Present

Here's another simple little thing that I flung together the other day, or rather if I'm to be more accurate, it took me about three attempts and a lot of wasted timber (one board of which was a nice piece of brown oak...hell!)  It's just a slightly bigger version of the traditional school boys pencil box, complete with a sliding lid.

Having been a bit frustrated in munching through so much timber to make something so relatively simple, I eventually got hold of a suitably sized piece of ash and managed to get the thing reasonably well put together, so that it looks like a half-respectable little job.  However, when the lid is removed, you can see that nestling within it's cocoon of Cedar of Lebanon shavings is a ...

...small bottle of 15 year old Dalwhinnie, single malt, scotch whiskey.

You may recollect that very shortly, SWIMBO and I are off on our travels once more, this time to the far flung distant shores of Japan and one of our visits will be to a swordsmith, who still makes the fearsome and awe inspiring katana blades in the traditional and time honoured way. There's a better than even chance that yours truly may have in part, learned a new practical skill by the end of the visit! 

Fujiyasu-san is an old craftsman, living close to the prefecture in Japan so recently hit by the earthquake and tsunami.  I hope that the box itself and the contents will be appreciated in a quiet moment, but that's not really important...it's the act of presenting the gift which matters.

All I have to do now is to learn to wrap it in the Japanese style, which is another matter entirely...