End of the Year

I am a novice at this carving bit and hope that I can "hook up" with others to improve my skills.  I have made progress on the Santa carvings but with the decoys and shorebirds, struggle with eye placement and carving the heads. 

Working with wood is as good as it gets; I read in Biitz's book "How To Carve Wood", that many of our ancestors believed that trees were magical, storing the sun's energy and releasing it as fire.  Many thought that wood was the home to powerful spirits of nature and worshipped trees; others thought that elves and fairies lived in trees.  They believed that is was possible to drive out these spirits by "knocking on the wood"-sound familiar.  Richard Biitz's books are not only great resources but history pieces too and have been a great help to me as I learn this craft.

I have posted a picture of my painting desk-wish it was better organized but then you find more things when you are looking for something else.