Which do you choose, a hard or soft option?

We have been urged to choose a project by next Monday's class, and to bring a crude sketch.

I am still overwhelmed by the options. I talked to the Instructor about a dining table. Although he has discouraged it in the past - because it is a large project in a crowded workshop, and we don't have the tools to properly turn a round tabletop and would have to wing it - I did detect in his eyes a glimmer, as if he would relish the challenge of "making it work" against these challenges.

Michael is encouraging me to make a desk for our new den/library. What we need for that room will, in fact, need to be custom made because of the functions we want it to possess - doubling as a media console and a work surface. Access to a well-equipped workshop could be a unique opportunity to do this for ourselves. And, it has the advantage of containing no round parts, only right angles, a more comfortable match for the workshop and my minimal skills.

In that same vein, though, we learned about the marketing of finished hardwood lumber last night (all merchants charge heavily for machining and even surfacing), and also watched a demonstration of the workshop's planing and sanding tools. This leads me back to the idea of simply machining beautiful hardwood shelves to use throughout the house, as (lacking such heavy equipment at home) this could be a chance to save a lot of money, even if we don't install these shelves immediately - or, for that matter, even know where they're going!