As you can see, Bean the three-legged cat is the worst wax salesman we have hired. Instead of doing something cute to encourage you to buy wax, he just sits and looks like someone poked him in the butt.
My youngest daughter, Katherine, has made up a big batch of soft wax this week and you can purchase it in her etsy store here. Soft wax is an easily applied, high-solvent finish. It’s ideal for finishing the inside of casework. It helps the look of antiques with aged finishes. It coats Crucible tools before they are shipped out.
Don’t use it on your beard. Or your three-legged cat. (The FDA has found it ineffective for growing back a missing leg.)
There are more details on soft wax and how we make it with a waterless process here in Covington in the etsy description. Katherine cooks it up herself. Bottles it. Ships it out.
Bean does not help, as you can clearly see in the photo.
I owe a great many thanks to Dr Iwan Wyn Rees, senior lecturer and director of the Cardiff Centre for Welsh American Studies, located in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University, which serves to promote the study of the culture, language, literature and history of the Welsh in the Americas.
First, we hired Iwan to provide pronunciations for each of the Welsh words in “Cadi & the Cursed Oak,” and he used the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It was perfect except we worried children may not understand it. But simplified pronunciation guides are tricky. There is a lot of room for interpretation and criticism, and one must be mindful of regional dialects as well. But Iwan, who has a young daughter, understood. And despite the rush of the holidays he created one for the book. Here’s the difference:
Yr Hen Ardd (The Old Garden)
IPA: ər heːn arð
simplified: uhrr hain arrthe
He also provided a wonderfully detailed pronunciation guide tailored to the book, which we, unfortunately didn’t have room for – but it’s included at the end of this post.
We then hired Iwan to record himself speaking each of the words. You will find those recordings below. Simply press play on the audio file underneath each word. If two audio files exist, you’ll be treated to a different pronunciation in the local dialect.
Enjoy!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
Aran Fawddwy (AHRR-anne VOWTHE-ui): mountain peak in southern Snowdonia, North Wales
Aran Benllyn (AHRR-anne BEN-ttlin): mountain peak in southern Snowdonia, North Wales
ASGRE LÂN DIOGEL EI PHERCHEN (ASK-rreh larne DEEOGG-elle ee FAIRRchenne): a good conscience is the best shield
Cader Idris (CAH-derr ID-riss): a long mountain ridge in southern Snowdonia
Ceubren yr Ellyll (KAY-brren uhrr ETTLittl): the hollow oak of the demon
Coed y Brenin (koyd uh BRREN-in): a forest near Dolgellau, in Snowdonia National Park
Coed y Moch Lodge (koyd uh mawch): built in 1830 on the Nannau estate by Sir Robert Williams Vaughan, second Bart, who insisted dinner guests arrived on time. The lodge was a six-minute ride from Nannau, hence the clock permanently painted six minutes to five.
Coraniaid (korr-ANNE-yighed): magical and malevolent beings from Welsh mythology with an acute sense of hearing
cwtsh (kootch, as short as in ‘cook’): hug
cyfarwyddiaid (kuv-ahrr-OOWITH-yighed, with ‘th’ as in ‘the’): storytellers
Dolgellau (doll-GGETTL-aye): a small town in northwest Wales
geol (GGEH-aul): jail
goujons (GOOJ-onz, with ‘j’ as in the French ‘je’ or ‘Jean’): breaded chicken tenders
gormesoedd (ggorr-MESS-oythe): oppressions or plagues
Lle gwreiddio y Fesen, Llwydded y Dderwen (ttlair GGOORRAYTHE-yaw uh VACE-enn TTLUITHE-ed uh THEIRR-wenn): the oak tree may succeed where the acorn takes root
Nannau (NANN-aye): an estate near Dogellau, once home of the Nannau oak
Owain Glyndŵr (OWE-ine gglin-DOORR): (1354-1416), rebelled against English rule; considered the father of Welsh nationalism
The Tale of Lludd (ttleethe) …
… and Llefelys (ttleh-VELLE-is): …
… one of several Welsh prose tales from around the 11th century, found in the “Red Book of Hergest (HERR-guest)” …
… and in fragmentary form in the “White Book of Rhydderch (HRRUHTHE-errch),” …
… and translated and published by Lady Charlotte Guest in a series called “The Mabinogion (mab-in-OGG-yon),” published between 1838 and 1849
yr hen a ŵyr a’r ieuanc a dybia (uhrr hain ah ooirr ahrr YAY-ank ah DUB-jah): the old know and the young suspect
Yr Hen Ardd (uhrr hain arrthe): The Old Garden
Pronunciation guide
The following guidelines are not by any means comprehensive but relate rather to Welsh-language words which appear in the story.
Note that emphasis (or word stress) is placed on the penultimate syllable (i.e. the last but one) in all words consisting of more than one syllable, (bar Glyndŵr) e.g. CÁD-er (not cad-ÉR), BRÉN-in (not bren-ÍN) and Dol-GÉLL-au (not DÓL-gell-au or Dol-gell-ÁU).
Vowels
a – as in the English ‘man’ in all positions, e.g. ardd /arð/ ‘garden’ and Aran /ˈaran/, the first element in Aran Fawddwy and Aran Benllyn (two mountain peaks).
â – lengthened ‘a’ similar to the English vowel in ‘art’, e.g. glân /glaːn/ ‘clean’. A mutated form of glân is found in the proverb Asgre lân diogel ei pherchen.
e – as in the English ‘net’ or ‘edit’ often, e.g. Dolgellau /dɔlˈgɛɬaɨ/ and Cader /ˈkadɛr/.
ê / e – similar to the English vowel in ‘fair’ (but closer to the quality of ‘fay’ in most dialects, although never diphthongized to /ei/). It is always this long vowel that we find in hen /heːn/ old, e.g. Yr Hen Ardd.
i – as in the English vowel in ‘pin’, e.g. Idris /ˈidris/ and /ˈbrɛnin/. It is sometimes pronounced as a semi-consonant too, as in the initial sound of the English yes, e.g. ieuanc /ˈjeɨaŋk/ ‘young’ and gwreiddio /ˈgwreiðjo/ ‘to root’ / subjunctive form of ‘to root’.
o – as in the English ‘hot’ or ‘knock’ often, e.g. Dolgellau /dɔlˈgɛɬaɨ/ and gormesoedd /gɔrˈmɛsoɨð/ ‘oppressions’.
ô / o – similar to the English vowel in ‘law’ (but closer to the quality of ‘low’ in most dialects, although never diphthongized to /ou/). It is always this long vowel that we find in moch /moːχ/ ‘pigs’, e.g. Coed y Moch.
u – pronounced as ‘i’ as in the English ‘pin’ in south Wales but with the centralized vowel /ɨ/ in the north of the country. It appears in the text as a second element of diphthongs, e.g. ieuanc /ˈjeɨaŋk/ ‘young’ and /dɔlˈgɛɬaɨ/.
û / u – pronounced as ‘ee’ as in the English ‘tree’ in south Wales but with the centralized vowel /ɨː/ in the north of the country. It appears in the text in the personal name Lludd /ɬɨːð/.
w – as in the English vowel of ‘put’ in cwtsh /kʊt͡ʃ/ ‘hug’. It is sometimes pronounced as a semi-consonant too, as in the initial sound of the English well, e.g. dderwen /ˈðɛrwɛn/ (mutated form of derwen) ‘oak (tree)’ and gwreiddio /ˈgwreiðjo/ ‘to root’ / subjunctive form of ‘to root’.
ŵ / w – as in the English vowel of ‘zoo’. In this text, it is found in (Owain) Glyndŵr /glɨnˈduːr/ (personal name) as a simple long vowel and in the verb ŵyr /u:ɨr/ (mutated form of gŵyr) ‘know(s)’ as a first element of a diphthong.
y – pronounced as ‘i’ as in the English ‘pin’ in south Wales but with the centralized vowel /ɨ/ in north Wales in final (unstressed) syllables, e.g. Penllyn /ˈpɛnɬɨn/ (placename), Llefelys /ɬɛˈvɛlɨs/ (personal name) and ellyll /ˈɛɬɨɬ/ ‘demon’. This is also the case in monosyllables too usually; however, in some common monosyllabic function words, e.g. the articles y and yr ‘the’, it is pronounced as in the English ‘but’ (with the schwa vowel), e.g. y dderwen /ə ˈðɛrwɛn/ ‘the oak (tree)’ and yr ellyll /ər ˈɛɬɨɬ/ ‘the demon’. In non-final syllables of words with more than one syllable, we also find the schwa vowel in these contexts, e.g. dybia /ˈdəbja/ (mutated form of the verb tybia) ‘suspect’ and cyfarwyddiaid /kəvarˈuɨðjaid/ ‘storyteller’.
Diphthongs
ai – as in the English ‘light’ or ‘my’, e.g. Owain /ˈouain/ (personal name).
au – as in the English ‘light’ or ‘my’ (with the centralized vowel /ɨ/ rather than /i/ as the final element in north Wales), e.g. Dolgellau /dɔlˈgɛɬaɨ/.
aw – as in the English ‘now’ or ‘owl’, e.g. Aran Fawddwy /ˈvauðuɨ/ (mutated form of Mawddwy).
ei – similar to the English ‘way’ throughout Wales, e.g. gwreiddio /ˈgwreiðjo/ ‘to root’ / subjunctive form of ‘to root’.
eu – similar to the English ‘way’ (with the centralized vowel /ɨ/ rather than /i/ as the final element in north Wales), e.g. ceubren /ˈkeɨbrɛn/ ‘hollow oak’ and ieuanc /ˈjeɨaŋk/ ‘young’.
oe – as in the English ‘toy’ (with the centralized vowel /ɨ/ rather than /i/ as the final element in north Wales), e.g. coed /koːɨd/ ‘trees’ and gormesoedd /gɔrˈmɛsoɨð/ ‘oppressions’. Note that the first element is long in northern monosyllables, as opposed to /koid/, which varies with /koːd/, in south Wales for coed.
ow – as in the English ‘owe’, e.g. Owain /ˈouain/ (personal name).
wy – similar to the English ‘fluid’ (although both elements appear in the same syllable). In north Wales, it is the centralized vowel /ɨ/ rather than /i/ that we find as a final element, e.g. Aran Fawddwy /ˈvauðuɨ/ and cyfarwyddiaid /kəvarˈuɨðjaid/ ‘storytellers’.
Consonants
The following consonants are pronounced in the same way in both Welsh and English usually: b, d, h, l, m, n, p, ph, s, and t. The following list therefore draws attention to some of the differences between the two languages.
c – always hard as in ‘cat’, e.g. Cader /ˈkadɛr/ and cwtsh /kʊt͡ʃ/ ‘hug’.
ch – as in the Scottish ‘loch’, e.g. moch /moːχ/ ‘pigs’ in Coed y Moch.
dd – always pronounced as the first sound of the English ‘the’ and ‘then’, e.g. y dderwen /ə ˈðɛrwɛn/ ‘the oak (tree)’ and cyfarwydd /kəvˈaruɨð/ ‘storyteller’.
f – always corresponds to the English ‘v’ as in ‘van’, e.g. y fesen /ə ˈvesɛn/ ‘the acorn’
ff – always pronounced as the first sound of the English ‘farm’ or ‘free’. Unlike English, the sounds of f and ff are always kept separate in Welsh (see f above).
g – always hard as in ‘gate’, e.g. gormesoedd /gɔrˈmɛsoɨð/ ‘oppressions’ and Dolgellau /dɔlˈgɛɬaɨ/.
ll – a typologically rare sound which turns up in all varieties of Welsh. When native speakers pronounce ll /ɬ/ and l /l/, the lips and front of the tongue are generally in a similar position in both cases. However, to pronounce ll, learners are commonly advised to blow air around the sides of the tongue. The nearest sound in English is heard when ‘t’ is followed by ‘l’, e.g. ‘little’ or ‘kettle’, but even this rather strange sound is not identical to the Welsh ll. Examples of ll from the text include Llefelys /ɬɛˈvɛlɨs/ (personal name) and ellyll /ˈɛɬɨɬ/ ‘demon’.
r – native speakers of Welsh roll their rs regularly. This involves vibrating the tongue to produce a trill or a tap. This r sound is not silenced after a vowel (as is often the case in varieties of English in Wales), e.g. in ardd /arð/ ‘garden’.
th – always pronounced as the first sound of the English ‘thanks’ or ‘through’. Unlike English, the sounds of th and dd are always kept separate in Welsh (see dd above).
The hardest part of writing a book is that I forbid myself from reading for pleasure until my book is done.
My problem is what some people call “code switching” – where you imitate a local accent. Sometimes unwittingly. At my last corporate job, we had a corporate VP who spoke in a Cockney dialect. Whenever we were in a meeting with the guy, a coworker would start talking exactly like Mr. Bow Bells.
I took the coworker aside and gently broke the news to him. His response: “I know! I can’t stop myself! It’s horrible!”
Code switching is easy to do with writing. And it can be used to your advantage.
When I teach writing, I encourage code switching. If you don’t have a “voice” as a writer, borrow one. Find a writer you adore. Study how he or she structures sentences. Are the sentences long or short? What words get repeated over and over? How do they handle dialogue? How do they describe objects?
Now imitate them as best you can. Really. Rip off their writing style without shame. I did this when I was a student. I imitated Kurt Vonnegut, Noam Chomsky, Nikolai Gogol (especially Gogol) and (nerd alert) Vonda N. McIntyre. Imitating good writing is a good thing. It’s like making reproductions of good furniture. You get the feeling of good writing (or good furniture) in your veins. And as you do it, you will say “Yes, that’s what it feels like.”
When you start writing in your own voice or designing your own pieces, you will know what it feels like when the words are flowing and the furniture is stunning. In time, your imitative prose and furniture knock-offs will fade in the past as you find your own voice.
Once you find your own voice, however, that’s when the danger begins. If I read Vonnegut while writing a book, it’s going to come out as “The Anarchist’s Cat’s Cradle” or “Welcome to the Monkey House Vol. 2, Monkey Dreams Come True.” So I cut myself off from reading anything for pleasure while I’m writing for profit.
Right now, I am in a joyful place. I’m building furniture for “The Stick Chair Book,” taking notes, making photos, drawing chairs and thinking (so much thinking). But I’m not writing. So this month I’ve gone on a bender of fiction and nonfiction.
The slutty fiction: “The Murderbot Diaries” by Martha Wells, a six-book science fiction series recommended by my cousin Jessamyn West. Wells’ writing is a great thing to try to imitate (if you are looking to do a little code switching, sailor). The higher-brow fiction: “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke, one of my favorite novelists. I’ve read her her first novel, “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,” more times than any other piece of fiction. And the nonfiction: “Thinking With Type” by Ellen Lupton. This was a textbook for one of my youngest daughter’s classes. It’s an interesting and contemporary take on typography (again, nerd alert).
With any luck, I still have another six or eight months of being able to read for pleasure. And I have a big pile of books to dig through.
But after that, I’ll have to close the book(s). Otherwise you’ll be in for “Shart of Darkness,” “Board of the Annular Rings” or “Love in the Time of the Emerald Ash Borer.”
Feel free to suggest other book titles in the comments (you know you want to).
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
Katherine has just made a good-sized batch of soft wax, which you can purchase in her etsy store – $24 for 8 oz. of wax in a heavy-duty glass jar.
The photo above shows a jar of her wax with her new three-legged cat named Bean. He’s a shelter cat (of course) and he lost his leg after being run over by a car and then delivered to the Kenton County Animal Shelter.
Katherine and Lucy volunteer at the shelter, so you probably know what happened.
Bean is impossibly sweet to everyone. And he – like all animals – refuses pity. We did not need another cat in our house (we have five). But we did need Bean.
Bean craps – a lot. More than many fully grown cats. So purchasing Katy’s wax will ensure an ample supply of kitty litter and deodorizer.
Mark just retired from a career as a carpenter and general contractor, so what better way to commemorate the transition than by turning our own home into a construction site with a full-blown remodel of our bathroom?
This potential marriage breaker domestic disruption has been a long time coming. It was prompted by our recognition that as we, along with many of our family members and friends, have reached the stage of life characterized by the occasional discount on a cup of bad coffee or condescendingly raised voice from pharmacy staff, it would be advisable to replace our high-rimmed, impossible-to-make-presentable clawfoot tub that I bought from a pile outside an antique store in 2004 with something less likely to cause us to trip and fall. What finally set our wheels in motion was the Hallelujah Chorus of stepping into the newly completed bathroom of our clients Nick Detrich and Kathleen Benson, who tiled their walls in seafoam green – a shade that, while not for everyone, proved the perfect evocation of 1930s camp for me (and luckily, for Mark as well). They’d ordered too much field tile and were hoping to sell it. We were happy to oblige.
From the start, we agreed on most of the details. A built-in cast-iron tub, an exhaust fan that’s quieter and more effective than the cheap-motel-circa-1972 model we currently have and a wall-hung basin with intact enamel. The tall shallow cabinet I built years ago with a salvaged door and hardware will stay, as will the shuttered window-like opening that lets light in through the laundry room.
Then there’s the floor. I wanted to keep the black-and-white checkerboard of 12”-square commercial-grade vinyl composition tile that I installed when I first moved in, inspired by a room that Sharon Fugate and Peggy Shepherd had finished in their eclectic home-furnishings store, Grant St [sic.], in the early 1990s.
Mark wanted ceramic tile or unglazed porcelain mosaic. “It’s the highest-quality finish,” he insisted. “It’s thicker and more durable.” Exactly what I would have told customers 20 years ago. And considering that we’re tiling the walls up to about 5’, he said, we should also do away with the baseboard so that moisture condensing on the vertical surfaces wouldn’t drip down onto the square top edge. Hmm, I thought. I have never seen water pool on the baseboard, other than just behind the clawfoot tub, where the wall sometimes gets sprayed when certain tall people (one in particular) take a shower – and that condition will be eradicated when we install a built-in tub.
The idea of a tiled floor didn’t feel right to me for this house. It’s a funky house built and finished on a shoestring budget. The funkiness is its charm, and I know the story behind nearly every house part, from the salvaged sink that lacks a mixer faucet to the gate I made to keep our dog in the mudroom and the lamp my maternal grandma made from an antique hand-cranked coffee grinder. I have never been concerned about using the “highest quality” offerings just because they’re widely considered superior; I don’t want to live in a house where my surroundings are dictated by other people’s often-uncritical judgments. I have always worked with budgetary constraints – at $1 per square foot for a commercial-grade flooring product, my VCT tile reflects a necessarily skinflint period of my history that I have no desire to forget. I feel more at home when surrounded by things that hold meaning for me.
Ceramic and porcelain tile floors are hard. From a purely sensual perspective, I find them unwelcoming, though I have installed plenty of them in rooms where they were period-appropriate. Tiled floors are also cold. If we lived in a tropical climate I might value this characteristic, but we live in a place that has winter. Of course we could address the cold with under-floor heating, but that, too, strikes me as luxurious overkill, at least for our home. So you’re cold when you get out of the shower – dry off and put some clothes on. A little discomfort is good for us; it reminds us we’re alive. For our house, installing under-floor heating as a way to make tile more palatable also seemed a bit like the logic of building houses so tight and well insulated that you need a heat recovery ventilation unit to bring in fresh air. At some point, from a cradle to grave perspective, the efficiency arguably becomes inefficient.
Also, I like the bathroom baseboard, even if its interruption of the transition between a tiled wall and floor may not be typical in contemporary high-end bathroom construction. Does it work? Do we like it? Is it easy to keep clean? The answers to these and similar questions matter more to me than some industry stamp of approval, not least when I remind myself that such stamps appear on many cabinets made with ½” MDF carcases held together with staples and hot-melt glue.
Vinyl composition tile is by definition synthetic – a product of the plastics industry.[i] At a prima facie level, this inclines me to view it with disapproval; it certainly raises all sorts of questions, from which chemical constituents went into its production to the possibility of toxic off-gassing over time.[ii] By comparison, the 1” hexagonal porcelain ceramic tile mosaic we’ve been considering seems more traditional, and so (in theory), safer – it was used in many a late-19th-century bathroom floor, at least in higher-end residences. (The majority of homes occupied by “working people” in that era did not have indoor plumbing.) I thought back to some recent news reports about cases of silicosis among workers in the composite stone countertop industry; even though ceramic and porcelain tile seem closer than VCT to their naturally occurring components, the dust from decanting, mixing and applying the cement and grout, as well as that produced by cutting tile, presents its own dangers to health. And when you’re talking about the industry that mass-produces ceramic and porcelain tile, you’re in the world of heavy materials that have to be mined and transported, often internationally, then processed with complex equipment at temperatures only achieved with significant carbon inputs, coloring additives, glazes and more – in other words, a highly energy- and resource-intensive product in its own right. So much for any “green” advantage, at least insofar as I can make out.
As for durability, while the 1’ x 2’ sheets of mosaic we were thinking of using are somewhat thicker than VCT, the latter is far denser than the resilient sheet flooring most people associate with vinyl; that’s how VCT came to be the flooring of choice for grocery stores around the country during the 20th century (even if acres of the stuff are now being scraped up in favor of an unapologetically bare, polished concrete floor). When properly installed, VCT will last for decades.
“But tile is more waterproof,” said Mark, invoking a common belief. Really, though? Water can’t get through 1/8”-thick VCT. Granted, there are joints where water could in principle penetrate to the underlayment and subfloor. Then again, there are many more potentially permeable joints in a floor made with the 1” porcelain hexagonal mosaic we were considering. Sure, if we installed a waterproof membrane beneath it, the tile floor would be waterproof in a meaningful way – as long as the membrane remained intact. But we use a bath mat when we step out, and how often does a sink in our house overflow or a toilet go bonkers and leak all over the floor? Neither has happened in the 17 years since the house’s construction, and with the two of us aging tradespeople who regularly clean out the gutters, mop up spills, and keep things reasonably well maintained, neither is very likely. Besides, should we design every feature of our homes with a view to its ability to survive a rare and potentially devastating scenario? I’m not talking about basics such as anchoring a structure to keep it on its foundation in an earthquake zone, or bracing it to resist high winds; this is a matter of interior finishes.
You can answer that for yourself, but my answer is no. In aesthetic terms, to make one room of our house State Of The Art would be an affront to the spirit of the entire place. It would also be a concession to dogma – “tile is better because harder, more permanent, more expensive” – the kind of prejudice I think it’s important to make my customers aware of on principle (because you know a friend or relative is going to ask them why they chose what they did, regardless of what they did), but that I don’t think should be the ultimate deciders.
And the VCT floor is already there, in perfectly good shape. Why rip it out and send those materials to the landfill?
For decades, the ethos in the building trade has been “tear out what’s there and upgrade” – more luxury, more comfort, more image-conscious “curation.” Maybe I have just been around for enough years that I recognize the motivations underlying so many real estate and construction industry recommendations, which too often boil down to “buy more.” My life and home have been shaped as powerfully by what I’ve rejected as what I’ve embraced. Mark is persuaded. (It helped that keeping the current floor will mean spending significantly less money.)
[i] Although the word “synthetic” is commonly used to connote poor quality, it simply means that something made by putting constituents together. Strictly speaking, few things we live with, wear, or eat are not synthetic.
[ii] I should add that there was no discernible smell to this flooring, even when it was new. It’s a different product from sheet vinyl flooring.