A spoon story

Mary, Brindley and I attended a festival recently. A ‘boutique’ affair with just 1000 festival goers and almost the same number of dogs. Booked over two years ago. We had to show our ‘Covid passports’ on entry along with a recent negative lateral flow test.

It was a lovely dog friendly event with great focus on food, books and music, as well as giving opportunities to try different crafts. 

We opted for spoon carving with David.

The class was 2 hours long, held on the last day. Ample time to make a spoon I thought to myself. But actually, when you start to delve deeper into the art of making a wooden spoon, we discovered there’s an awful lot more to it!

It started well. Carving with the grain to create a rough spoon shape, and then gently whittling small pieces off to start to shape the spoon. My spoon began to emerge from the rough piece of wood I started with. Surrounded with shavings I became excited to see it finished… surprised at how satisfying it was to whittle. I ditched the safety glove in favour of working faster and directly with my hands. Easier to feel the wood and shape it. 

David was impressed with my efforts and complimented me on my carving prowess. I was so proud!

But time was running out! I would lose access to the marvellous sharp knives (sharper than a razor) in less than 30 minutes time so I started to whittle a little more enthusiastically – focussed on finishing my beautiful spoon.

You can guess what happened next I’m sure. In a silent smooth swipe of the blade I removed a perfect piece of wood from the spoon… along with a not insignificant piece of my index finger. Initially the cut was so clean and quick I barely noticed. Then the blood started gushing in earnest and I realised I needed to dress the cut – not least because I would bleed on my beloved spoon!

Dressing the cut became a mini drama, playing out in the tent with the staff on the wood carving stall… muted, slightly alarmed whispers, as the blood flowed freely… trying to keep things calm we managed to jam a large plaster on the wound, along with another on top of that, and then a sort of tourniquet and instruction to pinch my fingers together to compress the area. And hold my hand above my head. (It was confirmed to be the worst injury of the weekend for the wood carving stall).

The frustration! My spoon so very nearly a spoon! David kindly added some finishing touches to it (I now justifiably wary of the sharp knives!) before we reluctantly had to down tools and call it a day.

The moral to the story? More safety, less spoon. Obvs!

About the author