Ooh, baby baby! A new baby rattle

The baby bug seems to be going around quite a bit these days. I know a few ladies who are expecting pretty soon. One of them is Niz's former roommate and good friend Debbie. Debbie and her partner Matt are living in Chicago and expecting a bouncy boy in mid-March. Their baby shower was this past Sunday, so we decided to make the trip and kill two birds by visiting Niz's favorite furniture store (and my least favorite), IKEA. (I could easily fill an entire post with a rant about my lack of enthusiasm for IKEA's cheaply made and poorly fabricated furnishings, but hey, this is a fun post about the miracle of life and such, so I'll save it for another time).

Anyway, as I've done for several friends and a few clients over the past few years, I made Debbie and Matt this fancy turned rattle. The body is from a scrap of canary wood I found in my shop and the orange plugs are from a piece of paduak I still have from the first chair I made. This color combination is one of my favorites, as evidenced by the other picture, which is of the first rattle I made.

The form of Debbie's and Matt's rattle is inspired by the shape of an acorn (Debbie and Niz share a love of squirrels), though I've also been told it resembles, ahem, something else.

I'll likely be making time in my schedule to make several more of these miniature maracas in the months to come.