Spoon Carver’s Blog

Often while I am carving, I want to tell someone about the spoon. How it takes on a character of it's own, or how a mistake became something beautiful. That is what this blog is for. Welcome!

"The Spoon and it's History"

Monday, June 22, 2009

Being at the Spoon Carver’s Gathering has been a bit inspiring for David too. He doesn’t really have a desire to learn to carve spoons for the sake of carving spoons. If he did learn to carve, I think it would be for the learning itself.

On the way back to Upstate NY we were talking about the Gathering. For some reason David thought it would be fun if I did research on the history of spoons to add to the web page. I told him that it was all fine and good, but I’m not really interested in the history. I figure Adam or Even figured it out quickly enough when they were cooking. I’m sure Jacob had some type of spoon or scoop to dish out stew for his brother, Esau. So I told him I have no objection to him doing a bit of research, but I prefer learning about the different styles that current carvers have now.

So, David, still being curious to find out how many other people have written on the history of spoons, did a bit of web research himself. Lo and Behold, he found a book titled, “The Spoon and it’s History.” By C.J. Jackson, dated 1890. Not only that, but the web page that he found it on said that there are only two copies in all the libraries that it has in it’s system. One was in England, which is appropriate because it was primarily a study of English spoons, and the other is at Cornell University! Exciting for us because David has been studying at Cornell for the past two years and we still have library privileges.

The other exciting part is that it is part of the rare books collection. David and I have been wishing for an excuse to check out a book from there. So, last Friday we went to the Cornell Library to check it out.

In short, it is a rather interesting book, primarily looking at the style of the silver spoon throughout the years in England. It did cover wood spoons a bit, but because wood spoons are often not dated, it is hard to do a lot of research on them.

There were a few fun quotes in the book too, one taken from Don Quixote. “‘Oh!,’ said Sancho Panza, “what spoons! what neat wooden spoons will I make when a shepherd.’” (presumably adding on the end and “I be”)

Spoon Carver's Gathering - Milan, MN

Friday, June 19, 2009

Three weeks ago my husband, David, and I packed up the car and took a road trip to Minnesota to attend the Spoon Carver’s Gathering. It isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds, even though we are coming from Upstate New York, David grew up in Minnesota and we were able to visit his parents.

I heard about the Gathering last year from Norman Stevens, a collector of hand carved wood spoons. He was asking if I would like to be a part of his collection, and then mentioned that he would be displaying them at the Spoon Carver’s Gathering, and proceeded to tell me about it. I tried to figure out a way to attend myself, but since it didn’t work, David’s parents went for me.

This year, I started talking about it early, to give David a lot of warning, and things worked out really well that we could take the time for the trip.

What a great trip it was!

Spoon carving is something I have been doing on my own for the past two years. I’ve never taken a class and I have only talked to one other person who carves spoons. To be at a Gathering, where just about everyone is interested in carving spoons, both for business or pleasure, was just a delight!

The schedule was loose, to give people time to sit and carve and chat. I met so many great people and saw so many different spoons that these people made.

It is really hard for me to verbalize just how much I enjoyed the weekend. I think, that unless you have been to something similar, it would also be hard to understand. It is also hard for me to share how much my carving has been used in my life to mature me. I give thanks every day for my work that I am able to do. To then be surrounded by so many other people who also enjoy the same thing, is filling.

So, instead of trying to tell you how well I enjoyed it, I’ll add a few photos so you can see what the day was like.

Fred Levesay giving a spoon carving demo. Here he is showing how to rough out the spoon first with an ax.

Tom Denglar showing how to make Shrink boxes.

Tom and some of his work.

Del Stubbs giving a knife sharpening demo.

Del touching up my hook knife.

Chit chat with other carvers.

My new friend, Dawna, working on a spoon.

Work done by two of the demonstrators, April does the woven baskets and Jarrod the bowls and spoons.

April and Jarrod

David and his parents.

I hope to make a separate page of the Spoon Gathering photos under “Photo Galleries” on the side menu. There will be a few more not pictured here.

Wedding Set

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

I was able to visit my family for a week at the end of last month. It was wonderful to be able to spend a bit of time with my Grammie for a few days. While I was there, my cousin in Japan requested a set of soup spoons to give as a wedding gift to his Japanese friends.

He said I could use which ever wood I would like so I chose Bird’s Eye Maple, Rosewood, Bloodwood, and Maple.

It wasn’t until I had oiled the spoons that I saw just how well the colours blended together. For whatever reason, white, red and black seem to be really nice colours for a marriage. The Bird’s Eye seems to pull them all together.

Tired but Satisfied Hands

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

I thoroughly enjoyed working on orders before Christmas. I had been working on Christmas type order since September and the last few weeks were especially busy. Below is a photo I took of the Soup Spoons I was working on before they were sanded.

Here they are finished:

From left to right the woods used are:

Maple, Cherry, Goncalo Alves, Bloodwood, Redheart, and Purpleheart.

I also worked on an order of 3 mixing spoons from Buckthorn wood that was sent to me from Minnesota. It has a few knots and I wasn’t able to get all three spoons big, but they did turn out very nicely.

More on Baby Spoons

Thursday, October 23, 2008

I am excited about these spoons! I’ve been taking a few more photos of them today so I can display them better in the galleries. Most of them are sold already, and a few of them are on display in the Spoon Gallery. The two that are left are on the Spoons for Sale page.

This is a photo of a gift I am sending to my girlfriend.

I have a love/hate relationship with this spoon. This is the one that I first thought was ugly with it’s streaks. It isn’t like the other Bird’s Eye Maple spoon I made which has beautiful rays. But the more I look at this spoon, the more I love it and find it beautiful and intriguing. It has risen to be one of my favorite of the baby spoons I made this past month.

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