Learning from mistakes, and how I do not do it.

With Maren being gone to work, I find myself with ample time to carve here. And I have been taking and enjoying that time. Having finished the cup from my last blogpost, I figured I`d make a spoon to go with it. So far so good. 

The process of these went quite smoothly, and I was feeling good about it, so the next day I made a small cup and a teaspoon to add to what I began to call "the royal family", due to the crownlike decoration I carved on the handles.

But my production-run of royal family-members seems to have stopped there. The axe giveth, and the axe taketh away. Since then I have broken all the things I attempted with poor axework. This cup here was the first thing to go. Just before I was to start smoothing it out and putting the final bevels on the rim and edges, I noticed the pressure crack in the wall. This crack must have formed way earlier on in the process, when I was carving out the handle. For that purpost I had to chop in the direction of the bowl, but in doing so I started a crack that is now unstoppable, except maybe with glue.

Not too bad, these things happen, and at the very least it would teach me a lesson of care with the axe, right? Well, apparently my learning curve is not so steep... I chopped two spoons in half today that I was carving because the chance of them succeeding would be way larger than for yet another cup. I have learned my lesson now though, I hope. Tomorrow another day, with more wood to turn into kindling! Things to watch out for? 1. Carve the delicate neck on a spoon with a knife, not with a sharp 1 Kg lump of steel on a stick. 2. Kuksa-handles may require stop-cuts. 3. Learn from the mistakes, then the time is not (entirely) wasted.