Genuine antique stool?

My first school woodwork project was this 16 joint stool with a seagrass top. This was in 1962 which makes it a genuine antique at 50 years old!

 Amazingly, the underside still shows the original red and green of the seagrass.

Coloured Wood

No, I haven't had the paint out recently! These are natural colours created by time. This bent branch spoon is damson from a branch I found which had been cut off last year. The wood was fairly dry and hard as hell to work. The pink is a layer just under the bark so I left it on to show the natural curve of the bowl rim.

This next one is in Hawthorn which is carved green and left for the sap to stain the surface to a lovely golden brown.

Spalting works well with some woods and this Aspen scoup shows very marked colouring after being left in the log for 9 months.

We had a 60 foot Silver Birch blow over in the early summer. The base was rotten and had sent a brown streak up the trunk a short way. There was only enough of this colour that was sound enough to make a few spoons. Easily confused with Walnut at first glance!

Nearly all my work this year has been with 'firewood'. I keep interesting bits to one side for carving. Last week the carving pile was bigger than the firewood pile! Think I need to be more selective otherwise we'll be relying on heat generated by carving and not burning. That's OK for keeping warm but won't get the dinner cooked! There is a lot of spalted Birch which has reached its peak so I am roughing out as many bowls as I can.

Still Buzzing!

A few weeks have now passed since Spoonfest and I'm still buzzing with ideas inspired by the great people I met there. A few new spoons have been added to the gallery page, with lots more developing but not enough hours in the day and too many other pressing projects getting in the way. Cycle trips to the States and Sweden are formulating in my mind, purely for research of course, no hint of a holiday at all! Need to set about selling more spoons and bowls to pay for them.
Had a little play with colouring and now most of the stock of pixie spoons are sporting a new look.

Had Fred Livesay from Minnesota come and stay for a few days after Spoonfest, and he explored some of the wood that has been lying around for a few months/years. I was surprised to see how much it had changed from when used fresh, and that a lot was still split free and workable. Some of the 'dry' firewood has been converted to spoons already with lots more being kept to one side just in case I get more time to experiment.