A little bit of teaching...

I haven't been feeling terribly well over the past couple of days, a stinking cold with runny nose, cough and temperature. So yesterday I spent most of the day in bed feeling sorry for myself. Until my wife came and asked if I would get up for an hour or so to do something with my 14 year old nephew, Connor, who is staying with his Nana for the summer and had come over to play with my 9 year old. She was afraid that he was beginning to get bored of Jude and 9 year old type games and as I know he has the regular boys' interest in knives and axes, I thought he might enjoy a spot of spoon carving.

I also thought it would be a good opportunity for me to practise teaching spoon carving to someone who hadn't done it before.

It was good fun. I think Connor enjoyed himself - he produced a cracking spoon, albeit with a little help from me. In fact that was the hardest thing for me, to let him try the different techniques and steps that I showed him, sometimes struggling to get it quite right, and to resist the temptation to do things for him.

Splitting off some waste from the sides



Shaping the profile of the bowl

The finished spoon

And here's the one I did to demonstrate to him as we went along...

As an aside, I have also made a simple mask for my new Nic Westermann axe. I am very fortunate to have quite a bit of leather at the moment as my good friend Roger is the shoe designer for Ted Baker and he often gives me samples that he has had for shoes. This is football leather with a dimpled texture. I have also been looking at duffle coat toggle fastenings so thought I would try and incorporate one here.

The textured leather looks a bit like shark skin