Colin's Christmas Constructions

Every year since 2000 Colin and chosen a home-made present to give to all the family.

2000: Colin constructed the man from bits of the old dead birch tree from Avebury.

2001: Colin made this "Together" sculpture from clay of Mo and I to celebrate our time together

2003: The "Towns" game was a wooden board game' I did a computer version for Dom

2004: These bookends were constructed from wood and old bakelite

2005: The hexagonal "John" mathematical game. This game originated in the "john" or loo of Princeton University by John Nash which had hexagonal tiles where they played the game. It has very simple rules yet is very hard to win.

2006: Spare mirror glass inspired me to make candle holders with mirror reflectors

2007: These A4 printed timelines describes each persons life along with general events

2008: Three Mens Morris, Latin name 'Merels' was common in roman times. Boards have been found in ancient Egypt from 1440 BC and in china from 500 BC. The romans were very fond of board games. Many tombs have them, with their pieces, for the enjoyment of their owners!

2009: These A4 printed family trees have each family member at its centre

2011: This year I constructed my single manual pipe organ. I had lots of spare wooden stopped diapason pipes, which made a present: you could blow on them to make a note.

2012: Left over from the 2010 mine detection exhibition were the long lengths of bamboo that held up the stand. There were enough to make boot-racks for everyone although being all different diameters they were difficult to make and did not last very long!

2013: Friends from France introduced us to 'Bananagrams' a scrabble-like game with no board, no dice, and no pencil and paper. I came up with "Corks', the favourate expletive of my father. You have to make up a cross-word with the fewest words using the given number of letters you take.

2014: I bought at a Vide Grenier in France a highly masculine tradional wooden gymnast. I decided to copy it but make it more graceful and feminine by having a shapely lady on the frame.

2015: This card game requires you to pair identical pictures on cards, and I made this game using portraits of family members as the pictures to be matched. It helped all of us to remember the faces of more distant family members.

2016: There were many spare sweet pea and nastursium seeds this year! I made up little packets for everyone, along with large wooden row labels that could be sawed from a neighbours screens.

2017: Plenty of nice wood enabled me to make these Eiffel tower-shaped bood removers, with a 'peace' label.

2018: Plenty of spare paper inspired this classic piece of origami. It was most enjoyable and surprisingly quick to make them.

2020: Lockdown year we holidayed at Morton on the Jurassic Coast and did this wonderful cliff walk. It was carved from fine wood left over from the bass recorder construction.