Spoon-a-geddon

     Seems like the past few weeks went by when I blinked a few seconds ago. The last few weeks I have been mostly eating, visiting, drinking varies holiday liquids, eating some more, visiting, etc....I did get out on the ice to fish twice and caught a few fish. The winter here seemed normal until a few days ago, then it warmed up and all the snow melted. We had some nice ski trials April and I were using almost every day. What fun and a great way to burn up all that food I ate in the last few weeks. But alas, the snow is almost gone now. It turned cold again but the snow is gone. Waiting will have to work for now on the skiing front.
     Now it's time for work again. It's the good and bad part of being self employed. You have to have discipline, or at least a plan. I have the plan. Remember the yurt? The getting rid of all my power tools? making bowls and spoons? Well, I've finally got a few old projects off the list. This past week I finished up a few birch bark baskets I had promised a friend.....last year. I am on the home stretch of re-rushing a set of 4 really nice post and rung chairs, again for a friend. With all that almost behind me, this week is set to be a spoon carving week. It will be the first time I will have set on my calender 5 full days of spoon carving in a row. I've carved a few days in a row here and there, or in the evenings all week, but this week I'll be working 10-5 everyday, with a short lunch. Today was the first day. It went really well. I roughed out 10 blanks with my axe and carved 8 of them, with the varies knives I use. I'll post some pictures in the middle of the week. The whole point of this is to see how the production method could/can lead to new designs. I'll be carving one after another so any ideas I get can be put into the next spoon. I'll also be looking into stream line my methods (again). Lastly, I'll see if I can physically do it. Spoon caring can be hard on the hands and wrists. I'll be setting a fairly easy going pace, but I'm still curious. If I intend to make lots of spoon over the next year or so, this will give me a good idea as to how to do that. Carving a week a time, then turning a week a time? Sorry to bother all of you by this stuff but it's important, at least for me.
     Now, on to Spoonageddon. This year April and I decided to make our new years resolution getting rid of all non handmade dinner ware. All of or plates, bowls, glasses, forks and spoons, even cooking utensils will be gone this year. First off are the spoons, hence what I've titles Spoonageddon will happen Feb 15. All non hand made spoons will be banned from our house. How can a spoon carver and hand craft enthusiast have a drawer full of metal mass produced spoons? I can't. Then we will put our sights on another items...say glasses, set the date and out they go. This will be my way of contributing to the local economy and supporting local handcrafts. We are lucky here where I live to have many great and talented artisans. We have a plenty of pottery, a glass blower, and a few blacksmiths and silversmiths. These folks will be making our new table ware and cooking stuff. Of coarse much of the spoon and bowls will be wood, but we'll also have the pottery and glass and hand forged steel. I've heard it said that if we spend our money at the big box stores or anywhere non locally owned, the money is gone....never to return to our communities, never. I don't like that idea. So I'm going to do something, maybe something small in a lot of ways, but big for us. It will cost some money to get locally made stuff for our kitchen and for eating, and it's won't be that easy to convert all the stuff and what can't be converted to handmade to CHOOSE to do without. I bet we all have something that we could do along these lines that will help our communities thrive. Think about it. More to come. Happy new year to you and yours