Doo Rag

I'm gonna get a doo rag. I think I will be a better turner if I wear a doo rag, particularly while I am trying to get the outside shape of a bowl as nice as I can make it. I can take it off while I am roughing out a bowl and while I turn the inside, but for the real shaping and the stuff that separates the men from the boys in bowl turning so to speak, it takes a doo rag. The reason I say this is because I was watching some TV show the other day and some craftsman was repairing a door or some trim work or some such, and he was wearing a doo rag. I knew instantly from the rag that he was a craftsman and knew exactly what he was doing. The host knew it too, and we all sat around in awe while he did his thing. He did do a really good job and I think it was because of the rag. Only thing it could have been. I'm getting one now.


Did you ever think about the difference between homemade and handmade? When I was growing up we didn't have a lot of money and I can remember Mama making shirts for me and my brother out of flour sacks. If you bought 25 pounds of flour to make biscuits (Mama made biscuits every day twice a day) it came in a fabric sack of cloth suitable for making clothes. Since you had to make biscuits anyway, the shirts were free if you could make one. Mom could make one. Course we didn't like them very much because our classmates knew what the deal was and homemade shirts did not cut it even in that time and place. Remember Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors". Same thing. Those shirts were handmade, but they were homemade, and that did not gain much respect.

I make these bowls at my home, so I suppose you could say they are homemade. But homemade carries a connotation that is definitely negative and I don't sell homemade bowls. Handmade carries a connotation that is distinctly positive, so all my bowls are handmade. Don't tell anybody I make them at home. I can sell them for more money.