Chip Carving

Last Friday we visited our friends and former neighbors Val and Wes at their beautiful home in Sun City West. Some years ago they sold their large home across the street from us and bought two smaller homes, one in Olympia, the other in Sun City West. Now they spend summers in Washington State and winters in Arizona. Sun City West is a wonderful development with more activities than anyone could ever want – much like some of the RV parks we have stayed in. For Paddy there is bocce ball, lawn bowling, and shuffleboard. For me, several swimming pools with water aerobics, tai chi, and shops to pursue any hobbies imaginable. When our days of 5th wheel travel are over, this is definitely a place to consider buying a winter home.

On Saturday, we visited our friends Mare and Dave in Chandler. Paddy met Dave through the EONS BBQ and photography groups. We got together with them a couple of times last year when we were in the area. Saturday, Dave smoked up a bunch of ribs along with some beans and potato salad, plus Margaritas. Since I don’t eat ribs, he also grilled a beautiful piece of Alaskan salmon while Mare steamed some asparagus. Yum!

And, the last couple of weeks I have been learning chip carving, which is a style of wood carving. Here are pictures of my first project (a trivet) and of the tools I used to create it. The way chip carving is done is to glue a pattern (with rubber cement) on the wood and start taking out the triangular chips in the design. After doing the chips, I used a v-tool to make the straight lines between the triangles. At the end, I removed the paper and cleaned off the excess glue. I still need to do a little cleanup work on my trivet, getting rid of little gibbles of wood left in the holes. Then I will put stain on it, which will make the design stand out more. It’s pretty easy and kind of fun.