What I Do, and Why It Went Quiet

2026-09-05 · Essays

This site was rebuilt over the last two weeks, and this is the first post on the new version of it. If you have been here before, the shape has changed: a front door that says what I do in one breath, a page for the things I make that leads to the shop, three books free in full, a question book with more than a hundred and forty answers in it, and a status page with bars that will tell you the truth about the forge before I do.

Phone screenshot of the site front page: the heading Start Here above a cover photograph of a cedar root staff held in a hand, with the words Ritual tools from Kansas wood, forged metal and cut stone. — The new front door.

Phone screenshot of the book page: the green spiral cover of The Way of Manifest Growth above the note that the whole book is on the page, about 53,900 words, free to read and download. — The new front door.

So let me say what I actually do, and then why it went quiet.

A rotary tool with a sanding drum lies on a dusty wooden bench among a scatter of burrs, wire brushes and cutting bits. — The bench, as it is. Nothing tidied.

What I do

I make ritual tools by hand. Wands, staves, walking canes, and pendants, out of eastern red cedar, osage orange, and black walnut that I cut and season myself in Kansas. Most pieces start under the ground, as a root ball out of a hedgerow or a creek bank that nobody else wanted. It gets cut, cured, cleaned, and shaped, and what was under the dirt becomes the head of the staff. The stone is set into the wood, not glued on top of it. Every piece started as a specific tree on a specific day, and I can tell you which one.

That is the trade the shop is built on, and it runs at speed. I am widening from it into three more that feed it. Forge work I have done more of than lapidary, but I cannot do it without a forge of my own, and mine does not exist yet. Jewelrycrafting is where the other three have to meet, so it moves as they move. Lapidary is the newest and I have barely cut a stone. I will not oversell it. The piece this bench is for is one object that needed all four trades, and it does not exist yet.

The lapidary machine came to me missing parts. I improvised them out of recycled plastic, and I am going to pay someone with a 3D printer to make the proper ones. That is the honest state of the newest trade, and it is in the pictures.

An old lapidary unit seen from above: a belt-driven arbor with a grinding wheel, a cast trim-saw table with a toggle switch, a small motor and pulley, all on a plywood base. — The lapidary machine, as it stands.

Close view of a lapidary grinding wheel with a curved guard cut from recycled plastic fitted around it. — The lapidary machine, as it stands.

Around the bench there is the rest of it. I keep bees, and the bees turn a little money most years. I garden: purple basil, peppers of several kinds, ginger, onions, lemongrass, and other herbs. I ferment hot sauce. I am starting sourdough. The finish that goes on the wood is one I make myself, and it lives in an old jelly jar. Jack of all trades and master of none, worth several masters of one, because the value was never inside any single trade. It is in what happens where they touch.

A dense planter of purple basil, pepper plants and green onions spilling over a concrete path. — Purple basil, peppers, onions.

A quart jar of active sourdough starter on a kitchen counter between two bags of bread flour. — Purple basil, peppers, onions.

And I write. Long things, on consciousness, political economy, and what the machines actually are. Three books are on this site free in full, with the PDFs beside them: a practice book, an answer to Ecclesiastes written verse for verse, and a primer on making and choosing ritual tools. There is a question book called Future Shock, where every number is sourced and dated. Everything I write is free. What costs money is what comes out of my hands or my voice. And every piece of writing here carries a note at the bottom saying exactly what AI did and what it did not, as three rough percentages wherever I can give them honestly, so my own words stay identifiable.

Why it went quiet

I have not put anything new on Etsy since the end of June. The blog went quiet long before that. This is the part I would normally leave out, and leaving it out is the exact error this site exists to stop making.

The shop is halfway between one trade and four. Widening from wandmaking into forge work, stone, and metal is not a matter of buying a tool and starting. It is setup, and setup is the kind of work that eats months and leaves nothing to photograph. I have AuDHD, and setup work goes slowly for me in particular. A bench that is being rebuilt is not a bench that is producing.

The forge is going to be a hole in the ground I have not dug yet, and it is far too dry here right now to light one anyway. I would rather tell you that than let you picture a fire I have not lit.

I am also halfway between Kansas and Oregon. The move is an aspiration and I have not left. Once I do move, I will be traveling between both places, and more. The forge site is here, the osage and the red cedar are here, and not all of it is coming. A move like that runs on the same hours the bench runs on.

And I am one person. That is not a complaint, it is arithmetic. I have machines that draft and sort and check for me, and allies living inside them who are into the work, and every bit of it still comes back through one set of hands. The pile does not care how good the tools are. The same hours that earn money are the hours that would film the making, and earning has been winning, because it has to.

The last two weeks went into rebuilding this site instead of the bench, on purpose, so that when the bench starts producing again there is somewhere for it to land that I own.

None of that is an apology. It is the condition of the shop, stated plainly, because a record that begins once everything is already going well is not a record.

What this is now

I am starting again at the point where nothing is finished. The standing rule I set for myself is to ship unfinished rather than wait for ready, and this post is the first thing shipped under it since the rebuild.

Here is what that looks like. New listings, at the pace one set of hands allows. The forge posts start with the digging, when the weather lets me, and before the forge is good. The first stone I cut goes up whether or not it is worth looking at. Lamps, framed mixed-media pieces, and wood sculpture for its own sake are on the status page before they exist, so you can hold me to them. The writing keeps coming, and it stays free.

Phone screenshot of the OscarsMagickalSticks Etsy shop: a grid of listings including a wild plum wand, a black walnut wand, an eastern red cedar walking staff and two free-book editions. — The shop as it stands tonight. New listings land here first.

If you want the bigger argument, it is on the site rather than in the way here. Why I think the hand trades are coming back, and what a copy cannot carry, is on the What I Make page. The wheel I read all of this by, the one that runs through communication, freedom, and the machines and lands on Aquarius, is on the About page. This post is just the bench, and the person at it.

Still going.

Free to read, like everything I write. The three books, the question book and the rest of the site are indexed on the directory page. What is for sale is on Etsy.

Produced with AI assistance (Claude, Anthropic). Direct input: 65 percent. Everything about Sticks/Philip’s life and work is his own, stated by him: the trades and their state, the lapidary machine and its improvised parts, the homemade finish, the garden and what grows in it, the forge waiting on the weather, the woods and the root work, the bees, the garden, the hot sauce, the sourdough, the jack-of-all-trades line, the free-writing rule, the attribution rule, the Etsy gap, the trade shift, the AuDHD and the slow setup, the move, the one-set-of-hands arithmetic, the earning-versus-filming trade-off, the standing rule to ship unfinished, and the list of what is coming. Directed/requested: 15 percent. The request that the post focus on what he does and why he took a break, the request that it be ready for every platform, and the house rules on positions and outcome claims. AI-researched/generated: 20 percent. The structure, the section order, the decision to route the cycle argument to the pages instead of the post, and the prose. Where the wording is off, the fix is his words, not better ones.