A Christmas annual from a wood company in Wisconsin. Where the log in the name actually comes from, how to lay a fire that catches first time, three things to build on a Saturday with a child handing you the wrong tool, and twelve small things to do on the twelve nights.
This is the web edition, and it is the whole book. A printed one follows in November and rides free in every order that leaves the shop.
Drawn, not photographed. The real pictures are being taken.
Seven things, in three parts. Each one is its own page and each one ends. Start anywhere. One is open so far and the rest arrive on the dates below, beginning September 26, 2026. The book is already finished. It just comes out the way a book like this used to.
Almost everything you have been told about this is repeated confidently and evidenced badly. Here is what the record actually shows, including the parts nobody can prove.
Build it upside down. The big wood goes on the bottom and the match goes on the top, and it burns cleaner, longer and without being poked.
Arrives September 26, 2026. The first evening cold enough to want a fire is usually the last week of September.
Cut a branch into discs and hang them on the tree. Some of them will split as they dry, and the reason they split is the most useful thing about wood there is.
Arrives October 10, 2026. The slices need a fortnight in a paper bag before they crack, and the branches come down in the October wind. Any later and there is no time to make them.
One split log, three flat-bottomed holes, three tealights. It is the shortest route there is from a woodpile to a table that looks like somebody thought about it.
Arrives November 7, 2026. Wisconsin loses the clocks at the start of November and the evenings get long enough to want candles on the table.
Three pegs in a board. Bore the holes eight degrees uphill and the rail holds a loaded stocking all night. Bore them straight and it does not.
Arrives November 21, 2026. Stockings go up the week after Thanksgiving. The glue wants a night, so this arrives with a weekend in hand.
Whole spices, low heat, and one temperature you must not go past. The number matters more than the recipe does.
Arrives December 5, 2026. The first properly dark, properly cold weekend of December.
One small thing to do on each of the twelve nights of Christmas. None of them costs anything and none of them takes longer than an evening.
Arrives December 24, 2026. It starts on Christmas night. It would be a strange thing to hand somebody in October.
The plan was a collectible catalog with two covers, and about half the line hidden behind a printed code so that owning the book was the only way in. It was a beautiful object. It was also a shop charging admission at the door.
So the price is gone and so is the catalog. What is left is the part that was always the good part: the history, the builds, the twelve nights, the cider. Nothing here is hidden and nothing here needs a code. If you never buy anything from us, this is still yours.
That is the honest position in September. We are buying from small makers rather than drop-shipping a catalog we have never touched, and that takes the time it takes. Two things in this book are real and open: a soy candle poured by hand in Madison, and a flannel in a plaid we drew ourselves that nobody has woven yet. Both listings say exactly where they stand.