Noah's Ark

At a woodworking class in 1988, I was busy building my first Ark & the instructor asked me what it was. I replied: 'A boat'. He said bluntly: 'It doesn't look like a boat.' Well, I don't discourage easily and I carried on to finish it and gave it to a friend's daughter as a Christmas gift. She was so pleased with it that when we decided to open a retail store, we named it 'Noah's Ark Studio'.

For the next four years, I made numerous Arks, using the wooden carved animals from Kenya. In 1992, I was showing a fellow something that I was impressed with because it was carved & he said 'You could do that'. I'd actually never thought of it even - but of COURSE I could ... I can do anything! The appropriate time to learn seemed to be on a 12 hour trip to Pennsylvannia. My sister, being older, wiser and a nurse, insisted that it was a particularly dumb idea to carve in a moving vehicle. It didn't seem any more of a challenge to me, since I really didn't know what I was doing anyway. With some hunks of wood & a dull xacto knife, I worked my way through some animals. It was the giraffe that did it - one wee tiny spot on his neck ... the knife slipped and sliced my thumb to the bone - a good four inches long. We were on the Thruway, so there was no place to stop to be stitched up. I caught the blood in a grocery bag, glued up my thumb with paper towel & tape and was healed up enough to be back at it on the way home. The scar is my daily reminder that my sister is indeed WISER than me.

Pre-internet days, I sold my Arks with the Kenyan animals through mail order in the Country Folk Art and Country Sampler magazines. In the late 90's Shaker Workshops out of Mass. carried one of my little Arks on wheels in their catalogue & I made well over 500 of that style for them. I sold the ones with my own handcarved animals at my store and shows. All in all, there are well over a thousand Edenwood arks spread all over the world - from Tasmania & Australia to Germany & Alaska and pretty well every State in the US and Province in Canada.

I haven't had much time to make Arks over the past few years. In fact, I confess that my granddaughter is still awaiting her Ark that was her baptismal gift (she's 5 now) ... and I owe my 11 month old grandbabe one as well. And if the truth's known, Scotty's (also his baptimal gift) never did get the 'boat' part - they call it 'Noah's House' rather than 'Noah's Ark'.

So it's a big deal that I finally have an Ark on Ebay - that's been a personal goal for quite some time ... and here it is: http://tinyurl.com/qtz5c6

Now that I've reached that, I guess the next thing is to get the grandbabes back on the list.