Emily Parke Chase
When my cousin’s daughter moved into her first apartment, she asked her father to make something for her new home. Her dad pulled out a furniture catalog with photos and told her to pick out something she liked. Her choice? A Shaker-style dresser for her bedroom. The photo showed a dresser made of …
Read More Another option…This has been a busy Spring! A rush of speaking engagements, among others, included presenting a workshop at the Pennsylvania Adolescent Sexual Health Conference: Everyone Counts. My session focused on encouraging the people to include parents in the conversation about adolescent sexual health. Eight-eight percent of sexually active teens say that it would have been …
Read More Speaking, Writing Update(You’ll find the rest of this devotional series on my author’s page.) Wood has a special warmth to it. Unlike other artistic mediums like stone or clay, wood has life. While the wood was yet part of a tree, roots absorbed water and nutrients from the soil, sap flowed through the …
Read More Of life and death…Morgan was a good friend of our family. He died recently but he often came for Sunday dinner after church and joined our family for holidays like Thanksgiving and Easter. Sometimes he brought a gift of candy or a book, but the gift I enjoyed the most was an intricate set of nested …
Read More Facing the right direction…Back again? So glad you came! Here’s the eighth devotional in my series on woodworking. My cousin built a little desk made of solid cherry wood. Soft pine would have been easier to carve, but when a pen pressed down on the writing surface, a dent would remain. The cherry wood’s hard surface …
Read More Hard wood or soft…Here’s the seventh in my series of devotionals on woodworking. The rest of this series can be found on my author page! Enjoy! Every piece of wood has a will of its own, a unique grain. A skilled woodworker will examine a piece of wood carefully to ascertain the direction of the …
Read More A will of its own…Welcome back! Here is the sixth in my devotional series on woodworking. Enjoy! My cousin discovered a treasure. He found wonderful pieces of air-dried walnut wood lying forgotten in a neighbor’s barn. To the neighbor, the wood represented old logs with little value, but my cousin took them home, scraped off the bark …
Read More Hidden treasure…The fifth in my series of devotionals on woodworking. Keep coming back because there are lots more to come! My cousin presented one of his handmade salad bowls to me last Christmas. How I treasure it! Every time I take it down from the shelf and serve guests, I think of him. …
Read More Remembered with love…The fourth in my series of devotionals on woodworking…thanks for coming back! Years ago, my husband and I bought a table. To our inexperienced eyes it looked well made. We were told it was solid oak. But when my cousin David looked it over, he pointed out that while the chairs were …
Read More Solid to the core…Here’s the third in my current series of devotionals on woodworking. Keep coming back as I’ll be posting a new thought each week! Where others are talented with tools, I am hopeless when it comes to working with wood. I have no patience or skills. Years ago, I tried to make a …
Read More Created with a purpose…