One that got away....

I'd meant to include this spoon in my last post but forgot.

It's nothing special - a birch serving spoon - but there is something about it I love.

As you can see, it's not carved from regular green birch, which is generally quite blonde wood, but from a piece of spalted birch. Spalting is an effect caused, usually in dead wood (though not always) by the colonization of fungi which causes irregular colour changes and patternation of the timber. It can cause weakness in the wood but, as you can see from the zoning lines and colours of the spoon, it's worth making the effort with in order to get something a little different.

This spoon was particularly hard to carve as in places it was a bit punky and brittle - the thing I can best compare it to are those white firelighter blocks that snap and crumble.

What I love most about the spoon is how parts of it - the bits that are a toffee kind of colour - go completely translucent when held up to light - it's as if the wood has begun to turn to amber.

You can see the translucence a little on the bowl and handle - you can get the same effect by carving the spoon thinly, but this is actually quite a chunky spoon, but still quite see-through.