April 2018

April was a long busy month. I took some time off at the beginning of the month. I made a few mallets before escaping to the farm in Wisconsin to start restoring the apple orchard. In between snow storms, we pruned eight of 150 wild apple trees. The added bonus was a carload of apple wood to carve!

I bought some fine spoons from Emmet Van Driesche and Tom Bartlett. It’s been a great learning experience to buy a spoon from someone whose work you respect. It transforms the 2D of a photo into the 3D of a real object. Holding a spoon that is finely carved is humbling and inspiring!

I also started reading Sloyd in Wood by Jögge Sundqvist. Ity’s highly recommended! Also, after interviewing Ben Strano last month, I checked out David Fisher. Absolutely amazing! David had a part of the poem “Things Men Have Made” by D. H. Lawrence on his blog that I enjoyed recently:

Things men have made with wakened hands
are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing
for long years.
And for this reason, some old things are lovely
warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.

By the end of the month, life turned busy with work projects. I had to postpone some interviews with spoon carvers that I was looking forward to doing, but I was happy to complete one with Jonathan Sussman. I put aside all other work this weekend and went into the workshop to split wood and carve. Worn-weary by other obligations, I felt recharged by the axe and blade carving apple and birch wood into spoons. I worked well past midnight last night, yet I felt finally alive and awake again.