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).

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.

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.

I had a few white oak offcuts (or off-turnings) from another project I'm working on. Was wondering what I could do with them when a friend of mine told a story about her sister (who was a little bit crazy) sending her a piece of cake from Japan to the US. Apparently it was intact when it arrived at her house, but a month in the mail had allowed time for some mold and such to grow.

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.