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Hobbyist findsuty i n d riftwoodBy JUDY GARDINER EDMONDS—Who can return from a walk on the beach without a pocketful of curiosities: a bit of colored glass, some pebbles and maybe a broken shell ?Not Jim Butchart.In fact the Edmonds man, who beachcombs daily is having an off day if he comes back from the waterfront with any less than a car trunk full of treasure.THE OUT-OF-WORK Teamster s fascination is with driftwood — weathered and worn beams that may once have been part of a boat or a dock or gnarled logs and branches burnished by seawater. Butchart can’t resist hauling them home and turning them into objects d’ art.The big pieces he puts together with lengths of rope (which he also finds on the beach) into decorative pieces for a yard or deck. Smaller bits are fashioned into miniature sea scenes, complete with ceramic gulls, glass floats made from clear marbles and tiny crab pots he fashions from balsa wood.Butchart’s impulse to collect interesting flotsam from his outings turned into a hobby when he found himself with time on his hands a year ago.He’d worked as a dispatcher for a trucking firm for 26 years when the company went non-union, and he quit. He quickly found a job at a brewery, but was laid off when the economy turned sour. He’s 59, but not quite ready to retire.“I’d never been out of work in my life until this happened,” he said.HE STARTED walking the beach, from the Edmonds ferry dock to the Union Oil dock every morning.“And I’d always come back with something,” he said.One day he eyed a nice-looking, bleached and water-worn log in his yard and decided to do something with it. The something — three sections bound with rope and toppedwith a ceramic seagull — is the first of his driftwood creations. He’s sold and given away many, but this one is “his pet.”He decided to make more.rXi.v.* '•Iv • • •/ • i • vm.V./%A:: *....SURROUNDED BY samples of his driftwood collection-turned-craft Jim Butchart relaxes on a sunny afternoon. The Edmonds man took advantage of temporary employment to turn his penchant from bringing home interesting driftwood into a hobby. For now he’s selling his handiwork at craft shows, but says that he may get more serious after he retires.“I thought it would give me something to do.”The hobby has indeed kept him busy. The collection of driftwood creations has grown steadily and could, Butchart concedes, someday turn into a business.He and his wife Adah, who works with handicapped youngsters, plan to travel when they retire. They have visions of a motor home-hobby shop where he could sell his driftwood pieces and she could market soft sculpture dolls she likes to make.But that’s somewhere down the road. For now Butchart will limit hissales to craft shows and school carnivals.“It’s just a hobby to me. I don’t want to get into anything until I know what’s going to happen with my job.”Butchart has been called back to the brewery before and expects he could be again soon because things seem to be picking up.In the meantime being out of work has not been so bad, he said.There’s the hobby he developed and the discovery that he has an artistic bent.“I haven’t had a talent for anything (before),” he said.And there’s a new appreciation for the beauty of the world around him. In addition to his morning walks Butchart and his wife go for a walk nearly every evening on the Burke-Gilman Trail east of here.“In my dispatching days I would come home and collapes. I was enthused with my work and that’s what I was living for.“Now we go on walks and I notice things. The flowers.“My wife tells me, ‘Those blossoms have always been there. It’s just that you have been so busy that you haven’t seen them.’ ”
Newspaper Details
Edmonds Enterprise
Edmonds, Washington, US
Wed, Mar 23, 1983
Page 3
Full Page
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Anonymous
AK, USA 06 Dec 2022
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Edmonds Enterprise
