Tortoiseshell serving spoon.....

I made this spoon a couple of months ago. It's laurel and it was a copy of a spoon Julian bought from a charity shop some years ago and uses a lot for cooking - or at least he did until I nicked it to copy!

Not sure how this picture came about?

Anyway, It's not a bad spoon, as spoons go. The bowl wasn't as deep as I'd have liked it to be, but that was dictated by the size of the piece of wood I started with. It's about 10" long. It's not particularly decorative in design, but I absolutely love the natural colour and patination (I'm sure that's a real word, but spell check says 'no') of the wood. It was quite colourful to begin with, but after a little bit of oil and a couple of months in the spoon jar on the window-sill of the kitchen, it has gone even darker. At first i thought it looked a bit like cow-hide, but now it reminds me of the fur of a tortoiseshell cat.

I haven't used the spoon yet, but am convinced with use, and washing and subsequent oiling, the colour would come out even better. Oh the eternal dilemma of using or selling spoons. I haven't made that many spoons yet - a couple of hundred maybe, altogether, which may sound a lot, but there are those who would do that in a month or two - and so I'm still a little bit precious about them all. They are a bit like my children and all live in a drawstring canvas bag in the garage (the spoons, that is, not the children). I guess I can't go on carving for ever and never getting rid of any. I've given away and sold the odd one here and there, but one day I'm going to have to get serious about them.

Anyone out there got any tips on how to cut the apron strings (again, I'm talking about the spoons, not the children).