Adrian loves building things, and has been asking me for a long time to build something in wood together with him. He’s also been asking for a bed for one of his toys. Today we had a woodworking day when we got both projects done.

I built a minimalist four-poster doll bed. The four-poster bit was essential and actually what got this project started – Adrian had a bunch of small bead projects that he wanted to hang over the doll, so it can look at them while it’s waiting for sleep.

Adrian built a boat. He did the design, we measured together, I cut and drilled, and finally Adrian screwed all the pieces together. Then he ran off with it before I got a chance to photograph the final result.

I like the way Adrian’s imagination works. He takes a piece of thick plank for the bottom, adds a section of square rod as a mast, and there’s his boat! He did add more detail to this one (two more pieces of rod for railings, a little post with a wooden button for a wheel, a block as a cabin) but in his mind it was already a boat without those. If I was asked to build a boat, I would probably aim for something more clearly boat-shaped, which would be a lot more work.