stuff I have finally finished

I finished a bunch of spoons and a few spreaders during the last couple of weeks.  These are pieces that I started ages ago and that have been sitting around in various stages of completion. I had them in boxes and bags and on shelves, etc.  They were everywhere.  I was a little mortified when I started to gather them into one place and saw how many there were.  I still have others in bags sitting around waiting.

These two here are maple, and I love the way these designs fit my mouth.  I stained these in cocoa water for variety, but they only got a few shades darker than normal.

These four are also maple, but I stained them with brown food coloring.  I love the deeper color!  I just got some food coloring at the store and mixed it with water and some vinegar, according to some instructions I found on the internet.

This is a monster big maple spoon.  I made this because the wood told me to.  There was a spot in the maple where the grain was bowl-shaped, so I had to make a spoon out of it.  The luster is quite nice and it is fun to cook with.

This is a little maple eating spoon with an ebonized handle.  I dipped the handle in some tea to make sure it had lots of tannins in it, then I dipped it in an iron acetate solution that I made with baling wire and vinegar.  That turns it nice and black.

These three get their picture taken together because they were all early attempts and eating spoons that did not work that well.  They looked nice, but they did not feel nice in my mouth.  Now that I have learned a lot more about spoon design, I decided to remake them.  I cut them down some, mostly on the sides of the bowl.  I made the sides of the bowl curved down (if you are looking from the side of the spoon) so that the bowl of the spoon isn't so deep that your top lip can't touch the bottom of the bowl and I did some other small adjustments with the handles.  Then I put some notches in the handles on two of them to add some visual interest.  I am rather pleased with the improvement.

 

And finally, these are some spreaders that I made for funsies.  Maple and walnut.  Walnut looks so good but it is such a pain to sand.

What we have on hand

I really enjoy using wood that I can scrounge or gather locally. I do carry a saw and sometimes a hatchet in the car with me, because you never know when an opportunity will arise. Since I moved back to the desert, I have been getting aquainted with mesquite, citrus wood, arizona sycamore, arizona cypress, bottlebrush, olive, and various other native and transplanted woods. I was really missing the birch that I had almost unlimited access to before the move, and I still do, but I am really enjoying the process of discovery with these other woods. The differences in texture, grain patterns, hardness, toughness, and especially how they feel and smell is an experience that I really do savor.
When in a thoughtful mood, I see parallels between this hobby of mine and the rest of life. There really is value in working with the things and people that are already around us. So often, I want to import solutions to the problem at hand. The risk is that I miss out on and discard the things and people that are right here, in favor of something more exotic and perhaps less suited to my environment.

Bigger and Better Spellicans (or maybe Spillikins)

I have made a lot of spellicans in the last several of months.  As you might be able to tell from these photos, I have started making them larger.  Most of these are pine.  I guess I got tired of using only scraps and being constrained by the size and shape of the leftover wood.  So I cut and carved these from non-leftover pine.  These are some of my favorites.  I made one tiki head and I liked it so much that I had to make some more.  The others are just plain fun.  Why the spoon, you may ask?  Well, I got some wood from a friend - Arizona Cypress.  I carved the spoon out of it, but the wood is far too aromatic to put in your mouth.  So it is now a toy.