Supporting the Tafia

This week I have donated a spoon to one of my favourite North American Welsh societies.

Although I rarely donate spoons anymore due to a couple of bad experiences, I always really enjoy creating a spoon for the West Coast Eisteddfod and like to be as helpful as I can to those members of the Welsh community in North America who are trying to boost the Welsh presence on the continent! Since we are usually the wallflower cousin in the corner who everyone ignores while they party with our more flamboyant Irish and Scottish brethren, it is a treat to see an organization like the Chicago Tafia come along and wave the flag for 'Cool Cymru'!

This Sunday Feb. 26, the Tafia will be hosting a big knees up at the Red Lion in Chicago and will be hosting a raffle and silent auction to raise money for further Tafia activities. I hope that they draw lots of Welsh from the Chicago region to support them, but I also urge any Welsh readers of this blog to visit the Tafia website and email in a bid for this lovely Celtic style lovespoon! You can find them at: chicagotafia.com

Drop David Parry a line and tell him you'd love to scoop this spoon out from under their noses and here's your bid!!

You may be the lucky winner of an elegant lovespoon and David will get financial support in his efforts to promote Welsh culture in the Windy City! Its win/win!!

The spoon itself is a double-sided Celtic knot with a nice asymmetric (is that how you spell it... it is now) bowl. It's cut from a lovely piece of birch and is polished with an oil finish, followed by two coats of beeswax. As with all quality lovespoons, a lot of time, patience, care and effort has gone into carving it and the winning bidder will be rewarded with a lovespoon that will bring a lifetime of pleasure!

Check out The Chicago Tafia today and bid on this spoon!!! chicagotafia.com

Valentines Day Surprise!

A couple of days ago I had a really nice Valentine's surprise when I received a copy of the luxuriously high-end magazine Atelier and its companion magazine Arcade. I had been email interviewed a couple of months ago about lovespoons and their eminent suitability as Valentine's gifts and had submitted a couple of photographs to journalist Shaily Bhusri, so I knew to expect something about the lovespoon in this month's edition.

However, the arrival of these gloriously lavish magazines was really very, very exciting!

The magazines are gorgeous and it is a genuine thrill to see my spoons rubbing shoulders with glamourous Bollywood stars, haute couture, cutting-edge architecture and some of the most remarkable 'Valentine's Day red' footwear that I have ever encountered! For a guy who is accustomed to chipping away day-after-day in his little dust filled hidey-hole, appearing in a magazine directed primarily at India's jet set seems very surreal!!

But I am more than delighted for both the attention it brings me AND for the fact that someone has taken the time to realize the wonderful romance of the lovespoon tradition. This year I had sent out literally dozens of 'promo packs' to media outlets across North America trying to solicit some interest in lovespoons as a suitable subject for coverage at this 'most romantic time of the year'. From my neighbourhood community paper, to the New York Times, I canvassed everyone I could think of.

Alas, no-one showed even the faintest interest in the subject. The lovespoon, it seems, is no competition for annual tales of overpriced chocolates and flowers.

So that is why it is doubly gratifying for me, that thousands of miles from its home, on the other side of the globe, the lovespoon tradition has received this one moment of glittering celebrity!

My sincere thanks to Shaily Bhusri and Atelier Magazine for their kind permission to use their material in my blog!!

Happy Valentine's

With Valentine's Day creeping ever closer, I thought I would post a blog now...especially since I probably won't get a chance closer to the time.

If ever there was a day made for lovespoons, Valentine's Day has got to be it. It's the perfect opportunity to be sentimental, passionate and nauseatingly romantic and have everyone love you for it!!

Although I have carved loads of spoons over the years for all kinds of Valentine's lovers, the spoon I have chosen to picture wasn't actually carved for Valentine's Day at all. However, the reason I chose it was because it possess all the requisite romantic detailing and depth of feeling I feel is required for an occassion like Valentine's. For me personally, this would be the type of spoon I would want to make if I was going to send a lovespoon for Valentine's Day. (No doubt my wife is in the background yelling, "Fat chance of that!" in one of those classic cases of the cobbler's family going without shoes)

It has everything I would look for in a romantic lovespoon design, but what I really love about it (aside from its obvious romantic message) is its exuberance!! This is a spoon which is unabashed and heartfelt and that makes it really hard not to be drawn in to its passionate enthusiasm!

The spoon itself celebrates the union of a Welsh man with a German woman and features artistic elements of both cultures in a vibrant display of Celtic knotwork and Alpine-style chip carving. The design is very, very contemporary BUT retains a very traditional feel which would not have been out of place 200 years ago. In case you are wondering about the text found on the spoon it is the Welsh and German words for 'sweetheart'...go ahead, try to tell me you wouldn't like someone saying that to you!!

This is the stuff the lovespoon does best...it actually says how much you love and value that special someone. There's no 'last minute' desperation or 'I'll grab whatever comes to hand' half-heartedness about a lovespoon...they require thought, effort and emotional investment. As far as I'm concerned, those grossly overpriced bunches of wilted roses and sugary chocolates in flowery boxes are for those of a 'less decorous nature', REAL romantics would go for the lovespoon every time!!

So even if you read this too late to get started on a Valentine's lovespoon for this year, hopefully you'll now have it in mind for next. Unless, of course, you'd prefer to be like the media and content yourself with the familiar mediocrity of the same old mundane chocolates and flowers story over and over for eternity!!