Whittlin' - January 29, 2025

Sunday morning, I went outside to find some wood to whittle.  I lopped small branches off live cherry and Polonia trees.  (The Polonia wood is strange. It has a hole in the center of the limb.  Is this characteristic?)  I gathered dry sticks from limbs that had fallen during the snow storm. The new wood proved easier to carve than the dry wood, but it was still tougher to carve than the wood that came in the carving kit.  I managed a rather messy tiny owl using the cherry wood.  

Mid-morning, I left off carving and went to pick up my grocery order.  On the way home, I stopped by the hardware store and got some pine sticks to try.    The pine was pretty tough to carve, too.  

By nightfall, my right index finger was giving me fits.  This is the finger that swelled up for no apparent reason the day after I retired (a few days after Christmas).  It's hard to even hold a pencil.  I suspected that the swelling was from arthritis, but worried that I'd cracked a bone or jammed it or something, so Monday I went to the doctor's office for an x-ray.  Diagnosis: arthritis.  

Lovely.  

Reasoning that using the finger would not damage it further since it wasn't broken, I whittled all afternoon, using the store-bought wood.  I got an ugly, half-finished, little bald pine man for my efforts.  

Yesterday morning, I went out to breakfast with my sister and our two aunts.  We had a lovely time.  Afterwards, I stopped by the hobby store to get some soft wood.  They had basswood and balsa.  I got a little of each and came home and carved a gnome out of the basswood.  I accidentally cut off his nose twice.  He got smaller and smaller and smaller.  Basically, he's a floppy hat, a honkin' big moustache, and some feet.

This may not be my "calling."  :)

I am scared of the knife, and with my sore index finger stuck out like a flag pole, it's hard to make deep, precise cuts in the wood.  

Nevertheless, it's a strangely calming hobby (blood-letting worries aside), and I'm going to keep at it until something else demands my time.  This morning, I sketched out a beaver on a 1" x 1" x 2" piece of basswood.  It will most likely lose its big protruding teeth at least once.  ;)

Funny (unrelated) story:

The LRB got in trouble this weekend.

Her mother noticed she'd gone quiet and went looking for her.  They have four dogs and a cat in the house, and one of them had pooped in the floor, and my D-I-L stepped in it on the way to find the LRB.  She called out to Granddaughter #3 to go see what the baby was doing while she (the D-I-L) cleaned up the poop.  Granddaughter #3 came back giggling.  She's found the LRB in the bathroom.  The LRB had also stepped in the poop and was busy scrubbing it off her shoe . . . with her mother's toothbrush.