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!

A "Worth It" Exchange!

Thursday, December 31, 2009

This past spring I joined the Women's retreat at church and was glad to find myself roommates with one of the women I had noticed at church and wished to get to know sometime. Unfortunately, our move to North Dakota has kept us from really being able to get to know each other well before I left. While at the retreat she was busy working on a beautiful and colourful scarf that just kept catching my eye. Truly, if I was wondering where my roommate was, I let my eyes wander over the crowd until I saw a lap of colours that caught my eye, and then I knew where she was. I did not know her face well enough at the time to pick it out in the crowd, but the colours always caught my eye when I saw them, it was a good way of finding her! I told her that I liked the scarf she was making so much that I was willing to trade her some of my spoons in exchange for it. She liked the idea really well, and come this fall, I got the finished scarf in the mail. It was just as beautiful as I remembered! I still had work to do on my spoons but about two weeks before Christmas I was able to mail her the completed spoons. Two Curly Maple spoons and one Bird's Eye maple. I have been so glad for the scarf too! It is long and wide and wraps around my head twice to keep out the wind chill of these North Dakota winters. Thank you Deborah!

2009 Blogger Ornament Exchange

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

While trying to catch up on back orders of spoons, and being very distracted, I came across:

(NOTE! It is over for this year!)

I love Christmas ornaments and I love to give gifts so I thought I’d join. I was partnered to exchange with Jaimie from J-Me

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what woods are nicest to use and what design I wanted to work on. Anything less than a spiral wouldn’t do.

I ended up making a fun ornament from a piece of Redheart wood that I had left over from a spoon. It turned out beautifully. Unfortunately, when it was all sanded and ready to be oiled, our new dog, Bella, found it, and started chewing on it before I noticed! And that was the night before it was to be sent off!

After a bit of thinking and looking at my stash of wood, I found a discarded mixing spoon that would work perfectly! I had been working on a spiral in the handle, I could cut the bowl off the handle and cut the handle in half for two ornaments instead of one.

Here is the results. I had actually been wondering how to make this design for some time, so my mistake and experimenting turned out quite nice I think!

And in return?

Jaimie’s ornament arrived two days before my birthday so I waited until my birthday morning to open it. (More presents for me!)

Check out this fantastic “quilted” ornament! I love it!

And all the detail!

It now sits in my Ikea tree beside my computer screen along with “Bella’s First Christmas” ornament.

Jar of Wood has moved!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Jar of Wood, previously located in Upstate New York has now moved to North Dakota!

I have also had a break from carving over the summer because of thumb issues. I am slowly getting back into carving, now that we are settled, and hope to update the web page soon. I have some great spoons to share about!

"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.

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