Got some Russian olive from a friend last Saturday. This bowl came out of one of the pieces. There are two cracks that wanted to come apart as I was turning it, and the shape was largely dictated by another crack that did come apart (and which put a dent in the ceiling of my shop).

A small carved bowl made from Gambel Oak, from near Taos, NM.

On the first of the year, a friend gave me a couple chunks of chokecherry and a chunk of Gambel oak. I rough-turned the chokecherry into bowls in the first week of January, and finished turning this one in February.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on this plate. It’s made from sweet gum that a friend sent me. I started with a piece that was roughly 12 inches square (300mm) by 3 inches thick (75mm). I finished with a plate that is just under 12 inches in diameter, and about an inch thick, and which isn’t quite flat. Sweet gum moves a lot as it dries, and I didn’t account for this movement in my initial turning.

A friend of mine in Virginia sent me some wood recently, which included a blank of “definitely not mulberry,” which he had picked up somewhere. It had pretty grain, but he hasn’t been turning a lot of bowls lately, so he passed it along to me.

My second bowl made from cholla wood and epoxy, with blue, green, yellow and red tints in the epoxy. The blue is darker than I intended, almost a black, but I think overall it works.