I’ve been a Spotify customer for years. I think $15/month is a good deal for access to all that audio content. But the app is so danged frustrating to use! More so because I regularly use four different versions of the app: the Windows desktop app, the Android app on my Samsung tablet in the shop, the Android app on my phone, and the Android Auto interface to the app on my phone.
The tablet and phone versions are almost identical. All of the apps are usable, although the Android Auto interface is just barely functional. But I expect better than just “usable.” The Spotify app, even on the Windows desktop leaves so much on the table. Things it should do but doesn’t, and often the things it DOES do are done in stupid ways.
Its handling of podcasts is particularly stupid. By default it lists the episodes in reverse chronological order. If I go to the podcast and hit “Play,” Spotify dutifully plays the most recent episode. And when that ends it goes to the previous episode, etc. Already heard it? Tough! You know where the “next episode” button is. And the next time I want to listen to something I haven’t heard I have to search through all the episodes I’ve already listened to.
It doesn’t help that most of the time when this happens I’m driving down the road in my truck and I don’t want to take my eyes off the road long enough to fiddle with the dang thing. I wonder how “Hey Spotify” would respond to “Hey, Spotify, play the most recent RadioLab episode that I haven’t already heard.” Asking Google to ask Spotify to do that hasn’t produced the desired result.
It seems as though Spotify hasn’t figured out that podcast episodes aren’t like songs. I don’t put podcast episodes on playlists and listen to them again and again. Why can’t I select an option so that hitting Play from the episodes list will play the most recent (or oldest! I’d love the ability to play all podcast episodes from the first one) episode that I haven’t already played?
More to the point, I listen to multiple podcasts. Why do I have to visit each individual podcast page to play the new episodes? Can’t Spotify create a “pending” list for me? It could append to the list whenever a new episode from one of my watched podcasts is released. I could go to that page, hit Play, and the oldest episode podcast would start playing. And when it’s done, it’s removed from the list!
I don’t think my requests here are unreasonable or even unusual. I suspect plenty of other podcast listeners have similar frustrations. Or maybe I can ditch Spotify for podcasts? Time to do some digging.
I was digging through my wood stash a week or two ago and came across this piece of Osage Orange. I’m not sure where I got it. I think it was a branch that I cut off a larger piece that I carved six or eight years ago. I’ve been re-discovering the joy of just doodling with the knife, and thought I’d see what kind of doodle I could whittle up.
Understand, Osage Orange is a hard wood. I mean really hard. Think “harder than mesquite” hard. I’ve carved several different things from this wood, but always with power. It’s harder than most carvers will attempt with a knife, or edged tools in general. But we already know that I’m a little unbalanced.
I stripped the bark and carefully carved away the outer layers just to see what I had to work with. The wood is hard, but not terribly so when cutting with the grain. It’s not very forgiving when carved against the grain, though. I found that, as with most hard woods, I can carve upstream if I’m careful, but I had to be extra careful with this wood because it tends to tear surprisingly easily. Cutting across the end grain is … well, it’s really hard.
With no particular design in mind, I started whittling away. At some point I thought it’d be interesting to try making some curves that follow grain lines. I shaped one end and incorporated the two branch stubs to vaguely resemble a bird … or a dolphin. I added a little bit more shape to make it look less like a stick. But my real purpose was to highlight different features of the wood.
The picture on the left shows the piece after I’d done most of the carving with my BeaverCraft C2 whittling knife. That little knife really is a joy to work with. It’s inexpensive, feels good in the hand, and the blade holds an edge well. It’s the knife my students use in classes, and I recommend it for beginners. And for advanced carvers, as well. The shape of the blade isn’t great for fine detail, but that’s okay. I don’t do much detail work, and I find that bench knives with very narrow points have a tendency to break at the tip. Or perhaps I should say that I tend to break the tips off of such knives. The BeaverCraft knife has a pretty broad, thick tip. I’d have to try very hard to break it.
At this point I pulled out my detail knife to touch up some of the cuts. A lot of carvers would go to sandpaper after that. I used to, but over the past few years I’ve started making the first smoothing pass with a scraper. More correctly, with a knife that I’ve re-purposed as a scraper. It’s just a sharp knife that I scrape over the wood, removing fine shavings. This does a much faster job of rough smoothing, and the sharp tip of the blade can get into areas that are very difficult to reach with coarse sandpaper.
In theory, a good scraper is all one needs. It leaves a fine glossy finish. But scraping something perfectly smooth, especially with these hard woods, is a difficult and tedious process. The end grain, in particular, will drive you mad. If you ever try it, you’ll much better appreciate the invention of sandpaper.
In a discussion at my monthly carving get together last week, one of the members commented on how carvers hate finish work. I had brought for show and tell some of the things I’d been whittling recently, all of which were simple shapes that I spent as much time sanding and finishing as I did carving. Her reply when I told her that I enjoyed finishing amounted to, “You’re different.”
I started with 60 grit sandpaper to get the carving smooth, and then worked my way up through the grits: 80, 100, 120, 150, 180, 220, 300, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200. The last four I sanded wet. I had intended to go to 2000 grit, but couldn’t find anything beyond 1200 in the shop.
After sanding, I set it aside and let it dry overnight. This morning I wiped it clean with a paper towel.
I’ll be the first to admit that the carving isn’t great. But it does an excellent job of displaying the wood’s beauty. And it’s glass smooth. I find myself picking it up just to feel it. Then I get lost looking more closely at different features, seeing how branches affect the grain pattern, and alternately admiring the cracks and being disappointed that they’re there.
Understand, I’ve not yet put any kind of finish on the wood. I’m still considering further sanding. If it shines like this at 1200, what will it look like at 2000 grit?
The wood has a decidedly orange tint to it now. That will darken to brown over time, due to oxygen and ultraviolet radiation. The only way I know of to prevent that would be to lock the carving in a dark, airless box.
Osage Orange. 5 inches long. Hand carved, and sanded to 1200 grit. No finish.
It became painfully (literally) obvious earlier this year that I should wear a hat whenever I go out in the sun. This was not an unexpected result; I’ve known for years that I should be careful. After all, my hair isn’t as abundant as it used to be and I did inherit my mother’s fair complexion. I probably should wear SPF 50 if I go outside during the full moon.
Anyway.
Since the aforementioned painful incident I have endeavored to wear a hat whenever I go out in the sun. Except what I’ve really done is start wearing a hat whenever I step outside. Why? Because I’m a creature of habit. It’s hard to create habits with exceptions. It’s a whole lot easier to make it a habit to put on a hat whenever I go outside. There’s no decision involved. I just put “hat” on my mental checklist for leaving the house.
I’ll admit that it’s pretty weird to walk out the door in the dark, headed to the shop, and then come back in saying, “Forgot my hat.” It’s dark. The sun can’t burn me and there’s no full moon, so I really don’t need the hat. But I go get it, put it on my head, and make my way to the shop.
It’s a harmless eccentricity, and it helps me remember to wear a hat.
In 2020, a doctor in California encountered an unusual number of fungal infections in burn patients. Understand, a burn patient getting a fungal infection isn’t particularly uncommon, but it’s not an “every time” thing, either. A search for the culprit lead them to the ventilation system, where they discovered filters that had been overwhelmed with wildfire smoke. And the doctor got to wondering if the smoke could have been a vector for the burn patients’ infections.
Up in Smoke, an episode of the RadioLab podcast, tells this story and the story of a fire ecologist who has discovered that wildfire smoke contains a dizzying array of bacteria and fungi. Based on her research, it’s certainly possible that wildfire smoke could have been the vector for those infections. It can’t be proven, but there is some strong correlation in the data.
I found the whole thing fascinating, and it’s given me a couple of things to think about. The first is how it took us this long to ask the question, “What’s in smoke?” We’ve long known that smoke contains soot that interferes with breathing, and substances that in sufficient quantities can cause permanent lung damage and many different types of cancers. But nobody ever thought to ask if there’s anything alive in smoke?
Perhaps the reason nobody ever asked is that smoke comes from fire, and of course fire is hot enough to kill anything alive. So it’s silly to even think about smoke carrying microbes. Right? It’s an interesting blind spot. Nobody thought to ask the question until a fire ecologist named Leda Kobziar started her research project in 2017.
When I see something like this I think, “What other questions aren’t we asking?”
I also wonder whether this finding, dispersal by smoke, can help answer some questions in paleomicrobiology. It could enhance our understanding of plagues, and also of how microorganisms spread during Earth’s evolution.
Definitely take the 30 minutes to listen to this podcast (unfortunately, I don’t see a written transcript). Check out the references on that page, too, for the details of both women’s research.
People are forever waxing nostalgic over the “old days” of music. Through some twisted reasoning they long for the days of records, tapes, and CDs, complaining that today they have to pay a monthly subscription just to listen to music. Perhaps they don’t remember things the same way I do.
I bought a high-end stereo system in 1985. At the time, a record album cost about $6.00. For what is the equivalent of about $15.00 today, I got maybe 40 minutes of music. If I had a turntable and stereo. And I had to get up and flip the record after 20 minutes. Cassettes and CDs were available, too, and cost about the same. The CDs’ primary advantage was that I didn’t have to get up and flip the record (or tape).
Today, I pay $15.00 per month to Spotify, and Debra and I have access to a huge selection of music, podcasts, audio books, and who knows what all else. I can play whatever I want whenever I want. I turn it on and it plays. Continuously. Until I tell it to stop.
Let that sink in a little bit. For the monthly price of what I would have paid for one album, I have an essentially unlimited music library. And I’m not talking obscure stuff, but the latest music in any genre and pretty much everything of note that has been released since the dawn of recorded music. Sure, there are some things not available for various reasons, but Spotify and similar services do in a very real sense give you everything. For the price of one record album per month.
Not only that, but I don’t have to store the music collection, take special care of it, or replace a cassette tape because the temperamental player decided to have a snack. Warped records are a thing of the past.
To play those records or whatever back in 1985 required some special-purpose equipment. Very bulky, heavy, and expensive equipment. My high-end stereo system in 1985 cost what today would be about $12,000. And all it could do was play music: AM/FM stereo, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs. The equipment weighed a couple hundred pounds and sucked power like nobody’s business. Sure, it was a really nice stereo, but even a low-end stereo back then would run you a few hundred dollars: what today would be $1,000 or more.
And if you bought one new record album every month then in 10 years you’d own maybe 120 hours of music. But if you then discovered Pink Floyd and wanted to collect all of their albums, it’d cost you $75.00 (equivalent to $180 today). Remember Apple Music and $1 per song?
Streaming, too, requires some equipment. You need a phone and an internet connection. Oh, wait, you already have those! All you need, if you want to save your ears, is a better speaker than what the phone includes. A pretty decent speaker for small spaces will run you maybe $30. Some quite usable wireless earbuds will be less than $100. You can spend a whole lot more if you want to, but a “listenable” speaker is not at all expensive. By contrast, even a set of low-end stereo speakers in 1985 cost hundreds of dollars: the equivalent of a thousand or more today.
So, let me see: a hugely expensive, non-portable stereo system combined with a laughably small music collection, or a $15.00 monthly subscription to a service that gives me immediate access to pretty much anything I’d ever want to listen to whenever I want it, wherever I am.
Tough choice. Let me think . . .
Who am I kidding? If you’re nostalgic for the bad old days of owning media, knock yourselves out. I’ve got some records, CDs, and cassettes (no 8-tracks left, sorry) I’ll make you a heck of a deal on. Me, I’ll sit back and groove to some tunes and laugh while watching you fiddle with your records or whatever.
Yesterday in The Whittling Pup, I described how Copilot came to generate a picture (four pictures, actually) for me of a puppy whittling a wooden dog:
Copilot completely misunderstood my request. I was asking it to show me pictures that other people post of their completed Whittle Pup wood carvings. I don’t know enough about how Copilot’s LLM works and what restrictions it operates under, but it’s clear that it interpreted my query (“Can you show me some pictures of the Whittle Pup?”) to mean, “Show me a picture of a puppy whittling a wooden dog.”
Not an unreasonable interpretation, really. Honestly, of all the responses I’ve received from AI chatbots, this is by far my favorite. Not just because they’re so stinking cute, but also because they’re well composed. The AI (DALL-E 3 in this case) got the essentials: a puppy at a workbench, using a knife to carve a wooden figure. Those pictures are, unintentionally, brilliantly amusing.
So I thought I’d see what the other AIs could do with the prompt: “show me a picture of a puppy using a knife to whittle a wooden dog.”
Google Gemini
I especially like the top-right picture. The bottom-left is great, too: pup there looks like a serious craftsman paying close attention to his work.
Meta AI
Meta AI generated only one picture in response to the prompt.
The picture certainly is cute, and amusing. Particularly the placement of the knife. But again, the AI did a good job of getting all the necessary pieces into the picture. We can quibble about how those are arranged, but why?
ChatGPT
ChatGPT, too, generates only one picture at a time. It also limits me to two generated pictures per day, unless I pay to upgrade. That’s okay, the first one it generated is great:
I like this one a lot. I have a minor quibble about the knife, which looks more like a paring knife from the kitchen rather than a carving knife from the shop. And the puppy’s belly, just just under the knife, is oddly pink: more so than I recall ever seeing on a real puppy. But, really, those are my only criticisms. It’s a wonderful picture.
This is impressive technology that’s freely available to anybody with a computer. And the technology is in its infancy. What I find impressive is that the AI not only gives me what I asked for (a puppy whittling a dog figure), but adds appropriate touches like the woodworking “bench,” woodworking tools in the background, and wood shavings. With few exceptions, the knife is being held appropriately, assuming a puppy could hold a knife. Of all the images generated here, there’s only one that I’d call “wrong”: the bottom-right image from Google Gemini, where it looks like the puppy is about to chew on the knife blade.
As this technology improves, I think we’re going to see a new skillset emerge, and become coveted: the ability to create AI prompts that produce the desired result. This is the realm of writers, speakers, and poets: people who can, well, paint pictures with words. It’s an odd mixture of technical and creative writing. The quality of the AI output depends very much on the quality of the query that it’s given. I need to explore that in more detail.
If nothing else, the current crop of AI chatbots is worth some laughs. Prompted by a friend’s recent experiments in which a chatbot told him that his sister is his wife, I thought I’d ask Microsoft’s Copilot if it knows who I am. Initial attempts weren’t very encouraging. When I asked it who Jim Mischel is, it told me about my distant relative, also named Jim Mischel, who is the founder and President of Electric Mirror in Everett, WA. (Very cool stuff, by the way. Definitely give it a look.)
I had to ask Copilot who was the author of The Delphi Programming Explorer (a book I co-authored with Jeff Duntemann and Don Taylor), and then ask it to tell me about that Jim Mischel. It still confused me with the Electric Mirror Jim a few times before it mentioned my blog and some of the topics I covered, including woodworking.
Me: Tell me more about his woodworking projects.
Copilot:
Jim Mischel has shared various woodworking projects, particularly focusing on carving. Here are some highlights:
Detailed Carvings: Jim’s projects often include detailed carvings, showcasing his skill and attention to detail. He enjoys experimenting with different techniques and styles, making each piece unique.
Jim’s woodworking projects reflect his passion for the craft and his willingness to share his knowledge with others. If you’re interested in specific techniques or want to see more of his work, you might find his posts on forums like Woodcarving Illustrated or his blog “Jim’s Random Notes” particularly insightful.
Whereas it’s true that I created the Whittle Pup, the rest of that response is fluff, or perhaps gilding the lily if not outright fabrication. In particular, my projects most emphatically do not include detailed carvings.
But I was curious what it knows about the Whittle Pup.
Me: Tell me more about the Whittle Pup.
Copilot:
The “Whittle Pup” is a delightful wood carving project created by Jim Mischel. It’s designed to be a fun and accessible project for both beginners and experienced carvers. Here are some key details about the Whittle Pup:
Design: The Whittle Pup is a small, whimsical dog carved out of basswood. Its charming and playful design makes it a popular project among woodcarvers.
Materials: The primary material used for this project is basswood, which is favored for its softness and ease of carving. A sharp whittling knife is essential for achieving clean cuts and details.
Techniques: The project involves basic whittling techniques, making it suitable for beginners. It includes simple cuts and shaping to create the dog’s body, head, and features. More experienced carvers can add intricate details to enhance the pup’s appearance.
Community: The Whittle Pup has become a beloved project within the woodcarving community. Carvers often share their finished pieces and tips on forums and social media, creating a supportive and inspiring environment for fellow enthusiasts.
If you’re interested in trying your hand at carving a Whittle Pup, you might find the tutorials and community discussions particularly helpful. It’s a great way to practice your whittling skills and create a charming piece of art!
I was pretty surprised to find that Whittle Pup is a “beloved project within the woodcarving community.” I’ve seen pictures from one or two carvers, but nothing to indicate that it’s hugely popular. And I do not often (like, almost never) carve the thing from basswood. My original tutorial talks about carving it from a tree branch, and I’ve shown pictures of carvings from pear, peach, oak, elm, mesquite, pecan, hickory, hackberry, several types of juniper, and others that I don’t recall. But basswood? No.
Anyway, I’d like to see some of the pictures that people share of their finished pieces:
Me: Can you show me some pictures of the Whittle Pup?
Copilot:
I’ll try to create that.
I’ll be chuckling about this one for quite some time . . .
I’ve been doing a lot of carving lately, mostly relatively simple whittlings from small tree branches. It’s a fun type of carving, especially because I can complete an entire project in an hour or three. That’s a huge departure from the bowls, which take several hours to carve, twice as long to sand, and the same amount of time again to fill the cracks with crushed stone, complete sanding, and finish. My simple little whittlings also let me think of other things while I’m working, something that’s difficult to do with the bowls or other types of carvings.
Not that there’s no challenge involved. Every piece of wood is different and poses unique challenges. Working around knots requires careful attention, and carving areas where multiple limbs come together and the grain is going every which way can be difficult. That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about: describing how to identify and best carve wood that has interesting grain patterns. Straight grain is easy to carve and favored for big woodworking projects (chairs, tables, other furniture), but a small carving that takes advantage of interesting wood features can really stand out.
I don’t know that any of the carvings shown here really stand out, but every one of them was a learning experience for me. How useful they are beyond that isn’t really a concern.
Above is a stir stick (for mixing drinks) carved from a small oak twig. It’s about 8 inches long. The stone at the top is crushed malachite. There’s a similar spot of crushed stone on the other side. I think oak is a perfect wood for this kind of carving. It’s strong and it shines up beautifully, and it’s easier to carve than most of the other woods in the yard.
At left is an example of what I’ve come to call “stabby things.” Stabby things are essentially just sharpened sticks. Well, maybe not “just”: there is some design thought put into them. This one came about because somebody in my wood carving class at Sherwood Forest Summer Camp pulled this piece of cedar (Virginia Red Juniper) from the pile and started trying to carve it. I took it away and gave him something that a beginner actually had a chance of making something from.
This cedar is generally very soft and easy to cut. As long as the grain is straight and you’re cutting with the grain. The wood is so soft that when you try to cut against the grain, your knife gets under some fibers and the wood starts to tear. And if the grain curves even the slightest bit, it’s distressingly easy to get into a situation where you’re tearing rather than cutting. I took this piece from my student because it contains two large knots and some really twisty grain between them. The handle is about as simple as I could make it, heck, the whole piece is about as simple as I could make it because carving that block of wood was a real challenge.
That cedar, by the way, was a 1″x6″ block of wood that I cut from a much larger piece. That much larger piece was used as part of a window frame in the Great Hall of the castle at Sherwood Forest Faire. My friend was hired to re-do the windows there and he asked if I wanted the wood. My students at Summer Camp got to carve a small piece of the castle.
Anyway, stabby thing, five or six inches long.
This is a piece of Arizona ash, six or eight inches long, from a tree that died in the yard a couple of years ago. I had carved a lot of it with power (bowls with the angle grinder, and some utensils with the Foredom), but hadn’t put a knife to it until I started this piece last year. The wood is pleasant to carve: generally straight-grained and not terribly sensitive to carving against the grain except around knots. Unlike most of the other carvings here, which came to me originally as branches, I got this from a 3/4 inch board I’d had milled from the ash in the yard. I’m fresh out of ash branches since most of the ash trees in the neighborhood didn’t survive two years of ice storms. I thought I’d try burning a simple design into the handle. I’m pretty sure that the design would look great if rendered by a competent pyrographer. I need to spend some quality time with the wood burner. I haven’t decided if I like the way it turned out.
In April or May of last year I bought a new carving knife. It’s called a Sloyd knife, a Swedish design that is used mostly for roughing out larger carvings. It has a long (a little over 3 inches), curved blade. I’d never used one and this piece of elm seemed like the perfect place to try it out.
The result is a large-ish dagger with a 10-inch blade, carved from an elm branch 1-1/2 or 2 inches in diameter. The design was inspired by the Rondel dagger, but this piece isn’t intended to be an accurate reproduction. It’s hard to see in this picture, but there’s a pretty good curve about where the blade meets the handle. That curve was in the branch, and I just carried it through the completed carving.
Carving this piece took a long time. I worked on it every night for a couple of weeks, put it down to work on something else for a while, picked it back up, lather, rinse, repeat. I pretty much finished carving it last summer, and then set it aside to carve the oak dagger (see below). I was going to do a wood burned design on the handle. The ash dagger above was my practice piece. I decided that I need more practice.
After I finished carving the elm dagger above, I thought I’d do another one in oak. I think this piece of oak is from a Post Oak tree in the back yard. This wasn’t a limb, but a piece that I split off a very large chunk of the trunk. Again, I did all the carving with my new Sloyd knife, and then set it aside. That was last summer. Back in June of this year I started carving again and two of the first things I finished were these two daggers. I scraped them smooth (as smooth as I could), then sanded them to 1200 grit. The finish is two coats of boiled linseed oil.
You probably noticed that the daggers don’t have well-defined edges, nor are they particularly pointed. There are two reasons for that, both of which have one overriding reason: these daggers are meant to be carried as props at Sherwood Forest Faire. Rather than a steel blade that must be peace tied (i.e. cannot be removed from its scabbard), I can carry this wooden dagger. The end is blunted to prevent a sharp point that could hurt somebody. And there’s no sharp edge for the same reason.
I could have created these daggers with sharp points and sharp edges. Oak and elm can easily form an edge that’s sharp enough to cut, and a lethally sharp point. Especially if you strengthen the edge and the point with the liberal application of super glue. But thin wooden edges, even those strengthened with super glue, are brittle and prone to break. I doubt they’d survive a single full day being used as props at Faire.
Yes, it’s a finger wand. Kids who’ve seen or read Harry Potter really like wands. I’ve been asked many times to carve one. I haven’t done it because kids usually want a wand that, well, it looks artificial. Manufactured. Perfectly straight with a perfect taper, etc. Where’s the magic in that? I started peeling the bark on this oak twig, wondering what I was going to carve from it. I’d been doing almost exclusively stabby things for a while, and wanted something different. One thing led to another and now I have a fingernail and first knuckle on a very long and crooked finger. The whole thing is about 20 inches long.
The handle is actually sanded bark. I carved away the outer layer of bark using my carving knife, then sanded it with 60 grit sandpaper to get a smooth surface. I sanded the handle up to 220 grit, and the rest to 400 grit.
I wonder if I can find somebody who wants a finger wand.
I think all of the pieces above are sanded to 400 grit, with the exception of the finger wand and the two large daggers. I sanded the dagger handles to 400 grit, but took the blades to 1200 grit. The difference really shows on the oak dagger. That blade shines.
Finish on all of them is two coats of boiled linseed oil. The linseed oil actually penetrates the wood and cures, making the surface quite a bit harder than natural wood, and also protecting the wood from moisture and bugs. I’ve found that two coats, maybe three, is enough. After that the wood can’t absorb any more. I like the linseed oil because it provides protection without adding a glossy look like a polyurethane finish would add. If I want to make it glossy, all I have to do is let the linseed oil cure for four or five days, and then spray it with poly.
This is just a small sample of what I’ve been carving. At least a dozen more are in the shop, in various stages of completion. They’re simple carvings, but I’m having fun with them and now and then find something exceptionally beautiful inside the wood I’m carving.
A friend on Facebook asked how to make a wobbly ceiling fan not wobbly. That’s one of those questions that starts with, “The best temporary solution is . . .” My response was more an explanation of why there is no permanent solution.
What the uneducated call “balancing the ceiling fan” is really just an amateur attempt at counteracting Fae magic. The one about putting small bits of coin on the blades to “counteract the wobble” can work temporarily, depending on the amount of iron in the coins. But it only dampens the magic for a while–until the Fae notice what you’ve done, and change the magic frequency. Then you have to do the “balancing” exercise again.
Various other solutions are proposed, but none of them have proved effective over the long term. And what do you expect? The ceiling fan is the perfect toy for the Fae to torment us with. It’s something that humans think they like because they think they need, but they secretly detest because of the lurking danger of things getting caught, inadvertently losing a digit or a limb due to an ill-timed gesture, etc. It’s like a spinning guillotine just over people’s heads. The Fae love this kind of thing! They’ll give it a little wobble–just enough so that you barely notice it–and they’ll delight in the annoyance it gives you. Then they’ll increase it steadily until you go through that silly “balancing” trick. And every time you “balance” it, the wobble goes away for a while until the Fae decide to torment you some more. Then it comes back, slightly worse than it was before. The Fae find this whole thing incredibly amusing, watching you get more and more irritated over time and all the while wondering at the incredible stupidity of humans who can’t figure out that their problems would be *over* if they’d just get rid of the silly ceiling fan!
Yeah, ceiling fans. Playthings of the Fae. NOT recommended.
