Or is it “My kingdom for a horse”? Anyway, the family returned last night from their week-long adventure in Death Valley. I got to experience a lot of what they had seen through pictures Hilary sent via email. A few days before everyone left, I made a couple of spoons for the kitchen out of our local live oak, one of the hardest woods in the US. The early European settlers in California used this wood to make splitting mauls for other wood — this stuff is HARD! A few years ago I used it to make a spatula which has endured with hardly any wear, so I decided to try spoons since our lone wooden spoon was broken, partly burned, and just flat worn out. A band saw cut out the basic shape, and chisels, a belt sander, a pad sander and four hours of labor pretty much finished it off. (Four hours? I told you it’s hard!)I sent one with Karla to give to Hilary and Luke for their Furnace Creek home. They loved it and in return sent a drawing Hilary had done in her sketchbook. I’m going to frame it; will Hilary frame the spoon? Hope not — it’s for cooking after all.
2 comments:
We love our spoon! It has been framed many times already by various soups and sauces, but it always gets lovingly and carefully washed by hand with mandarin-scented Trader Joe's dish detergent afterward, and left to dry in the low-humidity Death Valley air on the wire dish rack. It will never see the inside of a dishwasher, which could mar its perfect moisture content.
My horse drawing looks worried that it's going to get whacked in the head with your spoon!
Looking at that drawing scaled down, I can pinpoint what I don't like about it: the eye is too small.
It depends on your perspective. I think the eye is the perfect size; the head is just too big.
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