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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

back then all this was very new to me, i had a small selection of spoons five or six or something but i was  pleased with them. i hadn't sold any spoons yet that day but it was only 10 ish and they sell better in the afternoon. i was carving, like i always do, and my feet were cold as my boots are very thin and this was probably early april. i noticed a man approaching he was sketchy, i wouldn't have noticed him otherwise, but as he approached i looked into his eyes and i felt his empathy. He didn't say anything he just came over crouched down and picked up a spoon. He looked at the spoon in his hands and then back at me and he grinned, his smile was absolutely beaming, he stood up still making eye contact and said "all this, it's just an illusion" and with that he walked off with the spoon.

I've got a few courses on before i set off Spooning again in May, and need to make up a few tools before the next, i've cleft some ash, the bit on the left shows the orientation i prefer, and that bit actually has a nice natural bend that was around a knot, the one in the middle is a handle i axed out this morning, and the one on the right i've just fitted after drying. Previously when i've fitted handles i've put in an oak wedge and a little metal one that makes extra certain the head won't come off. I no longer use metal wedges not least because they have caused me to break several drill bits when trying to drill out old handles of these second hand axe heads i've got hold of. I have followed the advice of Wille Sundquist godfather of Swedish Carving Techniques and left the oak wedge standing proud, this means if there is any sign of the head loosening then it can be tapped in further. Those of you in the know will notice the handle style is very much that advised by Wille sundquist like his Swedish Carving axe (made by gransfore bruks). gabriel-branby talks about how you could have an axe head on a piece of string and throw the head at the bit of wood. As far as i'm concerned if you're not throwing the axe then you may as well be using a chisel or knife, there are times of course when it is quicker to use the axe as a knife rather than putting it down and picking up another tool. The handle does not need to be very thick for strength, the thickness of the handle is more to do with the size of your hand and personal preference. I prefer to make the handles from straight grained wood because then you know where you stand with it. Where i choke up the axe i like the haft to be smoother and longer in cross section (more egg shaped) this gives my fingers more leverage for the slicing carving cuts. Down the belly towards the knob i make the haft more faceted and the cross section is almost octagonal when you get down to the grip. It is important for me that the knob flares sideways as well as front and back this means the bit of wood i cleave has to be almost twice the thickness it would otherwise have been. With this flaring your wrist has more control for power cuts as the haft is also in contact with the heel of your palm.  I like refurbishing these axes almost as much as making spoons and i find it very empowering to make a beautiful tool from something that may have been thrown away or sold for scrap if i hadn't come along.

Well i promised i would post some spoon photos i know you don't really want to hear about nutmeg and aftershave. These three spoons were given as christmas presents to my family. They are three different solutions to the same problem of how to get the food from your bowl to your mouth, on the grand scheme of things they are all very similar. They are made from Hawthorn, Field Maple, Hawthorn. In the New year i will post photos of spoons more regularly and would enjoy any feedback.

 I made this spatula around 7 years ago from an ash log, which i always tell people is not a great wood for this kind of thing, it was actually made when i was camping to scrape baked beans from a mess tin, i liked it and took it back worked on it further and sanded it before giving it to my Mum, she uses it daily.

 These are spoons i made from Cherry last december they have been used regularly, they have a carved finish at the time i was reasonably pleased with them but they now seem quite crude.

 These are spoons i made a couple of years ago the nicer ones have been sanded, it is very easy to get the desired shape with sand paper but it is a slow process and not as enjoyable.

the scoop with the leather thonging is one of the first spoons that i made following Green Woodwork (11 years ago), it was turned on a pole lathe, you split the turned billet in half before hollowing the bowl, the spoons were very functional as scoops but weren't very pretty, in those days i was very much into using abrasives these days i feel abrasives take the life out of hand carved objects.

Whilst doing my assistantship with MIke Abbott i was making and selling these Friction Fire sets, they sold very well but are not so viable when travelling around, the packaging made them sell much better than by themselves and also turned them into a nice looking gift. I got some of these going for the Wye Wood Project in Herefordshire.

Well i'm at my parents and taking the oppurtunity to quickly use their camera and take some photos of some things i've made. The bowl in the back is the first bowl i ever made, it was made of green cherry and i can still remember the sweet smell it had, i remember carrying it back to show my mum after school. You probably can't see from here but it's got a massive crack in it where it dried too quick, it was made from a half log and i now know could have done with the first few tight growth rings removed to relieved tension in  it. There is an olivewood (i now only use native woods sourced by me) shot glass on the left which made the vodka at uni taste bad. In front of that is a little ash surf board that could be a key ring or pendent i made one for each of the kids at the school when i left. Amongst the rest is a bit of eccentric turning to make a queen for a chess set, some heads, a couple of pendents and a candlestick. The Bowl and candlestick are now my parents and the rest hang around in boxes as nicknaks and half finished projects waiting to be resurrected.

Little me, or at least littler i'm around 12/13 yr old in this photo, the man is Roger Jones who gave me my woodworking beginnings. He was my CDT teacher at school and was very much into his woodwork, he taught me to turn and in my teens i was very much into turning bowls. skip forward 7 years and i'm working as his assistant in the school, by this time he had a plan to build a timber framed building in the school grounds this is now affectionately known as the Tudor House it's a simple cruck design with wattle and daub, those bit's of green oak were heavy! Whilst working for Roger he had Mike Abbott's book Green Woodwork and from that book we built some pole lathes and shaving horses.

I received some aftershave as a present from my parents and realised i have not used aftershave for several years now, in the past i have spent considerable amounts of cash on luxury soaps and aftershaves, but they became less relevent in my life. The whole concept of aftershave and smells i think is quite interesting. When at Living Wood i got quite used to only showering weekly being outdoors and around fires stopped me from being conscious of my smell and it was a hassle to boil up a big pan of water and hoist it up the tree for a shower. When i was travelling around earlier this year i just had one change of clothes and trying to maintain cleanliness was harder work, i wore natural fibres (cotton and wooll) which i reckon don't smell as bad as synthetics. The pants and socks i wore were thin which meant they were quick to clean and dry, walking a long canals there was plenty of water to wash the underwear i wasn't wearing just with the soap and nail brush i used to wash my body, i would let them dry on my backpack, i had a very thin cotton cloth that i used as a flannel/towel and that dried in an instant and was a lot cheaper than the special antibacterial towels i've seen. When in towns and cities i would wash in toilets at places such as starbucks and tesco, i felt much more comfortable in these big shops than a small independents where those that work there are much more likely to notice and disapprove of your actions, incidentally i also found this with asking for water and charging my mobile phone. To cover up my bad smell i would stand over the fire and smoke myself a little and when walking past gardens with lavendar or rosemary i would pinch a bit and stuff it in my pocket.

I got an answerphone message a few days ago from Anthony he had got hold of my number from someone on the internet, he wanted a love spoon and was fairly abrupt and demanding in his message. I'm not a fan of love spoons, modern ones tend to be cut out of thin boards with a fretsaw and are never used as spoons. And the whole concept of paying someone to carve a lovespoon does not sit well with me. I was planning to call the man back but kept putting it off mainly because i didn't want to have to explain over the phone why i don't carve "lovespoons". Before i managed the return call i had recieved two more messages with increasing obstinancy, he came across as a man who is used to getting what he wants. This of course has stopped any desire to call him back. i have done some postal orders of spoons but only to people i know or have at least met before. i was selling spoons through a gallery in Bristol but i have now stopped as they don't buy them up front and i sell all the spoons i make anyway so why give them 20%. That said i do sell spoons to Douggie, i like him and he is willing to buy in bulk which makes it just about worth my while and though he makes very little from the spoons they do add to his stand at fayres.

Recently i've done a few orders of spoons, which is something i rarely do as i normally just make what i like and then street sell them. i have spent a huge amount of time trying out different spoon designs but i am now keen to get more into production work. The wood i now reside in and will do for the winter at least has much over stood hazel coppice and i have started making spoons out of it, i have found it to be a very good wood for spoons and the one i currently use to eat is Hazel it's in a Wille Sundquist style (Swedish spoon guru). i have tried most native woods and consider hazel as good as any for spoons. Anyway for the production spoons i made some templates so as to speed up the process and the top tip is to use the 2 litre plastic milk bottles for templates, these are obviously readily available can be cut up with scissors and will live much longer than cardboard ones, the bonus is that like cardboard they flex, i saw up the hazel into 7 " blanks  about 5 mm oversize then axe a crank into it making sure to leave the top surface clean and all but finished i then put the template on the top and draw round the profile, cutting into the neck of the spoon accuratley is the biggest time saver when carving spoons, also getting the top surface perfect before moving onto knife is important. i shall post some photos of the templates and the spoons directly.

It would be wrong of me to pretend i haven't always slightly resented cyclists, the self righteous ones on the high tech machines with two wheels. You know the ones that don't stop at traffic lights, don't wear reflective clothing at night and cycle on the pavement whenever is convenient for them. But it wasn't until this last summer that my apparent dislike of cyclists really manifested itself. Ok so maybe i'm exaggerating a bit but i wish they would get over themselves, the bicycles have worn ankle braking tracks along vast sways of our canal tow paths, and i'm sick of being pushed off the path by fast moving cyclists. Of course legally as a walker it is my right of way but i am far too polite to stand my ground and tell them where to stick it. Whilst at Robin Wood 's workshop at the start of the Pennine way on several occasions cyclists would whizz past at such a rate that if they had hit an elderly walker or child they would have caused serious damage and none of them seemed to stop to close the gate behind them. And i know they are no evil like the combustion engine powered four! wheel versions that whizz about the country killing everyone and destroying our planet. But i think it's time to stop praising them so much, yeah they're good in cities where there is a cycle path, but it's a shame they ravage the countryside too. Having aired my views to Rob his eyebrows were raised a little but he carefully explained the benefits of the bicycle when it was first invented, freeing thousands of people to freely move at least three times as far as they had been able to previously by walking. The impact the bicycle had on those that could not afford horses/cars must have been massive, and i think this has changed my view on the whole and that maybe cycling is a very good thing. I imagine if the bicycles were made by hand with hand forged steel that had been smelted by hand they would not be so freely available.

well sorry this is a lazy way of doing a blog!

I wake up and give the queen a massive kiss she has morning breath but thats okay cos I love her. I must admit it feels weird being king and Im not sure I agree with it entirely but thats all very complicated and Ill just go with it for now.

Yesterday before I was king I was a travelling spooner, hiking and hitching about the place sleeping in woods carving spoons and peddling them on the streets of Great Britain. I am lucky that I enjoy my lifestyle very much, being completely in love with wood and woodlands and almost too obsessed with spoons peddling is for definitely for me. I have all the kit I need to be comfortable in the woods. But when Im in towns and cities I notice a distinct lack of public toilets and if you can find one it has silly handwashing machines with no drinking water taps. As king I would create many more public toilets with a lot more readily available sources of drinking water, I guess tax payers have their own water and toilets at home. Id also like there to be more footpaths and less barbed wire.

One of the real blessings of peddling is that I get to meet many lovely people on my travels and I get to see old friends now and then, but I do miss Spoon Club. When I lived in a static caravan I used to have Spoon Club on Saturdays, it was open house and everyone knew that they could come round whenever and carve spoons. Wed all just sit around whittling wood whilst chatting and drinking tea and coffee. Those that could afford it would bring along some sausages and there was always plenty frying away for everyone. As King I would do a massive spoon club probably in one of my forests everyone could come and Id make sure there were plenty of tools for people to take home so they could carry on spoon clubs all over the place. Imagine if everyone had a spoon carved for them by someone that cared about them, I really like that idea.

This is an article i wrote for Living Woods Magazine it didn't make it, not entirely sure why.

The word Spoon has it’s origins in the old Norse word “sponn” which means chip or splinter of wood, so when we talk about wooden spoons we are really just talking about spoons. I make my living from carving spoons using hand tools to shape green wood pruned from trees. As a pedlar i travel around selling my wares; i also carve for bed and board. My makers mark is a lower case “b”- i like it because turned on it’s side it looks like a spoon. i have only just started signing my spoons I like putting my name to them and i like the fact that i am a person and not a machine.
I read somewhere that to rely on your local environment is to respect it and care for it, i think this is the same for people too, which would seem ironic if you view my life on the road as an attempt to escape this interdependency. It is not an escape, being self employed as a pedlar i feel a much closer relationship to the environment and the people i serve, than any job i’ve ever had. I have been employed in customer services for a multinational before and i didn’t feel like a cog - part of a big machine i felt like a bit of grit that had been added to the machine to slow it down and reduce what the customer could get for their money. Now i peddle spoons it feels like magic when i turn a bit of wood into a cup of coffee. There have been days when i have had no money at all and if i wanted a coffee or some food i carved a spoon and sold it.
Wood is my livelihood and is also where i live, i have a very close relationship to all parts of my business, i sleep and eat where i gather my raw materials, i am in charge of manufacturing and
marketing and sales. My shop is my little silk hanky and my cardboard sign, and if i am grumpy the spoons sell more slowly. I seem to be able to sell all the spoons i can make, but sometimes it can be difficult to persuade someone that the spoon i just took an hour to make is worth the £7 i am asking for it when they can buy one from tesco for 7op, there are days when you don’t want to hear “how much?!” but then i guess that is how i feel when i see poncy “artisans” valuing there crafts so highly, when often there has been little skill in their making. All these things are subjective but it’s hard to find reasons why i should earn any more an hour than anyone else working hard.
There are of course lots of reasons to buy a hand carved wooden spoon, i much prefer to eat with a wooden spoon, the feel of a wooden spoon in your hand and mouth and scraping the bottom of a bowl is infinitely more preferable to that of a metal one (better still if it’s a wooden bowl). To me the look of a wooden spoon is also much more attractive than a mass produced stainless steel one. When you buy a stainless steel mass produced metal spoon you are unlikely to know which country the spoon was made in let alone in which factory and by whom, and to take it further where did the steel come from? what conditions did those who work in the mine endure? When you buy a spoon from me you can know i enjoyed making it, how could you ever know whether those involved in making the metal spoon enjoyed their part in it?
This summer my main focus is on peddling spoons in towns and cities rather than just going from one festival to another preaching to the converted greenies, I will however, be at the Green man festival and the APF show.

i always carry nutmeg with me, it is widely known as the best of all the spices and for good reason. Nutmeg can be bought as whole nuts as in the first picture. The red stuff in the picture directly above is called mace it's the aril of the seed and is sold separately. You get a lot of flavour from that little nut and it will last you a lot time, i tend to just take micro shavings off the nut with one of my carving knives, i'll have to try get a photo of one i've used because when it's cut off rather than grated you get to see the beautiful grain it has. i add nutmeg to my museli which i normally have with hot water (carrying milk is a hassle  and it goes off), but it goes well with most meat dishes and a cheese sauce without it is just a waste of time. being a hard nut it travels well, i normally just have one in my pocket.