Spoon Rack

Brilliant! finally got round to making one of these, my large spoon rack was over flowing with all my spoons and some even had to live in a draw! Those of you that are spoon enthused will have seen antique ones of these and i have seen Wayne Batchelor of the APT with his -which i think had the loop made from hazel in the round.

It works perfectly with my octagonal handled eating spoons. I don't have any whippy bits of hazel at the moment so i made this with cleft hazel, I barely skimmed the bark off the outside of the loop and steam bent it to shape (it wouldn't bend without the heat), this has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience reminds me of steam bending days in the woods for chair making except instead of using an open fire and oil drum i was using a roasting pan on a gas hob. In fact i enjoyed it so much i have just made another 2 in Wych Elm with similar hazel hoop, they each hold 6 hazel eating spoons and one could be yours for £60 spoons and all.

These two racks have sold now, but i'de be interested in doing some more if anyone wants one get in contact.

Bent Branch Spoons

I have just been staying in a nice little wood which was lovely after a few hectic days of birthday celebrations. I am very happy to be in a City for the winter, but i do crave getting back on the road, not least for the solitude, i miss my time alone with trees very much. 

I was staying with friends Olly and Lily who are introducing a seven year hazel coppice rotation to their wood. I am usually interested in the straight hazel for my octagonal eating spoons, and have come back from the woods with enough straight wood for a few hundred spoons, but this time i was also looking for some bent branches, these i wanted particularly for making birdy caddy spoons (more on this another time). Below you can see one of the forks ive brought back with me, i find it easier to split if you leave it as a fork even if like the one just below i will probably only get one spoon out of it (because of the knot).

This fork shows how i've cleft the two spoons out, these spoons have the same style neck and handle as my cooking/serving spoons on the "for sale" page. I like the way they've both come from the same branch, and obviously the grain follows the bowl which makes them more durable and some claim more comfortable to eat with. You can buy this pair of special spoons with my makers mark on each spoon for £45 (this includes postage)

Spoon Club

Don't worry i've not become a communist, well not yet at least...i'm more a "social anarchic individualist" (luckily for you lot i know nothing about politics!).
A few folks have asked if they could have a copy of this, so i thought i would post it here, don't worry about cutting off my blog at the bottom and using it yourself.
It was created by a couple of friends i live with who are self employed artists and available for work.
Spoon on.

Spoon Club

The original Spoon club was held in my static caravan in Herefordshire on a winters day a couple of years ago. Will (who looks like a caveman and has a spaniel that can't keep secrets) was going to come round and we were going to carve spoons. He brought with him a whole bunch of sausages and his puppy. I don't remember much about the day but we went and chopped down a field maple tree with a chainsaw and i had no ear defenders on, I remember thinking this would have been better with a hand saw, anyway we got back carved some spoons ate a whole load of sausages and I had a general feeling of this is brilliant lets do this again.

Spoon Club grew into something that happened every Saturday, everyone knew that I had open house on Saturday and people would come round, the general idea being that it was purely a social event based around carving of spoons, lots of tea and coffee and a pan of sausages. Friends would come round with tools and wood, though ideas were passed around and skills shared passively, there was no formal teaching, no one was "in charge" it was just a gathering of people doing stuff they loved. We would sit around my static caravan which seated 8 or so around the woodburner and carve and chat. I am hugely indebted to those that came to Spoon Club as it helped me through a difficult time. I am particularly grateful to Ben and Lois who were staunch supporters of Spoon Club, and the other regulars Toby, Ali, Pete, Maurice, and obviously Will thanks guys.

It'll come as no surprise, seeing as most of you are crafters, that being sat around as a social group creating folk craft is a truly beautiful thing. It is just something that feels completely right. In my opinion it is one of those things we were created to do, it is a shame it's missing from many peoples lives.

You will probably know about the quilting movement, affectionately known by some as "stitch and bitch" groups, where friends meet in each others houses and sew together. Quilts are beautiful folk craft, like spoons they are something that everyone still needs and use on a daily basis, and who wouldn't rather have a hand made quilt than a lifeless one from a factory? the most beautiful part about quilts is they are a mix of old fabrics where part of a dress/curtain/etc may have worn through a small section of the good stuff is saved and these are sewn together in a mosiac, so not only is the quilt beautiful in it's own right but the owner may recognise the fabrics which gives the Aesthetic a depth that can't be bought.

I hope you will forgive me but I always promised myself I would take things a bit more seriously when I reached thirty and that has happened today! (11/11/11) I'm on a mission to get a hand carved wooden spoon into every household in the country, and i hope you will join this mission. If i could carve all of them myself i would but although i would love to be a Spoonillionaire i don't think this is possible. If each town had a spoon club going then we certainly would be able to do it. I want people to have that same empowered feeling i get when i create beautiful practical utensils using simple tools, the tools we have been using for thousands of years but seem to have turned our back on in the last century.

It won't seem strange for me to suggest that times are changing, the whole cultural environment we live and work in has shifted as much in the last ten years as any other decade in our history. As we move into the future big organisations will become larger like they always do with more levels of complexity. I am not against this, but i am certainly for the indiviual, far from cowering under the shadow of corporations we should flourish under their canopy, and it looks like we are! I think we are entering a new age of Folk Craft and Artisan Craftsmanship, it is my hope we embrace this, and my personal wish that Wood carved with axes and knives is part of that movement.

Like the last couple of years i will be travelling around carving spoons from around April , i would dearly love to visit some "Spoon Clubs" along the way, if you would like any advice on how to set up a spoon club please get in contact. I will also be getting spoon club up and running in Bristol, so this is an open invitation to any other spooners out there to come along.

Sanded Spoon!!

Well all of my original spoons 12 years ago were sanded and i was really pleased with them at the time, when i see them at my parents house i also quite like the naive Aesthetic they have. I have wondered if you can make an item functional what is the point in chasing down different designs and trying to perfect them? i think the answer is some of us are just chasers and i think beautiful spoons are a good a thing to chase as anything else. Anyway this spoon is interesting for a couple of reasons, firstly it has been made from a bent branch you may be able to notice the elongated rings in the bowl, if the bend in the branch perfectly follows the curve of the bowl then you get straight grain and no rings at all, in my experience it's rare to find a perfect match, and when you force it it definitely looks forced to me (i don't think that this is a bad thing). But i think it is not neccessary, certainly using a bend even like i have above will greatly increase the strength of the spoon not least because of the ripple in the grain that interlocks and also looks pretty.

So i've cocked up and left my old spoon knife in London, and all i have now are my new (lovely) Spoon Knives, i am still very excited about these, and i'm looking forward to exploring the shapes of bowls they will  make, i am finding that i can finish the bowl of a spoon in about half the time it was taking before with a lovely uniform finish. 

So you may ask why i have sanded the inside of this spoon. Well because the spoon knife is symmetrical it has quite a limited size bowl it can make. When you carve with the grain (which i find faster) you need to maintain enough shallowness to the bowl so that you can tidy up the middle across the grain. I'll forgive myself because this type of knife is very new to me (if you know anyone that uses one like it please get in contact), but i was left with a few fine hairs in the bottom of the bowl and had run out of space to change it. Having recently picked up some old stuff from storage i found some micro mesh that i used to polish my wooden jewelry with, this starts with 1500 grit and secveral grades up to 12000, i did it all in just over 5 minutes, under a warm running tap (hot water from a tap is a luxury i adore), the water lubricates the very fine abrasive as well as keeping the grain from flattening, i let it dry and gave it a quick rub with the 12000 again. As i hope you can see from the photo it leaves a very smooth finish which you can see you can actually see your face in. I used this spoon to eat with last night, and was nervous that i would prefer it to the carved finish i leave on my spoons. Luckily i did not like it at all, and shall not be sanding any more spoons. Disappointingly all my housemates liked it because they think it looked nicer, don't know what to do about that : (

Massive Crisis of Faith

 The other day i was having a very pleasant trip to my parents, they were watching Antiques Roadshow. On the show there was porcelain vase that was astonishingly beautiful turns out that due to some tax thing in the olden days for a short period of time porcelain or whatever was taxed very heavily probably to pay for some war, so these vases were actually made by glass blowers they weren't porcelain but white glass. They were so nice that for almost a whole minute i was determined to become a glass blower, i was ready to give up everything and retrain. Don't panic, i got over it! but i feel there is much to learn about Aesthetics from studying other materials.

The vase had a beautiful organic shape to it, there were slightly spiralling "ribs" around the outside that had the glass stretched between them it looked similar to a seed pod. After being told it was glass you could tell from the rim that it was, i don't know about glass but it was probably snapped off the stock material to make the opening to the top of the vase, and then melted a bit to remove sharp edges.

Anyway this reminded me of some of the stuff Fritiof had for show when he came over, Rob has some nice photos on his blog. The stuff of his i really loved were the birds. My point being that i loved these items because the wood almost seemed stretched, it gave a ligtness to the objects, you can use the bellly of the knife for the slight hollows. I feel like the Aesthetics of the two designs i'm working on at the moment are like forging metal the material feels like it has been hammered out this is shown by  distribution of material.

Tips for Spooners
The profile of the inside of the bowl does not need to be parallel to the outside, in fact it can have quite a different profile, and i often prefer them that way.
Try flexing the spoon along it's length i like it when they don't flex more in one spot than another.
Think about shapes as dynamic when you shape a curve where does it start? where does it go? does the tightness of the curve accelerate or deccelerate.
Triangulation! all the cool knife grips are about triangulation, it generates absolute control.

Below are some photos of the spoon i made when Fritiof was here, i finished the hollowing this morning with my new hook. I am pleased to have such a large spoon to go with our new 18.5 litre pan, the pan holds about 30 odd portions of food and the new spoon serves one portion in one dollop. The hook is great for stopping the spoon dropping in the pan and for storage, i like the hook position so it doesn't interfere with holding the handle. The shoulders of the bowl are a signiture of Fritiof's spoons and are a great design feature that is easy to achieve.

Spoon Carving Workshops

Friday morning i took the national express to london for one of my monthly workshops, i took this photo of some graffiti on my way down gloucester rd to the coach station. This kind of artwork never fails to impress me, i keep meaning to post some other photos i've taken of my favourite graffiti. I must admit i find legal "graffiti" a bit sickening, and hope this man crept about with a bit of adrenaline flowing through him whilst the noxious fumes from the spray can entered his lungs. The attraction for me is the underlying passion/obsession and focus to manifest a concise image, one that might catch someone's eye like mine (more on this another time).



I run the workshops in the heart of the East End of London right behind Mile End tube station, there is much poverty in this area which is overlooked by Canary Wharf.


Tower Hamlets has a fantastic Park resource it's 30 acres of woodland with wild flower meadow is notorious for it's huge biodiversity, it is amazing to see the trees reclaim the earth from the gravestones of the old Bow Cemetery. I have the run of the Soanes Centre for the weekend, this has kitchen and toilet facilities with a classroom and a covered open air space outside, i also source all my materials (for the course) from the park too.
I was introduced to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park by Paul Wylde who set up Grounded Ecotherapy with Kelvin Barton, they work with a group formed mostly of volunteers who regularly do conservation work in the park. I got involved with these guys after meeting up with Paul in London, Paul is a brilliant and hilarious man and i very much enjoy spending time with him, but i also passionately believe in the work he and his team are trying to do, i have spent quite a lot of time passing on skills from hafting axe heads and spoon carving to fire by friction. This Monday after running my weekend workshops i was to firm up some foundations they have in Pole lathe turning, getting them to cut a pole and set it up to churn out some treen. It's empowering to be able to make the machines you use!
I'm very grateful to the group for always making me so welcome in London, i consider it a privelige to work with such a lovely group of people.
Sorry i've got no photos of the actual  course i'm too busy working! (i promise i will next time) But i'm sure you get the general idea, axes, axe blocks, wood, knives, spoons and lots of wood shavings.

New Spoon Knife

The first spoons i made were made from Lime turned on a Pole lathe and hollowed out using Pfeil gouges (beautiful gouges). I am obviously completely sold on axes and knives. But i do admire a lot of traditional carving that has been done with chisels. That said after having a bit of tuition from a world class carver i was very disappointed to see the vast number of different chisels he used, his work was beautiful and he was a skilled man but the number of chisels were too prescriptive (and too expensive) for me.

I started using Svante Djarv spoon knives about 10 years ago i think these were either introduced to me by Mike Abbotts books or Ray Mears, i got several bad cuts from them because i didn't know the safe way of using them, cuts from spoon knives can be quite nasty because they cut chunks out rather than nice neat gashes which can close and weld themselves shut like straight knives do.

When i was serving Mike Abbotts apprenticeship i met Ben Orford after trying his spoon knives i was amazed at how sharp they were, he also had a slightly flatter design knife that gave a nice smooth finish.  Since then i started using Ben's knives and use them on my courses, i find the smaller knives are better for beginners as they do not need to take big cuts.

It didn't take long to realise that the big knives were the way forward for making lots of spoons and for giving the very best finish. As i think is often best i tried out what they did in the olden days, let's face it they knew what they were doing in those days and to be honest when it comes to Artisan spoons very few people know what they are talking about these days. I had seen old photos of twca cam's etc and got masses of information from watching Ion Constantin on YouTube.

Anyway when i was travelling around i had this large Svante Djarv spoon knife blade that i'd put in a large handle, but i find his bevel angle too fat and i didn't have anything to grind the bevel down with, so then i think i bought a large Ben Orford hook which is similar size and shape to Svante Djarv but has a more acute bevel angle. I am very embarassed to admit i snapped this blade when attempting to fit it into a poorly drilled out mortice (about ten years previous to that i had snapped a Svante Djarv when i put it in a vice and tried to open up the curve a bit (luckily i know more about metal these days!) woops.

So then i was at friends in devon who had a belt sander (machines like belt sanders or wetstone grinders are great for sharpening not just because they are quicker but because you do not need to move the blade backwards and forwards this gives much greater control for sharpening particularly reshaping a spoon knife).  I ground the angle down considerably and sharpened it, wow what an improvement! the bevel on bent blades can be more acute because the bend puts tension in the blade and prevents edge roll (or something like that).

believe me there are as many ways to use and hold a spoon knife as there are with straight knives so don't let anyone tell you their way is the only one. I have been using this long handled spoon knife ever since and have several of my own ways of using it which i will go into more depth on another post.

I learnt much after chatting to Rob about how Ion used his spoon knife and a combination of studying YouTube videos and Rob's description of how he used it and using the replica of Ion's knife that Rob made. I made much progress in how i felt the future of my spoon carving needed to be. Since then i have made a lot of spoons and i have been getting more and more frustrated with my spoon knife. The main problem for me arises because the blade is asymmetric, this makes it difficult to create a symmetric shape bowl. Like i said there is not just one way of doing things but my future spoon carving lies in symmetrical blades and i have known this for a while.

Anyway i finally got around to forging a new blade to my exact designs with Rob, this is the first one i have put a handle on and the photo is the first spoon i made with it. I know i have been waffling on a bit but i am very excited about this, it really is the dawning of a new age of work for me.

The ongoing debate between the spooners i respect goes sonmething like this, it appears they all use asymetric blades, Rob has experimented using scrapers inside his bowl which he reckons medieval artisans did and having looked at medieval spoons they do look like they may have been, Jogge sands the inside of his bowls to a very smooth finish. And Fritiof who also was concerned about the asymmetric shape the knives made the bowls does somthing completely different, he leaves grooves in the bowls by doing a series of cuts across the bowl all going with the grain, he comes from two directions and meets in the middle, this leaves a good finish and allows control of the shape of the spoon. I have seen spoons made by Ben where the cuts leaves grooves working into the centre radially.. All of us do some hollowing with adzes/axes before hand.

Anyway, i know i waffled on there, there is just so much to say about these things, but i need to get going with work now. This spoon is a special one and therefore the price is more than normal. Yesterday was a brilliant day, not least because it looks like Spoon fest is getting some legs.

Cherry Spoon (Sold)

Craft Wood?..Craft Metal!

It strikes me that as with industry most craft hobbies have taken the same route - more machines = less skill. Now i am not naive enough to think that this is always the case but i am certain all woodworkers of any kind would gain much from learning how to sharpen a knife and carve a spoon. The beauty of spoon carving is the simplicity of the tools and the availability of the wood, it truly is a folk craft.

Spoon carving is a real challenge, although i do teach spoon carving on day courses there is much scope with spoons. It takes a day to learn the very basics, but a lifetime to perfect, a hobby for the woods or for the living room, projects that can be completed in 20 minutes, aesthetics and function that takes a lifetime to perfect.

Without the use of machines, work benches and jigs there is no room for excuses, just the wood you and a sharp edge, this is where true understanding of the properties of wood comes from. It is no surprise that the once beautiful and functional lovespoons became increasingly made on machines, and the skill used to make the simple and elegant functional spoons was replaced by complexity.

I started this post in response to seeing Robin Wood's Post on Knife sharpening, i think this kind of course is massively useful to the spooner enthusiast especially after a bit of experience using and sharpening knives, all the crafts people i respect use razor sharp tools. Mike Abbott might suggest you don't need a sharp axe for cleaving and i'd agree, and he might even suggest using a blunt drawknife for "sheaving", this too makes sense, but whenever he did a babies rattle demo when i was working for him, he would go to the six or so pole lathes and see where the sharpest skew chisel was, incidentally he would sharpen his turning tools on a tormek and then use japanese waterstones to hone them, he still does not strop his tools (though i have tried to persuade him) but does use a very light touch and fast action with the fine waterstone. Fritiof also used a tormek on his knives and then japanese slip stones, i would hollow grind my knives too if i had a nice wetstone, but i no longer have a tormek ideally i'd have a grinding workshop with a great big electric waterstone like Robin.

So like the post title says if you want to craft wood, you need to know how to craft metal. Then you can craft a razor sharp edge, not only does this make the carving easier but it also leaves a beautiful finish.

When i used machines i would order exotic timbers from catalogue, cut them on a fretsaw (noisy/dusty), abrade them using grits from 80-400 with belt sanders and dremel like machines (noisy/dusty), then by hand 1500, 2400, 3200, 4000, 6000, 8000,  i would use the finest grade i could find 12000 micromesh this did leave a beautiful mirror image finish, with practice you could get the desired shape without losing the crispness of edges like beginners do, but any sign of human touch, of deftness was gone.

But now i source my own materials locally, i use hand tools that are beautiful in their own right, there are no whirring engines of machines or dust extractors, and i can get a hand carved finish in an instant with my knife and if that knife has been honed to 16000 then the finish is even smoother.

How Many Handmade 3D Objects do you own?

It strikes me that although often i am a massive fan of modern life, for example the wonders of YouTube (being able to watch a video of a Romanian Spooner), and the availability of beautiful high quality music at the click of a button. So few of us seem to own beautiful handmade objects, things that actually exist in 3 dimensions not just as pixels on your computer. I am trying to make a concerted effort to spend less of my money on cheap consumables, and more on quality crafted 3D, things i can pick up and use without plugging them in or using WiFi.

It is a very sad fact that i have spent more money this last month on coffee than craft items, this is not because i don't crave them, there are loads of things i would love to own and use, but i never have the money to buy them because i waste it on crap i don't need.

But i am not alone, there is a city phenomenom where people put stuff outside their house they no longer want, i have furnished my room this way and have not paid a penny for a bed, chest of drawers, corner cabinet and shelving unit, i have also recently got a new hat, pencils and all sorts of stuff that is just left outside the front of peoples houses. Yesterday it only took 20 minutes for our old microwave to be taken and we'd only put it outside because we got another second hand one that was in better nick. It is nice that we do this, but it would be naive to suggest this is just through altruism, in the most part it is done because the objects though useful have no real value at all, if they had value they could be sold, and if sold they would be valued at less than £10-20 which is negated if you are employed by the cost of selling them.



Watch this space! if i don't post about something beautiful i have bought this next month then consider me a failure and pull me up on it.

Spoons for Sale

Sorry this post went up when i thought i'd just saved it i've put the photos to normal size now.

here's an example of the spoons i'm selling online, check out the others here.

Hitching

The vast majority of times i've hitched it has been a highly pleasant experience, some of the best encounters of my life have been hitching.When someone picks you up it is an absolute joy, it's exciting to travel so fast and to meet someone new, to chat and share an hour or so in someone elses company especially if you've spent the last few days alone. It also feels good that they wanted to pick you up, that they have added to that pot of positivity we all rely upon to make life good. But you don't need to feel the burden of debt to them because it is no bother for them, it's one of those perfect win win situations.

That said I was pretty gutted not to have been picked up the other day when i was trying to get up North. especially as, though now i am settled i have access to a car, i didn't have any money to put petrol in it, but it was an important trip so i borrowed money and drove, if i had planned i would have been able to book a cheap coach or something but i hadn't.

 I had decided i wasn't going to hitch anymore, basically i was pissed off that for 4 1/2 hrs nobody had bothered to pick me up. But luckily whilst i was driving up the M5 there was a hitcher obviously i always pick up hitchers (all hitchers do). This man was absolutely fascinating, he had been on the road for 20 odd years and knew the country and it's roads inside out, he also knew a huge amount about what he called Freeman Laws, during the hour or so he was in my car he gave me a whole wealth of information about living on the road that is of great use to me. But my lasting impression was that these old laws most of which still stand made a lot of sense and were designed to protect the individual.

A lot of my moral beliefs are based upon individualism and i passionately believe Laws should protect the individual who can be overwhelmed by the greater powers that exist. So it is good to know Laws still exist to protect a person (man or woman) and that it is legal and right for a person to exist and make his or her way in life.

Whenever i am asked to join a community or travelling band i decline, part of the joy of being on the road for me is being alone, but that does not mean i do not support their cause, making a persons way of life illegal is a very dangerous thing, and if we make it impossible to exist as the lowest common denominator, we lose part of being human.

Anyway i will be back hitching again, and i'll stand there with my little cardboard sign out and if someone wants to pick me up they will and if they want to shout Pikey! swear at me, spit at me, or throw food at me (all of which has happened), i will stand proud knowing i have done nothing wrong that my lifestyle is just as moral as theirs and i will do my best not to hate them because hate gets us nowhere.

Knives

As far as i'm concerned the only thing that is important when it comes to using a knife is that it's sharp. Don't know whether any of you have had a go with a flint knife but my view on knives completely changed after using one. It was flint that a friend had knapped and to me it looked for all intense and purposes like a little splinter of flint. But carving with it was an amazing feeling someday i'm going to save some cash and go flint knapping with John Lord and may never use metal tools again! Ion Constantin looks like he is using a hacksaw blade stuck in a bit of wood and i've been told by Robin Wood that he sharpened it with a file!

At the moment i use a Frosts 106 for most of my carving. Previous to that i had been using a 120 which i had to make a handle for - after cleaving a tough bit of wood with it i twisted the handle right off! That said I find these swedish knives have the perfect handle for me, and i only carved myself a new one because the old one broke.

When holding the knife with a standard forehand grip it is more comfortable and gives you more power and control if the handle fits snug in the palm of your hand, i was teaching a four year old girl some knife cuts not so long ago and although she was quite competent she would have found it much easier if the handle had been shaved down a fraction so that she could close her grip. i don't really get all the so called ergonomic grips you see on different knives because i change the position of my hand quite frequently up and down the handle and in reverse i find a symmetric one very useful.

One thing that Ben Orford a tool maker pointed out to me is that with laminated blades people tend to make the bevel more and more shallow because the harder metal abrades away more slowly, i have found this to be the case with my knives though i do like the angle to be pretty shallow for softer woods. I usually tell people that the laminated blades are better because they are quicker to sharpen but i think i'm just repeating what i've heard elsewhere and is not neccessarily true. Fritiof had some 120's rehandled and a home made knife in hard steel (sorry i don't have more information than that) His short knives had large bellys this is something most people reduce by accident when sharpening. The belly of the knife is extremely useful for reaching the middle of large flat areas and for slicing cuts with a thumb push, and for getting into nooks and crannys. All people are differenmt and have varying techniques, i at present am still sold on longer knives, but Fritiof made the point that most of the wear on the knife is towards the hilt and when sharpening a long knife you have to sharpen the whole length which is harder to do the longer it is. When doing big powerful long slicing cuts i find i don't use the length of the knife at all, but i do use it on levering cuts and you get much further travel that way. Often when doing a reinfrorced pullstroke i have my hand all the way up the blade with my thumb in contact with the last inch or so, on a 106 this part of the blade is small to get around tight corners but also remains sharp for doing long finishing cuts. Fritiof had a knife with a fatter bevel for cutting knotty bits etc, this is a very good idea and i intend to do so now i can have a few more knives at my disposal. Especially as i usually find i'm sharpening because of hitting a knot and rolling the edge, i think having knives like del stubbs with the back of the blades rounded and polished is very nice for your hands but also good for pushing back knackered edges (always use lubrication!)

getting bored now, i will probably write more on this and try edit it so it reads better.

hopefully more photos on tumblr by end of day http://barnthespoon.tumblr.com/

Tumblr

I now have some photos of spoons on Tumblr barnthespoon.tumblr.com some of these photos you may have seen on my blog and many are from my facebook account which i have now closed. i intend to keep the tumblr account just photos of spoons. Tumblr is much better for photos than blogger so i hope to be updating them quite frequently but there will not be much if any information with them just photos. I'll post tomorrow morning about knives.

Green Wood?

One of the first questions people ask me on courses is how green the wood needs to be, this seems such a strange question to me now. But as a child turning wood on an electric lathe i used to turn green wood in the round (wood that has not been split in half or quarters but has been left whole with the pith running down the centre)  beautifully long (40/50 foot long) and dripping wet shavings would stream out the end of my roughing gouge and make a heap on the floor, i would take whatever object i had made inside with the knowledge that over the next few days it would dry and split. But that was ok because for real projects i would order wood from craft supplies (the Home of Woodturning), they would send various shapes and sizes of different woods from European Cherry to African Pink Ivory. Their wood was magically square sided and have wax on the ends, unfortunately it took several years before i understood that shipping endangered species across the planet wasn't what i wanted, and that virtually all the wood growing in this country has a use in woodwork and is very simple to convert to useful wood.

When wood is living it is full of water, probably something like 50% of it's weight, as it is worked into some form of product such as a spoon or a plank water evapourates from it's surfaces and depending on the dryness of it's new environment the product will continue to lose water until it reaches some kind of equilibrium.

As the wood dries it skrinks, gets harder and is less readily split along the grain. Because wood is made up of tubes the water evaporates from the ends of the tubes more readily than the sides this is why the wood from Craft Supplies came with wax on the ends. The wax prevents moisture leaving the ends of the tubes and therefore the moisture has to leave through the sides this is a slower and more even process. If the moisture is allowed to escape from the ends of the tubes that wood will skrink faster and may cause splits to occur this is notable on the ends of logs and can be prevented by painting them with wax/pva.

Wood skrinks more tangentally than radially (radially is from the pith outwards) and virtually no skrinkage occurs longitudinally. Tangental skrinkage is often twice as much as radial and in some species as much as five times. This differential skrinkage causes wood left in the round to split. If the wood is cleft into quarters and then turned round when the wood skrinks it should not split but will skrink to an oval cross section.


Green Wood Pros
It is readily available (grows on trees)

It is easily cleft along the grain into usable blanks
It is softer so is faster to shape and is kinder to razor sharp tools

Green Wood Cons
The wood skrinks so that whatever is made green will be a slightly different shape when dry (this varies considerably between species)
Depending on the species the surface of the wood can oxidise (not sure whether it is actually oxidising) this changes the colour of the wood, if the product is then reworked when dry it will have a different colour making it patchy.

Seasoned Wood Pros
In theory no skrinkage though there will usually be some change this is much less than Green Wood.
Dry wood is hard and therefore a razor sharp tool can leave a smoother surface than on Green Wood.
No colour change.


Seasoned Wood Cons
Expensive
Not easily cleft
Harder to work
Blunts tools quicker


Fritiof made a big point that when doing fine knife work like signing a spoon it is much easier when the wood is bone dry. In fact all fine work is better done when dry this is because the wood has much less "give"/flex when you try to cut it. If the wood flexs half a millimetre when you are trying to cut a quarter of a millimetre wide incison it is not very good. Fritiof was not a fan of half dry wood, he liked the wood wet and to either rough shape with an axe and then finish when it it is bone dry or to start and finish all in one go.

When i sign my work i tend to just make 2 incisions but there are times when i  make 3. I'm not certain what Fritiof did but i'm fairly sure he was using 2 cuts. The incisions he was making seemed almost vertical, at some point i'll do a long post on my engraving techniques, but a top tip is to not angle the cuts too shallow as that makes the grain tear more easily when turning corners. He was using very sharp tools which were hollow ground on a Tormek then honed. The problem with using the tip of your normal knife for engraving or detailed work is that most people aren't very good at sharpening and getting the very tip (by this i mean the last quarter mm) of your tool razor sharp is not easy, i think it is better to have a couple of different knives unless you have reason to only have one knife. Incidentally Fritiof was using short knives for virtually all of his work, these knives are easier to maintain an edge on. I use a frosts 106 but this is mostly because i want to have as few knives as possible, i keep that razor sharp then i have an old frosts "bushcrafty" knife i use for rough work and non spoon work. next post will be a bit about knives. More on knives next.

Wood

Fritiof seemed pretty sold on Birch, i brought with me a load of spoon blanks because in theory i was going to sit in the corner and carve spoons whilst the course was going on, in the end i only made 16 spoons during the whole course, several times Fritiof mentioned that the wood i was using was too hard and my tired hands agreed with him! Some of the wood i was using was London Plane and not only is it hard as nails but the grain switches direction laterally very frequently this is beautiful when finished but hard work/good practice. I too am sold on Birch it is a beautiful wood, it was re-introduced to me a couple of years ago after one previous bad experience with it i had discarded Birch as no good (woops!)

The other blanks i had were cherry and alder, the cherry was unusually hard but had fantastic colourings as did the Alder. I think Alder is a fine spoon wood like Birch it is extremely forgiving whilst carving with a nice close even grain though not as hard as birch i consider it to be harder wearing than willow. I was pleased to hear Fritiof was a fan of Hazel which is definitely in my Top 5 favourite woods, recently i have been staining hazel spoons with tea it really brings out the grain.

I like cherry but it's uneven skrinkage is a irritating, i tend to make my spoon blanks with tangentally cleft wood so that the top of the bowl is orientated towards the bark. If the wood is straight and you allign the spoon so that you get nice symmetric rings in the bowl then the spoon should shrink symmetrically if you don't you get what i call a wonkey donkey (these spoons deserved to be loved too though). I also make the spoon wider across the bowl because cherry tends to skrink much more in that direction.

When travelling i use whatever wood i can get hold of = smaller diameter stuff, which will have more knots. If you have larger diameter wood then you can split it into quarters and then split out the middle bit than contains the pith, this usually removes most of the knots as well. This wood is of a better quality as the tree has a larger canopy which means it needs to lay down stronger wood and also has the resources to do so. The wood at the base of the tree is much tougher and has a more "intertwined" grain on some harder more fibrous woods this can be a hassle to carve but on Birch it is lovely. Now i am settled i am hoping to use larger diameter stuff.

From a sales point of view i find the spoons sell much better when i have a variety of different colour woods, one of the problems with pale wooods like birch/sycamore/willow is they show up dirt more easily, each time someone picks up a spoon i find myself hoping they've got clean hands. Being sat on the street it can be hard to keep the spoons clean - a lot of black dust comes from roads/cars i'm sat next to.

Tomorrow i'll write a bit about Green V Seasoned wood.

Fritiof Runhall

It was a real pleasure to meet Fritiof a spoon carver from Sweden at a course organised by Robin Wood his meeting has brought about many ideas which I thought it might be good to blog about. I generally try to blog about things not covered by other spoon bloggers because i know most of you read all of them so the next few posts will be stuff that stood out for me. One of the first things i noticed about his spoons were the beautiful long carved facets, Fritiof usually creates most of these with a drawknife on a dumb head shaving horse. I have often wondered whether the more bushcrafty of you out there have come across these contraptions? they are wonderful machines, if you have had a go on one and didn't find it good then the the one you used wasn't any good (or blunt drawknife). A shave horse makes things much faster, as you can clamp the spoon rock solid but you are also able to change it's position very rapidly and you can hold the drawknife with both hands giving you a greater amount of control. On a shave horse you use most of your bodies muscles from feet to hands which creates a lot of power and removes wood fast. You obviously don't need to use a shave horse and we had no horse on the course, but when at home making large numbers of spoons he does. I tend to use a shave horse when available for the back of the bowl, this is particularly for spoons made from straight wood, this means that to shape the back of the bowl you need to cut across end grain which can be hard work. I tend not to use the shave horse for other parts of the spoon as the type i have is not so good at clamping them (i have one with two arms rather than a dumb head), a horse that is very quick to make and quite a good comprimise between the two is the Mike Abbott lumber horse, though on his design i would prefer to replace the soft wood with hardwood for the arms and use good strong fixings. I was interested to learn Fritiof also uses a curved drawknife as i do, the curve should not have a tight radius, but allows you to round things more easily and also removes wood faster as the shavings on a round will be wider. wide + long shavings = fast. I also find concave drawknives very useful because they can get into a much tighter curve than a straight one. When on the road i cannot take a shaving horse around with me but i will get my one from storage soon enough, particulalry for increasing my ouput for the christmas market.

Spoonfest

Had a great time as ever up Edale way with mr Wood (can't believe he changed his name to Wood just to sell more bowls). This time was particularly special as it was a very rare oportunity to meet someone who has carved more spoons than i have. I'm going to put up several posts over the next few days whilst thoughts are still fresh in my head, needless to say it was a very rewarding trip. It was also great to see Steve who has as diverse a background in green woodwork as anyone i know and is mower extraordinaire. It was also great to meet some other people in the flesh i had previously only known online.Many thanks to Robin for the invitation, spending a few days in such good company carving spoons is a beautiful thing.

Home Sweet Home/The Spoon Laboratory

Declaring the summer was over caused a heat wave, which has been fantastic. In the photo below is my new eating spoon, my last one broke after experimenting with using a dishwasher, i now don't recommend putting wooden spoons in the dishwasher! This dark brown spoon was made in birch and was the last one i couldn't sell from a large batch. I've been using it since August and it's been stained from making coffee and has now been oiled with walnut oil.

Thinking a change might be good i tried several different designs of eating spoons but i couldn't find one that worked better than my standard octagonal handled ones. Having said that i have been making extra long versions (between 9-12 inches) which have a lovely recurve in them, the recurve prevents you holding the spoon upside down by accident when in the dark, this only happened to me once and was hilarious, it also has a lovely balanced feel to it, has a greater reach and is brilliantly flambuoyant. When i get round to it i'll create a page of spoon photos and you can see a lot more of my different designs in more detail. The Spatula was a moving in present for myself i now own five or six spoons of my own, the other spoons in the rack are my friends spoons i made a few years ago.

I've got hold of a load of lovely London Plane which has a fantastic grain and some amazing bends that i'm turning into ladles, the knots are destroying my knives but sharpening now i'm in a house is ridiculously fast.  This is because i can store more tools such as my japanese waterstones, they cut so much faster than the DC4 ceramic i've got which is so hard it takes a lot of toing and froing. It's so good being able to use all my different spoons for research and development.

Summers over

Well it had to happen at some point, i had hoped to hold it off until november but having decided i wanted to live with friends this winter when the opportunity arose i took it. It has been a while since i lived in a house but there are obvious practical reasons to do so, having a hot shower every day is a beautiful thing. I am very happy to be surrounded by friends and by paying rent i am on an equal footing, if there has been one thing i have struggled with over the last two years it has been people taking advantage of my poverty. I'm very excited about the new opportunities of city life and there is nowhere i'd rather be than bristol for this winter. Below are photos of my room, the garden i hope to have a workshop in and a days work. I am already planning next years travels, those of you awaiting a visit will have to wait a bit longer i'm afraid.

Tea Caddy

This shop keeper's got the right idea, loose leaf tea is a beautiful thing, it's great in the woods cos you've not got bags to get rid of. My preferred tea at present is co-op own brand loose leaf, It's nice to have somewhere special to keep your tea, when settled for the winter I'm going to start making some shrink pot caddies to compliment my caddy spoons... I'll post some photos shortly.

Spoon for Toby and Ali

Toby and Ali work chesnut starting with coppice they process the wood and install their product, mainly fences and gates. I'm a big fan of chesnut particularly paling fencing it is very functional and beautiful.
I really liked this spoon with it's massive head, it's quite a large serving spoon really but has a small handle, I find a short handle is often much more practical, as it will stay put in the dish rather than falling over the side. These guys live in a converted truck, nice and snug for the coming winter, so hopefully the compact spoon will be useful.

Nice Elm Spoon

Here's a photo of an unfinished spoon. Actually liked this one so much I was determined to keep it for myself, but some guy made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and he looked like he would be a good home for it. Don't think i've posted a picture of my home before.

Don't mind being a contradiction

But I do mind being a hippocrite.

Its been a strange day!  Its been a long day, I got out selling at 9 after an hour and half walk into town. After around eight hours selling I've made £25, it's not much but it'll do.

For the first time I sold a spoon to a big issue seller, it's interesting that a big issue seller will usually make more money than I do. He was surprised, but I know many people, good people, that sell the big issue and they all make more money than I do. Much of that money will be spent on drink or heroin, but that is not all sellers, and I don't see those "addictions" in a different light to all of our "addictions".

In a good day buskers can make anything up to £100/hr, in a city it would be unusual for a busker to make less than £60 in a day.

One of the really beautiful things about my life is the relationship I have with other people on the street. Whether they are rich patronising people buying my spoons, or wonderful people i've met last year who have bought a spoon before and would like another one not to support me but because they want a spoon, I love my chats with street cleaners, market stall holders, town criers, buskers, the nice man in the pasty shop, they are my community and I love them. I would like to share more with you about these people.

Anyone that knows me knows I likes the coffee, and I tend to sit in a cafe like I am right now to charge my phone, use their toilet, fill my water bottle. I find I am much more comfortable in a big chain than a small independent, I am more likely to get away with being here for a while after i've finished my drink to charge my phone, and less notable in a busy place with air conditioning, particularly if I smell, when I look rough I am less likely to be treated badly too. The price is also considerably cheaper, I have just eaten two rounds of chicken and stuffing sandwiches for 65p from the reduced shelf in tesco.

I hope I have never billed myself as some kind of hero, I definitely don't feel like one. Though I feel like I am winning, is it to the detriment of others? Am I just one big disappointment?

Spoon for Karen

Karen lives up a steep hill and I arrived a bit of a smelly mess, as I walked into her front garden she had loads of beautiful lavender growing I grabbed a bit gave it a rub and put it in my shirt pocket, lavender grows everywhere in cities and is a great odour disguiser. Karen spends much of her working life empowering people, I think her work is massively important.

Spoon for Tom

Made a spoon for a lovely couple Tom and Amanda just outside bath a couple of weeks ago. They have an amazing baby and are living the dream, whilst I was there we watched Robbo v Banksy on tv, it was a really interesting take on it, I for one have got a bit bored.of banksys stuff, it was great when it seemed subversive 10 years ago but now seems overrated.
It was interesting the point they made about the skill involved and at what stage of creation the skill is used. There is rivalry between those that use stencils and those that spray freehand. I much prefer the simple symbolic freehand examples such as the one below from the bristol bath cycle path.

Bird Lady

I love the stereotypes that cross my path (or maybe I cross theirs).

I have had a great month taking it easy in old haunts and took this photo in one of my favorite places. The lady in the photograph is feeding the pigeons. I saw her last summer doing the same thing, this year I asked if I could take her photo. She told me of how hungry they are, its because the council keeps everywhere too clean theres no crumbs for them. I love that she feeds the pigeons.

Funny things birds, I know very little about them. in the past I have grown tired of people/greenies that I meet going on about them. I think the assumption that I care about the environment any more than a regular joe irritates me, we all make assumptions though -we can't help it.

having said that there have been times when birds have sunk deep into my mind. Before the real onset of my spoon obsession I got caught in a moment using a beautifully worn turned wooden spoon to pluck eggs out of the pan they were hard boiling in. The simple task of fishing out one egg at a time with this perfect humble spoon overwhelmed me with completed focussed joy, I was consumed in the moment, I was so content. 

Chicken or egg? My love of eggs came well before my love of chickens, but over the last 12 months I have become a big fan of those beautiful  egg making machines. At a friends woodland where they are well set up I had the job of taking the scraps down to the chickens on a loverly summers evening, again I was lost in a moment, a simple task a sense of satisfaction. Having the space in my mind to experience these simple things, without using rational thought, has been a lifelong need, the more space I have for these experiences the happier I am.

I am in london now and it was here that I saw a group of six or so children around the age of five chasing pigeons. I was carving spoons by marble arch, and this motley crew of boys and girls had self assembled in an anarchic co-ordinated hunting party, as if instinct prevailed the children running like driven maniacs attempted to divide and conquer the flocking birds at once huddled together and then airborne again. A strange energy surged through the children the look on their faces as they hurtled towards the pigeons is etched on my mind.

Birds have obvious symbolism in our cultures, for a while  I was obsessed.with the image of a bird in a cage. There is a fantastic bit in the film The Prestige where the illusion of the bird in the cage vanishing is revealed for what it really is.

whilst hitching the other day I saw a pigeon wing beautifully displayed on a busy A road stretched out on the hot tarmac the rest of its body nowhere to be seen.

Poo bags

Strange phenomenon of hanging poo bags, anyone else noticed these, I guess people get bored of carrying them, I see quite a lot of them on my travels.

Mouldy Spoon

How to finish a spoon? Moulds are always ready to start eating any living thing, particularly when they're dead. If there is not enough moisture then moulds can't survive, so it is best to store wooden spoons in a dry environment. Oiling is another option that keeps moisture away from the spoon. I think the mould on this unoiled spoon with the yellow turmeric stains looks beautiful.

Spoon for Becky

Heres a swedish style eating spoon i carved for Becky, the spoon is made from Holly, i rubbed some lemon that they had onto it to stop it discolouring, holly is a lovely hard wood it's distinctive smell is very evocative of my childhood days making Holly walking sticks. I met Becky last winter whilst peddling in Bristol. Becky and her man were having a bbq the night i stayed, i awoke to a bacon sandwich and a lovely strong cup of coffee, there was a great sense of team work as the others that had stayed along with Becky and her brother were putting on a small festival just outside Bristol. I miss that sense of a common goal on the road which is generally quite a selfish way of life.

new file handle

I'm in bristol at the moment, trying out a smart phone before i buy one myself, i think it's working well and will be a good investment. it would mean that i could keep my blog up to date and maybe offer spoons for sale online, the tariff would also probably be less money than i normally spend on OS maps when i'm out and about. I made this ash handle for a file this morning, i've made it to the spec that Chap (short for Chapter 12 one of my new young friends) wanted, he does up a load of old bikes and cars, and this file is usually used for enlarging holes. He's got a load that he needs handles for but it would be so much quicker to do it on a lathe, i'll do the others in london on my pole lathe.

Probably The Greatest Eating Spoon Ever Made (in my opinion)

I've made hundreds and hundreds of these buggers and i still absolutely adore them, essentially it is a teardrop shaped bowl with an octagonal handle attached to it, but there are oh so many different 3D realisations of those little pathetic words. I have tried many different ways of making them but the ones above are all of the same kind, (though within each "species" there is still variation and character). The one on the hanky (that's my shop by the way) lacks character. To my mind it's a bit straight laced, smug isn't the right word but it thinks it's prettier than it is. It's neck is a bit fat, the bowl is a bit dumpy. I also prefer them with a bit of movement in the handle and the last third of the handle tapering at an accelerated rate. I am of course being critical and i do love it and will make sure it goes to a good home.

When i was at Living Wood  we used to get out of the woods every now and again to use the internet, i would always check Robin Woods  blog  (his work has been a massive inspiration through my life) and i became transfixed by what he called the Lubeck Spoon, i have been obsessed with these octagonal handled spoons ever since.

Back when i first started making octagonal handled spoons the curved top to the bowl of a spoon was a contentious issue (This may not be memorable for Mike But it confused me for a while), Mike has some lovely swedish style serving spoons and an eating spoon Made by Martin Kimblewhite. They are all made from bent branches and because of this have a curved rim, i.e. if the bowl was full of water it would fall out the sides. For this reason Mike used to say that they should have flat tops which i agree makes more sense for something like a ladle. Except they are more beautiful if they have the curved rim. and i do wonder whether a ladle would pour better, i have made most of my ladles with very slightly curved rims. On a serving spoon the curve can be really pronounced and be very functional as a shovel as you slide the spoon in the food stacks up at the handle end of the bowl then to deposit it you twist your hand and it all drops out the open side. But most importantly for eating spoons it means that your top lip can reach the bottom of the bowl without excessive rim rubbing.

I have started to realise i'm going on a bit and this is getting boring, there is so much more to say about all these little things but i'll add them to further posts and maybe edit this so it doesn't get so boring.

I've seen quite a lot of photos of medieval spoons from internet/Robin Wood/Terence Mcsweeney i've not actually seen any that taper towards the end of the handle so i wonder whether that is something Robin came up with.

The way the rim cuts into the handle is very important to me, i first started doing this after seeing beautiful silver spoons at the Ashmolean where i spent an absolutely glorious 2 weeks of my life last summer, quite literally living the dream. Incidentally i've got a feeling that metal spoons have had a massive influence on wooden spoon design particularly eating spoons. The cut in i use on the rim is used in a huge array of different spoon designs by me and others and is much more sensible than a smooth curve.

I love the octagon, it is enough sides so that the edges don't fur up, if you've made a spoon try washing it with a plastic scourer, if the edges are left square they fur up so they need to have a wire edge taken off them which takes time and is fiddly therefore if in the design you can reduce the number of edges you need to do that to you save time. I also find this handle the most comfortable to hold. the swedish style may look more comfortable and "ergonomic" but in my experience octagonal for eating spoon is best (maybe different for ladles) mainly because it rotates so easily, you may disagree but i don't care and we can all agree that a wooden spoon feels nicer than a metal one.

facets facets facets, well this is what it's all about for me. i'm in the business of making something 3D (spoons) with an edge which is effectively 2D (knife) i move the knife through space and wood and a whole world of stuff goes on, i'm hooked and i can't stop and i'm not bothered. apart from function and other aesthetics i am aiming to reduce the information in the spoon, simple and few lines created with flat planes, if i was a painter i would aim for bold brush strokes not photo realism, more on this madness another time.

It could be argued that the best eating spoons are made from bent branches, the wood can feel smoother on your lips and can be thinner which can also feel nicer in your mouth.  As you can see all the spoons here are made from straight bits of wood. The spoon above that has been cut in half has a reasonable thickness to it because of the short grain i do this for strength.

i tend to chamfer the end of the handle and this can be done several ways, i sometimes think it's a bit fussy but at the moment the facets created alternate triangle- square- triangle-square and so on around the end of the handle.

3D Spoon shapes

I want to do a few posts about my spoons which i haven't done for a while, intentionally i am not talking about the function, aesthetics or the way they have been made but just the actual 3D reality, i will go into more detail about my favourite spoons in later posts. Most of these spoons are unfinished (the darker ones have been oiled and are finished) i tend not to actually finish the spoons until i'm sat there selling them, this is in part laziness as it is my least favourite part of the job and also they do move a bit (cherry is awful for this) as they dry so it is good to leave them for a bit.

The spoons i carve tend to come in 3 categories those with egg shaped bowls (on left), those with shovel shaped bowls (middle), and those with teardrop bowls (right).

The photo above is also a great example of how many different shapes of handle you can have, these are less easy to categorise and if i did try to i would do this firstly by categorising the "neck" style.

ok so i'm crap at taking photos, now all of these spoons have the same style neck i call that style Wille Sundquist style, anyone into spoon carving has heard of this man and he has written a great book about carving which is now out of print. The spoons that i make like this all have the traditional Swedish style "keel" on top of the neck not beneath this makes carving from the bottom of the bowl up the back of the handle one nice long cut, all these ones have one facet on the neck too .




These spooons on the right are just the ones above viewed from on top.

1st Day at Beauty School

I'm sat there with a pair of tweezers in my hand trying my best to hold them steady, my hands feel a little creaky as i've made a lot of spoons this week, stretching her skin and trying to catch sight of a hair in the light i struggle to get a grip on a little hair. It's only a few mm long but it's thick and black, i pull it taut and then with a quick pull out it comes, no screams or flinches...

Of course she didn't scream because she's dead it's Anabelle my once "baby pig" has now all grown up been killed and chopped up. The small portion of belly with it's mamalian hairy skin and subcutaneous layer of fat was roasted today i had the job of pulling out the last few hairs on her skin so there would be lovely hair free crackling.

I have to admit the roast was amazing and the flavour really was a lot better than shop bought pork. But it did feel a little strange, knowing that i had tickled that belly while Anabelle was alive. And now i was trying to turn that skin which for all intense and purposes is identical to human flesh into crisp bits of crackling.

While we kept the four pigs i wasn't phased by the idea of eating their meat, though it is not something i have done before. i always felt it was somehow undignified for me to pay other people to do it on my behalf, without at least knowing something of the experience myself.

One thing i noticed is that after three pigs were slaughtered i made a much closer bond with the Pig that was kept for breeding, this is in part because of the great weather giving me more time in the pig field and also the guilt of her being left by herself made me visit more often. But i am in no doubt that i bonded less with Anabelle because i knew she would be killed.

It made me think of all the other objects and living things that i don't bond with because of the my expectation of the outcome. Like thinking about the million Children that die each year from Malaria, because if i really thought hard about those children and that stayed on my mind then i would be forced to act upon the feelings. Or global warming just to pick a couple of clichéd examples.

It wouldn't do to go around with the weight of the world on your shoulders because you wouldn't get anything done and that would be of no use to anyone. The fact is most people have enough on their plate as it is with paying mortgages and looking after their own children etc.

We tend to make a lot of these moral decisions as a society through the media, the newspapers are trying to guess what our moral standpoint is on a hot piece of news and then try to serve it up in that manner to suit our moral tastes so that we consume it. We know what our views are on GM crops (they are clearly evil) and at the moment we seem to be deciding on footballers their wives and some women who aren't their wives. 

I wonder if in fifty years time we'll still be eating meat, and i wonder how many children a year will be dying.

Pedlar's Certificate £12.25/annum

The 1871 Act defines a pedlar as

"a person who, without any horse or other beast, travels and trades on foot from town to town carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares or merchandise or procuring orders for the same, or selling or offering for sale his skill and handicraft".

For further information about this please check out this site it's amazing http://www.legislation.gov.uk/

I am currently renewing my license, having left my winter's residence on 1st May (a great time of year to move on) I have been travelling around a lot and now find myself in Plymouth for 2 weeks whilst I try and get my foot and wrist sorted. It is now time to renew my certificate.

I went to the police station and filled in a very simple form, I took a couple of passport size photos and some photo ID plus another form of ID. I had to pay £12.25 precisely (they do not give change and they cannot accept over the amount, don't ask why). I now await the local Beat Manager to get in contact, he will get a police check done on me and soon enough I will have my certificate renewed.

Street selling is a precious thing to me, i feel very at home and happy whilst pedling my wares. I consider it a very beautiful thing to be able to do something as simple as collecting a piece of wood carving it into a desirable object and selling it to a member of the public on one of our streets. And I am glad to see more and more people are doing it and I do consider it their right to do so. I am not an Anarchist (though sometimes i do lean that way) so i do think it is worth having a certificate, this enables the public to know that we have at least had a police check and that any Pedlar acting beyond the law will have his certificate removed, and anyone in this country can scrape £12.25 together.

Like money Law can be used to enable and empower the individual, the Pedlar's Certificate is a bit of paper that straddles both these concepts, it protects an individuals right to make their way in life unimpeded by the power and impudence of organisations like councils or incomprehensibly large industrial giants like Tesco (such giants overpower ecosystems not just individuals). It does this by enabling an individual to trade with other members of the public in a real 3D space.

Please take the time to think about whether you think it's ok for someone to act as a Pedlar, and if you do think it's ok then help to protect it by talking to others about it.

When something becomes nothing

I have often wondered why we do what we do, this is obviously a small part of a bigger question.

Most people in this country have thousands of different careers that they could chose from. i am single and childless with no responsabilities and i have not been born into a spoon carving dynasty with the expectation that i carry on the good spooner family name. So why do i chose to make spoons, well it should be obvious why spoons, so i'll focus on why "Make".

Creating something is a very satisfying thing, and when you focus your efforts onto one type of thing you gain much understanding, the way you think about and feel about your creations becomes deeper. For me there is the challenge and there is the outcome. i enjoy the challenge and i think this is in part simply because of the need to do something, there is a sense of progress as i become more proficient at manifesting the spoons i dream of making.

Then there is the outcome some spoons i love because they are beautiful. and not just aesthetically their beauty is in their functionality or their simple lines or something special that only i know about them such as where the wood came from and the circumstances of the wood retreival, or what was going through my mind at the time of making. Sometimes the spoons are ugly and i love them because they are so. sometimes i will stare for hours at a spoon wondering about it's existence. Using a spoon to cook or to eat, when i see someone eating a meal with one of my spoons i am filled with joy and what can be better than serving someone food with a spoon you have made for them. There are times when i have produced things i have been so proud of i have cried (how embarassing!).

When it comes down to it i aim to make something that has pure ideals, a spoon that functions beautifully and has clean efficient lines too simple to hide any lies, ordinary in every way but special beyond measure.

And when you hold something like that, something precious to you and someone takes that away and you realise that precious thing you thought existed no longer does. when something becomes nothing, and that space in your heart that it had filled is now just empty.

If i'm being honest it's that empty feeling that drives me on to keep making, it's the only reliable way i can fill the void.

so why do you make things?

Haha

The nervous laugh that is this Post title is fitting. I took the decision before leaving for last years spooning not to take a camera with me, this was in part due to the hassle of carrying one and batteries etc. The main reason though was i believe it would have distracted from the experience, the straw that broke the camels back was on a visit to the science museum with friends they had some young relatives with them and photos with their accompanying smiles were the main subject of the day. Instead of experiencing the wonder of the museum which is certainly wondrous, we were constantly focusing on proof/evidence of enjoyment which would have doubtlessly been relayed via the magic of the internet.

Throughout last year people were constantly asking if they could take a photo, i never said no, but i asked those that did take photos if they could perhaps email me a copy. Well only one person has and i just received it via the magic web online yesterday.

I must admit it is always a shock to see a photo of myself. I don't feel like that person looks like he should feel. The second photo pulls at my heart strings because he looks so sad, and then i realise it is me. Photos lie, one split second is not a proper representation of a meeting or an experience or even a feeling. Though it is hard to argue that it does not represent that split second. As someone who is completely obsessed with 3D reality i have a very poor relationship with my own.

unfortunately i do not remember this meeting, like i said i do get people asking if they can have a photo but it makes it special that Ian Horne has bothered to send these photos to me, and i am very grateful to him for doing so.

I do know the location because i have sold many spoons there and spent most of the winnings in the cafe opposite. The grass i'm sitting on is in Spitafields i'm surrounded by high rise office blocks just round the corner from Liverpool street tube station. There is an allotment behind me which was created by Paul Wylde and others from the Providence Row Ecotherapy Group. The allotment has a great variety of different things growing on it, many of which are reputed to be therapeutic which is appropriate as the allotment is on the site of old monastery that made herbal remedies. I like that right in the heart of all that capitalism there is a little allotment growing morrocan mint.

I like the little cardboard sign saying hand carved wooden spoons, it's from a pizza express box and has fancy squiggly bits cut into it. The dappled shade was perfect for carving spoons and i spent many happy hours sat carving on that patch of grass.