sabhailte

julie, who is fully in cahoots with the monkee, posted up some photos from the weekends ride/race and post slog activities over on her blog. click it if you would like to see. i'm featured prominently, as is my thinning hair....

a few posts ago i mentioned what might be my worst carving ever. it was bad enough that i wouldn't even post a photo of it. it basically ended up looking like this guy dressed up as an old wizard for halloween. well, i've finally gotten to attempting to salvage it. the first step in doing so was to break the thing in half over my knee.

here it is in all it's former lack of glory.



i'm really not sure what i was thinking when i made the left arm about half the length of the right one. and i swear there was no beer involved.

i liked the hat, and the face was salvageable enough, to that was a start. the upper half became this:



and the lower half is a raven in progress. just need to do some research on ravens first.



don't hold me to the raven part actually. it'll be a bird, most likely a raven, but that could change i suppose.

i had been scouring the interwebs for a shepherd's hook diamond riffler file, since i hadn't been able to find the one i was using while carving in mexico. it was the most useful file in the bunch for the type of finishing i was doing. i've purchased two different riffler file sets since and none of the shapes included fit everything that the shepherd's hook would. well, i finally located it, along with the rest of the original set, and a handful of very useful gouge shapes. i had it the whole time, it was in the far back corner of the box i never open. of course.