The story of carving for me…started when I got a hankering to whittle. My father use to whittle and I thought it was cool way back then. Whitling has the same feeling of crafts for me that spinning has. Maybe it is also like how fishing is for some people. It seems like something that old men do outside their shotgun shacks in the forest…and by the way…I love seeing those people fishing in the streams when I drive through the hills heading toward the Catskill Mountains between Binghamton and Liberty, New York…right before it gets really mountainy near Roscoe.

So…I wanted to start to carve. It was right about this time of year, my favorite time of year, October. My mother-In-law and father-in-law came for a visit and we brought them to my favorite New York State Apple Harvest Festival. My husband and I found this festival one year by accident. It’s in Newark Valley and it is the best event in upstae New York.

While we were there…we met several gentlemen displaying their carved work. They told us that they were having a carving show the next day. We went to that show and that’s where my mother-in-law bought me my first carving knife, God love her!.

I loved the work I saw at the show. I met a few people there that I knew from my job in Ithaca. I joined the carvering group for a year. I got a lot of cuts and started carrying bandaids in my carving bag and I made some carvings.