I seem to have been so engrossed in making fan birds lately that I haven’t done much spoon carving but there’s a few spoons that I carved during the summer that haven’t yet made it onto the web and I finally got round to photoing them this weekend.
These 2 ladles are carved from the two halves of a single damson branch. It’s very unusual to get a branch that splits evenly enough to be able to use both halves so I’m really pleased with the results.
The ladles are for sale: £30 each (please specify either inside or outside of curve) or £50 for the pair.
Please use the order form or send me an email.
Inside curve ladle:
Ouside curve ladle:
Although I make as part of my living it is still also my favourite hobby and now and then it’s lovely to work with a new material and make something just for the pleasure of it. This weekend I got out some of the birch bark that I collected on a North West Coppice Association day in the spring. It’s thin, delicate stuff to work with and needed a fair bit of preparation to clean and smooth out the surface. I followed a traditional pattern, cutting notches into each end of a strip of bark which is then curled round and interlocked. A second piece of bark is glued inside to add strength and so the inside and outside of the pot can have the smooth inner bark showing though I decided I wanted the outer bark on the inside for texture. While the glue sets I used carved blocks and wedges to press the layers together. A handy hazel stick was cleft and shaved to make the base and lid. I carved the lid with a taper so it is a snug push fit and the pot makes a satisfying subtle ‘pop’ when opened. The handle is another piece of hazel with a round tenon carved onto it which passes through the lid and is fixed with a tiny peg inside.
I started with practising axing with the left hand which was a brilliant experience. I kept swapping the axe back and forth to feel the action in my dominant hand and try to copy it in the other. The key is to relax and be confident at which point I started to feel comfortable with it and quickly got the accuracy to start axing spoon blanks with both hands. After that I worked on some simple knife cuts and straight away saw the benefits. It was also really fascinating to have to ‘learn’ to carve again, examining the way my hands normally work together and transpose this across to the other side. It’s a brilliant exercise for anyone thinking of starting to teach spooncarving. You also see how the ‘non-dominant’ hand is doing just as skilled work in holding and manipulating the spoon while adding support to the cut.
Last week I spent 3 days in Edale as a student on a spooncarving course organised by 
I got back last night from the second round of filming the mowing scenes for Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. While we were away somebody told us about that the filming had made the papers because of extras being supposedly underpaid. Read the article in the Independent 
My skin-on-frame recovery kayak attracted a fair bit of attention as soon as I drove into the campsite at Ullswater with it on the roof of the car. I was suprised how many people remembered and recognised it from 2 years earlier when it was unskinned.
It did feel very exciting to carry the kayak down to the water knowing that this was the real moment of truth and I would find out whether it would actually work. Once I’d managed to get inside, using the paddle to balance I was grateful that Dave and Richard were there to stabilise things. The recovery kayak is designed for surf and manoeuvrability so it feels unstable for a complete novice like me but once I’d got back out Richard took over to show how it’s done and it was brilliant to see it properly in action.
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