SPOON # 35 - Saturday 31 August

I should begin with an apology. It has been weeks since I posted anything on this blog and I am doing these next few posthumously. At the end of August I started a new job as Assistant Head at a special school for children from aged 4 to 19 with physical and mental disabilities, and to say it has been a bit of a challenge, a steep learning curve or a baptism of fire would all be grossly understating the way I have felt over the past three weeks or so. Which brings me to the point of my preamble - I have not had time for carving, nor blogging, and don't realistically see that changing any time soon - at least for the next month or so, but possibly right up till Christmas. So, it is with regret that I am going to have to graciously bow out of my initial 52 weeks challenge of producing a spoon a week for a year. I will try, and when I do manage to carve, I will post and until then I am going to hand the reigns over to my brother Julian who will post one of his spoons each week instead - until I am up and running again.

In the mean time, here is a spoon that I carved a few weeks ago. It was tough going as it was from a piece of well-seasoned ash, which as you will know is one of the strongest and hardest woods. It was a small piece I came across on my wood pile, waiting to be burnt, and couldn't really bring myself to throw it on the fire as it is what I think is called jigged, or fiddled - meaning the tree it came from grew under some kind of stress and instead of having straight lines of grain, it has crinckled, zig-zagged grain instead. It is absoulutely beautiful and I used some before, when it was green and plentiful. Now I have run out of that particular wood, I thought I would rather struggle through carving some seasoned wood than simply watch it burn. It has a wonderful striped effect when you look across the grain and is zig-zagged when viewed straight-on. The close up photo of the end of the handle will show this lovely pattern, I hope.

Sorry - this is an absolutely awful shot of the side of my spoon - it looks more like a golf club than a spoon - trust me when I say it actually looks a lot better than this!

And nothing to do with spoons, but my song of the week, which I can't get out of my head and keep listening to over and over again, is a cracker by Grizzly Bear, called 'Two Weeks'. You might recognise it from the Youview advert currently on TV, but it is from their album which I was given a couple of years ago, but never really got into. I love it - hope it makes you smile as much as it does me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjecYugTbIQ