Love Spoon for a Couple Who Loves Cats, Music, and Writing

 In the realm of creative things I did in 2025 but never posted about was wood carving. 

I spent over a month carving this love spoon. A gift for my niece as a wedding gift, I used images of things that are relative to her and her fiancé's life. 

Both of them love cats, so that was a major theme of the carving. One of them is a musician so I included the image of a treble clef. The other is a hobbyist writer, hence the quill pen and ink bottle.

It was carved from basswood. 

Cherry Spoon with Chip Carving

 My sister called me to come visit after they took down a cherry tree.  I took several green limbs home and am now regretting that I didn't take far more.  I probably got eight spoons out of the lot.

Here's one I finished yesterday. It is being gifted to an old friend who grew up on the property from which that cherry tree grew.

I really like this one.  I am working on thinning out the bowl. It seems to me that, out of caution, most folks carve thick bowled spoons in the beginning. Well, at least after they carve holes in them a couple of times. I feel as though I did a nice job on thinning this one out.  

And I am happy with the chip carving.

Spoons, Bikes, and Watermelon

Happy Fourth of July!

We did a 27 mile bike ride with friends this morning. There were lots of folks outside walking, paddling, and riding. I had my mask… one of those tube pieces of fabric, a.k.a. a Buff, and used it from time to time. Mostly I rode with out but if the trail looked crowded I flipped it up over my mouth and nose. 

It’s 2 pm and I am in my favorite space “in the house”; our screened porch. It is a bit warm but not at my limit. 

I will eat a little melon; carve on a spoon; and then retreat into the air conditioning when the thermometer nudges up just a little too far.  (Note: After sitting an hour or so in 90 degree heat, the air coming out of my fan felt like it was blowing out of an oven.)

The Most Difficult Part of Carving Spoons

The most difficult part of spoon carving for me, is the part where you box them up and mail them to loved ones. Parting with the spoons is not the hard part. It is the actual physical shipping and handling that is just no fun. 

These need to head out though. My goal is to take them to the post office on Monday. 

The spoon on the left gets delivered to a friend who lives near the post office, so that is handy. That one is oak and the wood came from my friend’s yard. 

The second from the left is from a piece of cherry that I got from a farmhouse in West Virginia; my favorite spot on the planet. The cherry branch had been in my freezer for a couple of years. That spoon goes to a friend who has been teaching yoga on Zoom for free during the pandemic. She isn’t expecting this gift.

The one in the middle and the one on the far right go to my daughter’s best friend from high school. She isn’t expecting anything either. The white one is (I think) tulip poplar and the large one on the far right is crabapple. Both pieces were sourced from my neighborhood. 

The apple had been trimmed from a yard up the street and was in a debris pile on the curb. The tulip poplar (or is it maple???) had fallen next to a creek in the woods across the street. This piece is intended as a coffee scoop and is two tablespoons deep. Upon reflection, a bright white wood may not have been the best choice for a coffee scoop. The discolorization it will get wouldn’t bother me, but it probably would bother a lot of folks.

The fourth spoon from the right goes to my sister. Her husband had to take down a tree in the front yard because it was dying. I love this wood!!! Hopefully I can get a few more pieces before it totally dries out. I grew up in the house my sister lives in so this wood is extra special for me. Kids from the old neighborhood have asked for a spoon made from that tree since it represents home. I need to made one for myself first.

Cherry Spoons

My spoon carving doesn't start happening until after Easter.   This year, I had a difficult time coming across green wood to carve, so I got a late start.

On a recent trip to West Virginia, the friend from whom I rent a mountain top farmhouse told me I could cut a limb off her cherry tree.  Oh happy day!!!!!!!!!  Cherry is one of my favorite woods for spoon carving.

I carefully selected a limb that would not be missed. Probably I got about 10 spoons worth of cherry.

My first spoon was carved for my friend.  When I carve there, I hole up in a funky side porch area that is out of the wind. Many times when my friend visited the farm and came over to say hello, she picked up the spoon to inspect it.  I don't think she knew it was intended for her.

When I was finished the carving, I wood burned "County Line Cherry" into the side of the handle to show the wood came from her farm.  Sometimes it is so very hard to let go of these things!

(In the background is the "mother" tree.)

Carving is Addictive

Oh my goodness.  Carving spoons and kitchen utensils is addictive.  I should have called last month "Spoon-tober," I carved so much.  Probably 23 - 26 wooden utensils were carved; a special order for a friend.

Fortunately for me, Mark told me where a tulip poplar tree had fallen in the woods and was still green.  It was wonderfully carvable wood and I wanted to work with it nonstop.  My self imposed deadline for the project was Oct. 31 and I am pretty accountable to myself for such things.

I worked hard and finished on time. The goodies got put in the mail yesterday and so today has been spent vacuuming all the sawdust and wood bits from all over the house.  (How it gets to some of the places it does, I have no idea.)  I cleaned off my desk to make room for scherenschnitte time.  November will be a time for cutting my Christmas cards.  I'm sure that as soon as I get into it, I will feel as addicted to it as I do to the carving right now.

I carved fives set of these.  They varied wildly in how they turned out.  (It depends on the shape and size of the branches and the usable space between knots.

I mostly carved out on my screened in porch, but  my studio room, aka Snippyville, also  doubled as a wood shop.

Here's a spurtle in the rough stages. Every one of the spurtles turned out wildly different looking.

My beloved ax.  I mostly treat this tool like a baby. It is a good one.

My babies were almost done at this point.  They had all been sanded smooth.  Then, I soaked  the in water to allow the grain to rise again and then to get sanded once more.

Busy Days

Oooooh, today feels like Fall.  It is dreary and gray out. I'm at home alone, so it is a great time to try and catch up here.

We were away from home a lot this summer.  West Virginia was home for a month.  I spent all of August at my favorite place on earth; a farmhouse on the top of Allegheny Mountain. Friends came to visit.  Family came to visit.  We crafted.  We spent nights outside watching major meteor showers.  I saw the Northern Lights!!! I sang to cows.  I missed friends while I was there, but never missed a day of living in the suburbs.

The week after we came home, we hosted family as my uncle was to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. As always, it was a sad day but visiting with family felt warm and fuzzy and comfy.

Days later, Mark and I headed down to Florida.  Friends rented a house on the water for a month and invited us to spend a week.  We did a bit of paddling, including sharing a paddle with an alligator.  Trying to maneuver myself onto a sit-on-top kayak from a dock, as a gator was watching nearby, really freaked me out.  It turned out to be a four foot gator who could not have cared less about us, but it was very exciting.

From Florida, I drove to Charlotte, NC to spend a week with my daughter.  She flew east from L.A. for training related to her job.  As she did work things, I spent my days in the pool, thrift shopping, and working on my TeachersPayTeachers shop.  Few people can make me giggle as much as my daughter does.  We slept a lot and giggled a lot. Luckily, we left town a day or two before the riots started.

Now that I am home, I am carving like a mad woman; as non-stop as possible.

Wands

I have started carving wands. Someone on Facebook asked me what kinds of wands they are. My thinking is that the wand's purpose will reveal itself to its owner. Several teacher friends have asked for one. I would love to know what magic they have in mind.  At this point I am just playing around and practicing carving.

Walking Sticks

I love summer.  I spend my days out on my screened porch carving.  Actually, I am just getting back into the carving.  But here are the things I've been working on.  Spoon carving again.  Simple spoon carving but it is very satisfying to work on.  And walking sticks.

This walking stick needs a little work before it is done, but I'll get that done today.  The wood burned design took many hours.  They have fancy, schmancy pyrography (woodturning) tools now, but I am using a beginner's tool from the craft store. Oh how that expensive tool calls my name.

   

Wooden Spoon Love

This week I've gotten numerous projects finished.  It may have been because of deadlines.  It may have been because of the piles of unfinished projects on my work space.  It might have been because of days and days of rain.  Regardless, I have cleared swaths of space in my studio.  Yippee!

This accomplishment also gave me time to spend carving without feeling guilty about the other things that needed attention.

I just finished this spoon.  It might just be my favorite spoon.  ....at least for the moment. The shape is pleasing to me and it is spalted just enough.

I'd like to just sit and hold it.

What I Am Working With.... Tree I.D.

As a wood carver, I should probably know what different woods look like, both as lumber and as as trees in the forest.  Some trees I can identify easily.  Beech, birch, pine, sycamore, sassafras, I know.  There parts of some trees that I know but not in connection with other parts of the tree.  For instance, I know what a black walnut NUT looks like, but not the bark or leaves.  So when Mark and I hiked through the woods today, I tried to be more observant of trees.  When I found the black walnuts on the path, I tried to find their tree and observe what the leaves and bark of the tree looked like.

I cut two pieces of wood from trees that had fallen to the ground. One was a piece of oak.  Oak leaves, I know.  Furniture made from oak, I know.  The tree? Not so much. Here's what a branch of oak looks like.

 Here's a split piece of oak.

Here's another one. I cut this piece of wood aware of what it was at the time, but now that we are home, I have forgotten.  

We think it might be poplar.  To remember this stuff, I probably need to either take photographs in the field or take notes.

Look what's on the inside of it though.  Worms!  Ew. Guess I'll leave this piece outside for a while.  Worm eaten wood is prized, so as soon as it is vacated, I will try carving it.

Worms leave behind a fungus and it colors the wood in interesting ways.  That funky wood is called "spalted wood" and you can pay a lot more for that than just the plain wood.

YouTube has helped me learn about some trees.  I grew up knowing what sassafras leaves looked like, but I didn't realize I only knew one of the leaves from that tree.  I thought they only had the three fingered mitten leaves, but actually, they have a single finger leaf, a double fingered one and a triple fingered leaf.  Crazy.

And then here's a cluster of leaves we see all the time but have no clue what sort of tree goes with it.  Suggestions?

Spoons for Drums

I have been carving spoons like crazy this summer, but I have yet to try and sell any. In order to fund my contribution to my sister-in-law's Donor's Choose project, I am selling some of my spoons in my Etsy store. Here's a link to my shop if you'd like to take a look: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SnippetyGibbet

Carved Fudge Spurtle

This was the piece I made today.  Evidently, it is called a "spurtle." In my mind it is a spatula.  This particular one was made for stirring fudge.  I don't know how well it will work for fudge but it feels very smooooooooooooth.

See the initial "j"?  That's my brand.  I took a little nail and bent it.  A wee bit has been cut out so that it looks like the dot over the j.  I lay this brand on top of the wood and then lay a hot wood burning tool on top of it.  It heats the metal enough to burn the brand in the wood.  That's my signature for the time being.

Sycamore and Branding

Every week or two I wander out in the woods to see if any new sycamore branches are on the ground.   After rain storms is the best time to find them.  I feel so excited when I see new ones as it means I have wonderful carving wood for a few weeks.

I barely got down the trail this week before I found this one.

Sycamore carves so easily that it is my favorite wood to carve. The limb I found on the ground was relatively thick and had lots of straight lines with few knots.  Those parts will make for nice big straight spoons.  It also had wonderfully zig zaggy bits which I enjoy carving into oddly shaped spoons. The odd ones have a lot of character and are my favorites.  But my friend asked me for a long handled spoon and didn't request that it look odd, so I went with "normal."

Actually, I carved multiple spoons.

When I am done with carving, sanding and treating the wood with spoon butter, I use a wood burning tool to sign my initials.  It often slooks sloppy to me, so I investigated branding.  This is what I have settled on.

I sawed off the top of a cup hook and squeezed it with pliers until it looked like a "j."  Then I layed the "j" on the back of the spoon and pressed a hot wood burning tool on top of it.  After a few minutes, it branded just fine.

There are some fancy spoons that I have half finished on my work table, but plain old spoons are satisfying to work on.  Plain ones are the ones I go back to work on day after day.

Grandbaby Spoons

My granddaughter came to visit us for three weeks.  We call this time "Camp Grandma."  When you have a grandma who is artsy, of course you are going to do artsy things.  These are the spoons my granddaughter carved during her stay.

It was the second time I taught spoon carving around the campfire.

Loving to Carve Love Spoons

I spent many hours in carving bliss while working on this Love Spoon.  At the very end I gave it a little sanding, but most of the smoothing out was done with a knife tip.  It was happily meditative.

This spoon was carved out of sycamore and I just drew a pattern on it that seemed to fit the wood.