Takes a while, but it's worth waiting for

 Yes I got despondent about blogging but here I am now.

And a lot has happened, everything I make now takes weeks though I mostly only work at it for a few hours each day more so now that we are in winter.

Forming the handles and the carving of the pattern were both new experiences for me, I seem to remember doing the carving twice as I learnt that I could do better the painting was a whole big experiment too that came out as good or better than I could have hoped for.

The wood is Rimu a native to NZ that had some big splits in it that were

all glued up using epoxy glue.