I still have all 10 fingers, and no major cuts.  I’ve been carving a few things here and there, although other things take precedence.  I haven’t had a lot of time to work on larger and more complex projects, but I’m sure getting an impressive kennel of little dogs.

Cub in a stump is a pattern from Mike Shipley’s Woodcarving the Country Bear and His Friends.  The orange face is a bit brighter than I had planned.  Debra says he looks like a traffic cone.  So I named him T. Cone Bear.

I carved the rabbit one night in a bit of a rush.  I had been invited to an old friend’s birthday party and had two days to come up with something.  She and her husband have rabbits for pets, so I thought this refrigerator magnet would be appropriate.

You might remember the sweet potato I carved over Thanksgiving. Here’s what it looks like after drying and antiquing:

The snake below is carved from a piece of 400 year old mahogany that a friend gave me.  It’s beautiful wood, but the hardest dang stuff I’ve ever carved.  It sure finishes up nice, though.  The snake is seven inches long.

And more little dogs.  In the first picture, the two dogs on the left are carved from spalted maple.  The dog on the right is from a piece of mesquite.  The dog in the middle is two inches tall.  The second picture shows my latest little dog, carved from a piece of Bradford pear, much like the piece shown in the picture.  This one, too, is two inches tall.

This sure would be more convenient if I could just link to the photos I post on Facebook.  For reasons that are unclear to me, I can link to the pictures, but I can’t actually show the pictures from there in my blog.  They must have a block of some kind to prevent image hijacking.  Oh, well.  If you like, you can see the entire photo album.