In the last week or so, I tried my hand at wood carving for the first time.The result is pictured below. Not a work of art no, but mistakes are an essential tool of the crafting experience and here's where I made mine.

Firstly, impatience. Yes, impatience again. For wood carving ideally you need a wood without a grain, something like apple wood for example. The piece I had to hand was a pine ring, rife with grain and texture. This meant for some of my strokes, I was tearing into the wood instead of cutting cleanly. This however taught me the difference between "fighting the grain" and "this tool isn't sharp enough", which despite the tool set being new, there were one or two less-than-ideally-sharp tools in the set.

Second was a typical newbie error, in which I wasn't creating enough depth with my cuts. This meant when it came to sanding the piece to soften out carving, I was erasing most of my work.

Third. If you zoom in on this picture, you'll notice little blue lines on some parts of the design (which, incidentally, is supposed to be a Tudor rose). I transferred my design to the wood using carbon paper, but I think I leaned too heavily and left too much ink on the wood. This would have been ok for deeper cut designs, but for shallower designs I probably would have been better off with a pencil lead technique.

End result - While the first attempt wasn't the best, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on some more co-operative materials and trying again.

Beeswax polish. I understand it now.

I have finished applying the beeswax polish to my niddy noddy. It feels and smells beautiful. It gleams. I am very happy with how it's turned out.

But the understanding part? Let me explain.

When I first searched for a recipe, there were many options facing me. Some used beeswax and turpentine, others used beeswax and olive oil. Some used beeswax, turpentine and olive oil. Some even included soap flakes. Scenting any of these recipes was optional. But the thing none of these recipes explained was what any of these ingredients did. Now, this may be already obvious to someone who has made more of a study of woodworking than I have, but here's what I learnt.

My beeswax polish, using just beeswax and turpentine, turned out to be the consistency of just soft butter, which made it perfect for rubbing into the wood. I used my fingers to apply the wax mixture for that extra hint of tactile experience. Also, being a newbie, it was helpful in identifying the parts of the wood I'd missed. The smell of the polish when I first opened the jar is very strong, and smells very much like Vic's vaporub. This is why I thought at first that the neroli oil I added wouldn't be strong enough.

When applying the oil at first, it seemed a little sticky, which may have just been a sign that I was applying too much at once. It is very important to use a lint free cloth to rub in the polish; this means a cloth not likely to lose threads or fluffs when in use, like some duster cloths are prone to. And what I learnt was that the turpentine acts purely as a solvent, and evaporates away to let the beeswax and neroli soak into the wood. My finished niddy noddy, which had 4 layers of wax applied to it, has a beautiful soft feel to it, and a faint, sweet scent of oranges.

I have very much been bitten by the knitting bug. There's something about the colder weather coming in that brings it out. This week saw the completion of two pairs of socks. The first were the Skew socks I mentioned a few weeks ago, and the second were from a pattern called Kiertoradalla, available on ravelry.com.

These socks were delayed by a week after I made a mistake in the instep, and by another step when the kitchener stitch heel join (no one said there would be grafting!) got mucked up. It took me a week to both work up the nerve to correct it and be bugged enough to want to do it.

The top picture shows the mistake I made. The bumps in the centre line of knitting in the picture shouldn't be there. When done right, grafting, or kitchener stitch, is invisible from the lines of knitting around it. Clearly I was not having a good day.

I dislike kitchener stitch. Every knitter has a different mental block and mine is on this stitch technique. Even using the nelkin designs instructions, which are the best I've found, especially with the cute little printable chart, I cannot always get my head around it, as the evidence shows.

The picture on the bottom is the amended stitching. Still not perfect, but it's close enough for now. And they're very comfy socks.  

The Kiertoradalla are also slightly off perfect, though I have to mention, this is most likely my own fault as I started with a needle size bigger than the pattern called for because I didn't want to wait until I could get to a yarn shop. The result is socks that are comfy and warm but a tiny bit loose. I'm hoping some wear will help break them in to my foot shape. Impatience, thy name is Debbie.





In more niddy-noddy news, I picked up some pure turpentine on friday, meaning I could finally get around to making my own beeswax polish. After all, if I'm willing to go to the effort of personalising my niddy-noddy, I may as well go to the effort of a special finish for it too.


A google search turns up dozen of recipes for beeswax polish. I reviewed a few then decided to make mine with 10g of beeswax, which I melted in the microwave, and 25mls of turpentine. I also added 20 drops of neroli to take the edge off the strong turpentine smell. A stronger essential oil would probably have been better, but well, I took what I could from my stash and impatience, thy name...



I made up only a small amount as I don't anticipate needing a lot of this at any one time. I anticipate the wood of the noddy drinking in the first few coats before I'll have a buffable coating. Just as well I'm not actively spinning at the moment.