During our first week at my MFA at Lund University, our professor brought us out to the swedish forests, and together in groups we needed to construct tents and fires in order to stay their the night. Of course, it was raining the entire time.
We worked with some local scouting groups in cutting wood to right pieces with hatchets and using tarps and rope to build shelters. Having been in the scouts as well for many years, this was my element.
We also learned how to carve spoons from a single block of Birch wood, using hatchets, carving knives, and hook knives.
Three years later, in 2025, I bought myself a carving set in order to spend some more time in my local forest. After a couple of hours , some small scratches (some bigger ones), some broken spoons, but a lot of fun later, the first spoons started emerging. They were not straight, not symmetrical, but they were usable. Turns out, it takes a lot of patience to carve a good spoon.
Each one got better than the one before. Different, but better. Sometimes a better handle, sometimes a better bowl. Sometimes I found a knot in the wood, and would need to find a way to work around it, or with it. But I noticed a little mushroom in the forest, and decided to try and carve it into one of the spoons.
It turns out, I found an excellent little shape to practice my carving skills. As Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”. My goal now is to keep iterating this shape, and to keep improving my skills and efficiency in wood carving. I will update my journey as I go.
