bunn

Last year's Christmas tree had quite a wiggle to its trunk. I wanted to catch that wiggle in the decoration that I carved from it. In my head this was a 'dancing' wiggle, and so I tried to make a dancing figure, to stand for Cottia dancing in this post-Eagle of the Ninth story that I wrote.  

  

I'm quite pleased with it, though I think she has ended up perhaps a bit chunkier than I'd intended - it's so difficult when you get down to the point where shaving off a tiny bit too much will be too far and you can never put the wood back on!  On the other hand, in the story it is a cold, wet December night and she's dancing in a muddy farmyard, so if she has any sense she is probably wearing thick underwear.

I think there is a sense of movement there anyway.   The figure is about 5 inches long, but despite the size of it, I think will work OK as a tree decoration, as it is quite slender. 

The tree was a Noble fir, which is really a nice wood to carve green, and holds quite a lot of detail. I'm quite tempted to make something else from some of the left over wood, but that might have to wait till my finger heals up a bit.   I managed to gash it a bit doing the fine detail on the hands when the chisel slipped (but adhering to the important Rules of Woodworking, managed to avoid bleeding on the wood. )