When my first daughter gave birth to my first grandchild, the theme for her baby shower was chevrons.  I figured out how to make a segmented bowl with a chevron pattern that could be used to hold cards for the gift table.  I was pretty pleased with the final product, then figured I’d customize it a bit to make it personal.  I carved out my grandson’s name in the bottom, inlaid it with ebonized walnut dust, and just because, I burned a little message to my unborn grandson on the bottom.  Alexa loved it!  My grandson has it now and plays with it to hold the wooden Easter eggs I turned for him.  Well, that started a tradition…

When my second daughter had my second grandchild, one of the first questions was “When will she get her bowl”?  Apparently, it was now a foregone conclusion that was going to happen.  The first problem is that my daughter wouldn’t name the baby until she came out.  Her logic:  “I don’t want to name her Sofia if she comes out and doesn’t look like a Sofia”.  Guess you can’t argue with a mother’s logic.  The second problem was that Megan had the baby at the worst possible time for me to get any work done in the shop, because of a whole host of other things all competing for time.  When I told her it might be awhile, she said “no problem, dad, I know you’re really busy”, but those big, sad, eyes said “my baby needs something you made just for her, too”.  It has always been hard to argue with those eyes.

So now, a month or so after the birth, the bowl is finished.  Like James’ bowl, this one also has her name inlaid in the bottom and a message on the bottom.  Since this one was made after the birthday, I went ahead and put her birthday by her name, too.  The material used for the pink inlay is colored epoxy putty.  Even though Megan was adamant that her daughter wasn’t going to be forced to wear pink everyday, the color looks great with her head full of dark black hair and the pink color actually matches the color of the first hair bow she wore.  Very happy with the way this turned out.

Now to start thinking about the bowl for my third grandchild…