The Number Game – 234

And Judy’s number is: 234

• A selection of woodenware just after it’s received its first coat of mineral oil and beeswax to seal the wood. If you own woodenware, you should periodically recoat it with a food-safe coating.
• Sabrina and Marcus mix it up.
• One of my wife’s Grandmothers acquired this in the 1940’s it’s evidently a carved iron ore.
• Oldies Marketplace, in Newburyport, MA. A phenomenally fantastic place to browse for hours!
• One of my recent series of schooner carvings. In this one, she’s just before the gale, reefing topsails and preparing for a blow. It’s a shadowbox-style carving, but from a distance, people have assumed it’s an oil painting. I’m extremely pleased with it, but not too sure of my carving of the reefed topsails…always room for improvement.
• A large cherry bowl is in the process of being carved here. Last year, I found a supplier for wide, thick cherry planks, and it stimulated a flurry of bowl-making. Hand carving a bowl is kind of a sensuous process, as the wood is removed, it reveals patterns in the grain that you enhance as you finish with a hand rubbed finish.
• “Dad! This looks nothing like a mouse!”
• Most of these tools are over a hundred years old, and I am merely their current custodian. They are specialty veiner tools that I needed for doing detail work on my recent ship portraits.