spoon porn

this morning i went to the final saturday market of the year to take photos at the booth of the woodcarver guy i’m doing a story on.

everything he sells is made by hand and couldn’t be more local. he cuts down the trees himself--part of his business is tree removal, so the trees would all be destroyed anyway, he’s just utilizing what would normally go to the dump--then he carves them all by hand. each piece is unique and he can tell you about the specific tree it came from.

he makes a large variety of utensils of all different shapes and sizes, along with cutting boards and small boxes, but mainly he does spoons.

his wife makes these pendants out of the softer woods that don’t work as well for cooking utensils, like juniper and pine.

i *love* wooden spoons, and i love the work this guy does...i had to buy a couple. actually, he gave me one for free and a huge discount on the second one, because he is awesome.

the small one is made of maple...

and the larger one is apricot. apricot trees are special to me because of that wonderful tree jason and i found last summer.

it makes me want to start whittling, maybe try my hand at making a spoon or a spatula. bethany whittled me some cool knitting needles years ago--that might be a good first project to try. jason and i are going to see if we can find a fallen branch from "our" apricot tree to carve. i can see us now, sittin' on the porch of the idaho city hotel in rockin' chairs, whittlin' away, talkin' 'bout the weather, omittin' g's from the endin's of our words.

i love the detail in the maple wood.

when you look closely little faces start to emerge. and boobs, lots of boobs.

i’ll definitely be a repeat customer. he showed me a bag full of pieces that aren’t for sale, special ones that came out so beautifully he couldn’t bring himself to sell them, and there were a couple small spoons made out of the most incredible apple wood. i’ve never seen anything quite like it--i looked up pictures of apple wood online and nothing came close. this wood had splotches of extreme lights and darks, almost like super-magnified grains of sea salt and cracked pepper. i forgot to ask if he had any of that wood left...probably not. but during market season he puts out different stuff every week.