Knot exactly functional.

‘Square Knot’ is carved from a thin piece of Lilac. The square knot was one of the first knots I learned to tie in the Boy Scouts and one of the few I remember how to tie, “Left over right, right over left”. I didn’t intend to ‘free’ the knot part…. but by the time I got the ‘strings’ anywhere close to smooth my curiosity was piqued. I won’t ever try anything like this again until I get myself a scroll saw. And that’s final!

In the alley where I do my carving, one of the homeless guys (Ted) stops by to have a look. He is intrigued with the fragility of the spoon and asks if he can hold it. I say, “Okay, but just be really careful”. So he takes the spoon ever so gingerly into his hands and proceeds to squeeze the two ends together! And it didn’t break!! So there is a lot to like about Lilac. 8” long extended and 7 1/2” with the knot contracted.

‘Nodules’ is carved in Red Palm (with a little bit of spalting). 12”

‘Boat Ashore’ came from a little scrap of Serviceberry wood. If you draw a flattened triangle around the spoon that is what the scrap looked like… all sapwood with a little bit of heartwood at the short end of the triangle. 8 3/4” long.

‘Two Faced’ is Zebrawood, I think. It was among some wood I bought off Craig’s List. On each side of the spoon bowl I carved face profiles and just drilled holes for the eyes. 11 3/4” long.

‘Catch of the Day’ is from a piece of Star Magnolia a gentleman from MN sent me. It was a sort of trapezoidal piece of wood and I just cut the best part of the grain out on the bandsaw. As soon as I did the fish was there with the eye and the grain and so the bowl became a boat. 13” long.

‘Scoopy Doo’ came about at the request of a lady in Canada…. wanting a coffee scoop that stands up on its own. I think the wood is Ficus… plenty hard though. The ‘buttons’ are those BB looking things that you shoot out of a kids gun. 4 1/2” tall.

A couple of others:

‘Pink Dogwood’ was an experiment to see how food color would work as wood dye…. that way it could still be food safe. Carved in dogwood, of course. I have no idea how long the color would last if used in the kitchen.

‘Divided’ is carved from Star Fruit wood. The branch I found had this demarcation line running the length it shows up in this functional spoon. I think it is maybe 9”.

I carved one more for Mari from the purple plum she sent me

A functional ladle from our ‘enchanted’ weeping beech tree from Bernheim Forest:

And another maple seed spoon:

Another dogwood from the same branch…. not pink:

There’s a couple more but I haven’t gotten around to photograph them just yet… so I’ll save them for another post.

Thanks for having a look.

(Oh yeah…. Go UK Wildcats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

-- I just got done cutting three boards and all four of them were too short. (true story)

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