Greetings! This is Ilana, Chris’s wife/widow. It’s been a long time since I have posted, because although I think about Chris every day,
I haven’t had information that I thought would be relevant to most readers of the blog.

If you are new here, welcome! See the bottom of this post for more info. Long-time friends and fans, welcome back and nice to see you here!

A few blog updates:

• I just updated the visual theme of the blog so it’s easier to find the sidebar with the carpentry essays for sale.
• I send out carpentry essays myself, and sometimes payment notifications are delayed, so don’t worry if it takes 24-48 hours to get an essay download link from me. If you don’t get one within a couple days, please email me at Chris’s email.
• I don’t always see messages left here – feel free to email Chris’s email address (azumadesignbuild “at” gmail dot com). I also check his personal email address if you happen to have that one.
• I plan to add some search features to this blog so it’s easier to search for content, not just by date.
• I plan to make some of Chris’s carpentry study group materials accessible here on the blog too. If you were in the group and have any suggestions, please let me know!
• If you are interested in carpentry essays and can’t afford them, email me.

Thank you so much to everyone who has kept us in your thoughts or checked in to see how we are doing. Ryden is finishing up first grade and turning 7 this summer! Ryden remembers Chris, which is really wonderful. I wish Chris could have known that when he was dying, as that was one of his greatest hopes. I still think about Chris every day, but I am doing well. I got to be friends with a recent widower about a year after Chris died, and I’m actually getting remarried! It’s amazing and quite hard to believe. I feel very lucky to have found a new partner who completely respects and supports my commitment to keeping Chris’s memory alive.

I’ll probably be slow with continued updates, but please know I’m here, and I will keep paying to keep the blog active so old friends and newcomers can enjoy it!

Welcome, newcomers! My late husband, Chris, wrote all of the entries except for a couple of guest posts. He was a craftsperson who was passionate about design and using wooden joinery. He was inspired by traditional carpentry from Japan, China, France, and elsewhere. He deeply believed in the importance of sustainable design – for him, that meant creating things that would last as long as the trees that supplied wood for his pieces took to grow. Chris lived in Japan for 5 years, spoke and read Japanese, and enjoyed teaching and writing. Very sadly, he died from cancer in 2020, when our son was only 3. However, his work lives on here in his blog, in pieces he created, and in the people who were inspired by his work and continue to make beautiful, useful things today. Feel free to be in touch any time. I check Chris’s email regularly.