same tin as my carving tools. and the blade's been gone off it for about three years now, I knew it, I knew it was just chewing the pencils instead of sharpening them, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. it'd been everywhere with me. first studio, second studio, the shed phase, the kitchen table phase. anyway the wife bought me a new one yesterday, one of those crank ones you bolt to the bench, and I had to stand there and actually drop the old one in the bin. felt daft, felt like I was putting down a dog or something. the new one's fierce good though. grand twist on it. might name it.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="tags" string="false">["tools", "studio rituals", "letting go", "pencil sharpener", "the shed years"]

Spent two hours this morning sharpening a chisel that was already sharp. Knew it when I picked it up. Did it anyway. I've got a limestone piece on the bench, about 300 pounds, a torso. Been on it since April. It's done. Not "done" the way a client means it. Done the way I mean it, which is that the next cut is the one that takes it apart. I've got the mallet in my hand and I keep putting it down and going back to the stones. The kid who sweeps my shop on Saturdays asked what I was doing. I said sharpening. He looked at the edge and said it's already sharp. Kid's right. That's the problem. Thirty years and I still don't have a clean way to stop. You learn how to cut. Nobody teaches you how to walk away from a piece while you can still walk away from it. My old man did forty years on a lathe and never had this trouble. Part came off the machine, you moved on to the next one. Anyway. Back to the shop.

Had my good shears out on the porch Monday, cutting through six layers of old denim for a strip quilt, and they started chewing instead of cutting. Chewing. You know that sound. So I went on down to the fabric store over in Bessemer, and I asked the young lady at the counter where they keep the sharpening stones, and she showed me a rotary blade refill and said "most folks just buy new ones." Buy new ones. Honey, these shears came to me from my grandmother. I don't know how old they are, older than me I expect. They've got a nick in the blade from the year my uncle used them to cut wire, and I've never let that nick go because it's his. You don't throw that in a bin and drive to the store. My granddaughter found me a sharpener online, one of the little ones with the two slots, and it did all right on the kitchen scissors but I'm not putting my good shears through it. So now I'm doing the old way, the whetstone, little circles, oil on my fingers, and it is slow going and my hands ache after. But they're coming back. Cutting paper smooth again this morning. I don't know, maybe every generation thinks the tools are getting too easy to replace. But I hear that girl's voice in my head every time I sit down with that stone, "most folks just buy new ones." Most folks don't have a pair of scissors with their uncle's mistake in them, I reckon.

People ask me which brush company and I have to laugh. For the fine black line in Mithila work we do not buy brushes at all. We take a small twig, neem or sometimes bamboo, and we chew the end of it, or press and roll it on a stone until the tip becomes soft and pointed like a needle. Then it is a brush. Nothing else. I keep a small bundle of them tied with thread and when one goes blunt I simply cut the tip and make it again. My mother used to do this sitting outside in the morning light and I do the same now. It is the first work of the day, before any painting. The twig has to be fresh, if it dries it splits and you cannot get the line. So there is a little tree behind the house and my grandson is always the one sent to break the branches, which he does very happily and very badly. Somebody from Delhi once saw my bundle and asked if I could not simply use a 0.1 mm brush from the art shop. I said I could. I did not say I would. The line from a chewed twig is not like the line from a brush. It drinks colour and gives it slowly. If your hand is not steady it will show, there is no help from the bristles. So the twig keeps me honest. When I have not painted for many days I feel it in the first twig, the line comes out shivering. That is my measure of practice. Only difficulty is the colour. My twigs are good for black and for fine work, but for filling large areas the squirrel hair brush from my mother's time is still doing duty, and it is now more thread than hair. I have not found anybody here who makes them. If any of you know a person, kindly tell me.

Working on a portrait of my neighbour, third attempt at the same face. I had one dark grey pastel, perfect for the line under the eyelid, and I ground it down to almost nothing over a week. Now the eyes look hard and dead and I know it's because I'm drawing with the side of something too blunt. I ordered a replacement four days ago. Polish post being Polish post, it's sitting somewhere in a sorting hall in Katowice. In the meantime I've been building up the ear and the jaw instead, telling myself it's "preparation". It's not, it's avoidance. But the jaw is honestly the best thing I've done in months, so maybe the delay is doing me a favour. Hard to tell when you're inside it. Does anyone else get weirdly attached to one stick of pastel like it's a tool you'll never find again? Or is that just me being sentimental about grey.

Went out to Shivajinagar early this morning to catch the light on a row of old houses near the market, the kind with the wooden balconies and the faded blue shutters. Set up my stool on the footpath, chai in one hand, book in the other. Drew for about ninety minutes and did not notice that I was pressing hard with my 0.3 fineliner. By the time I packed up, the nib was flat. Completely flat, like a chisel gone wrong. I know it is a two hundred rupee pen and I can buy another one on the way home. But this one had drawn maybe forty buildings. It had a slight bend I had learned to work with, a little skip on the upstrokes that honestly gave the ink work some character. You build a relationship with a nib and then you murder it by being greedy with the pressure. So now I am rationing it. Using it only for the final architectural lines, letting the 0.5 do the foliage and the loose stuff. Which is the correct practice anyway, and which I will abandon the moment I am in a hurry again. Anyone else keep a dead tool long past its use? Or is it just me and my sentimentality about stationery.

There is one nib for the fine black line that I have been using since 2011, cut from a bamboo stick by my own hand. Every few months I trim it with a blade and it becomes a little shorter. Now it is hardly two inches, my fingers sit almost on the paper, and my son says Ramesh ji just buy new one, it is a stick only. But a new one takes some days to become mine. It scratches wrong on the first hundred lines. The old one already knows how much pressure a fish scale needs and how much a hair of the peacock. Some of the younger girls I teach do the opposite, they come with a whole bundle of nibs and choose one fresh each day. Their line is clean but I feel it is not yet theirs. I am not telling anyone to hoard old things. Only that the hand learns the tool, and the tool learns the hand also. Today I did the border of a Kohbar panel, around four hundred small lines, and the nib did not once catch. If I change it now, that border will not match the next one. Myself Ramesh, Madhubani, Bihar. This is the small thing on my mind this week.

I keep reading these threads about which platform is dead and which algorithm is punishing you and I have no insight to add because the only actual sale I got from social media this month came from a throwaway reel of me sharpening a palette knife. Just a plain knife and the ring of it against the sharpening stone. No music, no talking, 11 seconds, shot on my phone propped against a mug. A woman from Pune messaged asking if I could do a similar one of her grandfather's old house before it gets demolished. Paid a deposit before I even sent her a sketch. Meanwhile the carefully staged studio shots I spent an afternoon on, the ones with the good light and the composition I actually thought about, got maybe 40 views between them. I have stopped pretending I understand any of this. The algorithm wants what it wants. Sometimes I think it's just picking the videos where I'm clearly doing something and not performing. The minute I set up the ring light it knows and punishes me for it.

My mother used the same small bamboo brush for forty years before she gave it to me. I have kept it in the cloth wrap always, sharpening the point only with my tongue the way she taught me. Yesterday, applying the lampblack for the fish scales, the bristles splayed. Just gave up, like that. I sat with it in my hand for a long time, thinking she used this to paint the wedding panels of three generations. Now the point is gone and no amount of sharpening brings it back. People ask why I do not switch to the fine nylon brushes from Darbhanga market. They are cheaper, they last, the line is even. But this brush carried my mother's fingers. When I close my eyes I can still see her wrist moving over the aipan, the way she held breath at the fine detail. A new brush will have to learn me. I will have to teach it my grandmother's stroke. It feels like losing a person a second time. Today I opened the new brush and made one honest line with it. Not good yet. But the fish have to be painted, ji. The story does not wait.🙏

It's about an inch and a half long, no eraser, the stamp worn off. Been sharpening it with a blade for two years because it doesn't fit in the sharpener anymore. New 4b's feel like writing with a crayon someone else already chewed on. Mine's got my grip grooved into it. I know this is dumb. I have nine of them in the drawer. But the first mark on a new panel goes down different with the stub, it's like the pencil already knows the surface. Also, the apron pocket is now permanently stained graphite gray, and I've decided that's a feature. Anyone else refuse to retire a thing way past its usefulness? Or am I just hoarding dead ends.

There's a proper black magic to the first pull of an edition. You've sharpened the gouges, you've proofed it till you're sick of the sight of it, and then you ink the bastard and you hold your breath because forty sheets is a long way and the lino's only going to get softer and mushier and more treacherous the whole way down. Anyway. Forty prints off the whale mooring block today, every last one clean. Not a dry spot, not a slip, not a bit of the fine line work packing up. The last one came off as good as the first and I near laughed out loud in the empty studio. The dog looked at me like I'd lost the run of myself entirely. There's a lot of the job you can't control, sure. Paper that decides to cockle on you, ink that goes off, a Tuesday. But that one hour, that run of forty, that was mine. Nobody else's. Felt like the whole craft thing was worth a damn today.

Had a young guy at the booth this weekend, looked at my price tag, nodded like he'd figured something out. Said he could probably do the same thing himself with a Dremel and some YouTube tutorials. I said maybe he could. But I'd been thinking about it all evening and it still bothers me. Not the disrespect, I don't care about that. What bothers me is the assumption that the tool is what matters. Like the only difference between me and him is I own bigger equipment. I've got a 50lb tungsten chisel that I dressed myself because nothing on the market was right for the cut I needed. I spent three months learning to sharpen it right. A Dremel wont teach you how to read grain or when to walk away or what to do when you're 40 hours in and the stone decides to split wrong. Anyway. He walked off with a print. Probably gonna try to carve it this weekend. I hope he does. That's how you learn the difference between wanting to make something and wanting to have made something.

Broke two blades this week and spent the best part of today convincing myself the lino had gone hard on me, or the cold was doing something to the block, or honestly that I'd just lost the touch overnight. Nearly resorted to sharpening with a mug base, the way you do when you're desperate and pride won't let you walk to the shop. Checked the block. Checked the bench. Swore at the dog, who was innocent. Then I took out the other fork, the one I keep for fine line work, and it went through the same piece of lino like butter. Two hours, gone, for nothing but a bit of steel that needed a stone and a half hour I didn't want to spend. I've been doing this twenty years and I still blame my hands before I blame the tool. You'd think I'd learn. The dog's still not talking to me.

I got a pair of sewing scissors that belonged to my grandmother, she carried them in her apron pocket my whole childhood and I'd watch her snip thread and cut fabric and trim little corners off pieced blocks, never setting them down, just keeping them right there at her hip like they was part of her. She passed in '84 and I got those scissors and honey they are dull as all get out and I don't care one bit. I could get them sharpened, I know I could. But it feels wrong somehow, like I'd be erasing the wear she put in them. Every little nick and gap in the blade is from her hand. My daughter bought me a nice new pair for Christmas two years ago and they sit in the drawer. I use them when I have to. But when I'm really working, when I'm piecing something that feels like it matters, I reach for Mamie's scissors every time. They pull at the fabric more than they cut it sometimes. And that's alright with me. Anybody else got a tool they keep using past when they should? Or am I just being sentimental?

Still using the same guillotine paper cutter I bought secondhand in 2008, 120 kronor at a flea market in Majorna. The blade is dull in a specific way now, so it tears the last two centimeters of heavier board unless I angle my weight just right. I've had it sharpened twice. Both times it came back worse. There's a rhythm to it I don't want to lose. You slide the stack against the fence, press down, feel the blade meet the edge. When I use a fresh cutter at the studio, everything comes out too clean. I don't trust it. Also I know exactly where the blade stops if I'm not careful, and that's worth something too.

so I took a portrait commission which is already rare for me because I hate doing them, and the reference photo she sends is clearly a facetune situation. like the skin is blurred to hell, cheekbones sharpened, eyes unnaturally bright. I paint it as close to the photo as I can because that's what she gave me. she picks it up yesterday and goes "this doesn't look like me at all." no shit. you sent me a cartoon version of yourself and I painted the cartoon. I wanted to say "ma'am that's your face, you're the one who smoothed it into an instagram filter" but I just smiled and said I could adjust some things. I hate portrait work. I always remember why I hate it and then someone offers money and I forget. never again until next time.

I've been using them sixty-two years. She already had them worn smooth when she put them in my hand at eight years old, told me "these yours now, you take care." And I did. I sharpened them myself every year, oiled the screw, never dropped them once. Today I'm cutting a scrap for a border piece and they just, wouldn't. Snagged and pulled, made that awful crunch sound through the fabric. Laid them down real gentle and just looked at them a minute. I got a new pair at the craft store this afternoon. Nice enough scissors. They don't feel like mine. Told my daughter on the phone and she said "Mama, they were scissors." I said they were her great-grandmother's hands reaching through mine, is what they were. She got quiet. Anyway. I'll keep the old pair on the shelf. They earned their rest.