The Instagram Essays...
For folks following along on Instagram you've already read these short post. For those that aren't following along, I've been trying my hand at long form posts on that platform. Instagram is a great place for crafts, great photos and connecttions with folks if your not on Facebook. I left the Facebook world last year for reasons too many and too opinionated to mention here.
But I thought I'd post these past Instagram posts here. I've been digging the confined limit. I think it's like 125 words including spacing and paragraph breaks. So they have to be short and sweet. I wish I had the time and energy to write some in depth blog posts but....it's not in the cards right now. I've been working on a few posts and as I transition into really heady and in depth subject matter relating to craft, making, skill, etc.... I'm finding that my writing skills aren't up to the same speed as my thoughts and ideas. The ideas are too complex to give them all the back story I'd like in order to give context to the subject matter.
So.....short essays for now if you will.
I'll post these every time I post on on the ol' Instagram. But, hold on as I'm about a dozen deep over there already. I'll get caught up with them here on my blog over then next week or so.....
Here's one from a few weeks ago......
my collection of eating spoons
This morning I was thinking about spoon design, spoon carving techniques, and various tools used to make them.
One of the things I pride myself on is my always growing collection of spoons, from makers around the world. I never even thought to before, but a few days ago I put them out in one pile to look at them all together. They usually sit in a big drawer and we let them flow from there to our two spoon racks that we grab from when we want to eat or need a spoon.
I own over 80 eating spoons. Wow! I never counted them until then. Only about 5 are mine. All the others are by folks I’ve met and traded with, bought online or at spoon carving events, or were gifts. They all have something I thought was interesting wether it be the ways of doing certain cuts, addressing certain design issues or sweet decorations. They all have great things about them, all of them.
What makes a good eating spoon? Is it subjective? Maybe to a point. But they still need to have certain design elements to work well. They are still tied to a finite function. Some of the spoons in this collection look great, were made with a high level of skill but don’t work very well, some look fairly simple, misshapen, and don’t have clean cuts and work very well. It’s interesting to see the spoons that get the most use and explore why. Many times it’s not just pure function that is the deciding factor. Then there’s the ones in between.
I believe our eyes can, in part, deceive us at times. So I used to try them out eating yogurt with a blindfold on to see what I could feel (what spoons are balanced in use, where the bowl of yogurt ended up, etc…) Sometimes the yogurt ended up in on my chin or the yogurt was hard to get off the bowl of the spoon.
In the end it seems like what makes a good spoon is largely subjective.. or is it? What’s for sure is that there are no absolutes.