We've had quite a bit of yellow cedar washing up on our shores this winter. Someone told me the yellow cedar trees in Southeast Alaska are afflicted with a disease that is killing them. If so, that is a sad reason for our bounty.  But the driftwood that I have been gathering is being put to use.  I have spoon carving fever, and the yellow cedar is wonderful for spoons! 
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I use a variety of wood for spoons, including alder, red and yellow cedar, spruce and fir.  The alder and spruce I've used were green wood - much easier to carve that way.  The others have all been harvested as driftwood.  My favorite is yellow cedar.  Several long giant 'splinters' of yellow cedar I have found have been butter smooth to work.  The aroma is very different that red cedar: pungent, citrusy.  It fades after time, which is good for cooking utensils.  I love making long-handled pot-stirrers.  I did make a huge water scoop for banya out of red cedar.  That was fun - but it was the hardest piece of red cedar I have ever worked! It must have come from a root.  

Next on my plate is carving some bowls and serving platters.  As soon as the money comes from my client for my most recent commission work, I am ordering a lipped adze from Kestrel Tools - it will be a great companion to my baby gutter adze! 

The most enjoyable thing for me about working as a full time artist is that I can create my own schedule, and no matter what I am doing, it is answering my creative drive.  If I go out to the beach with my dogs, I always bring something home with me: wood for carving, rocks, bones, beach glass, sand in my pant cuffs. 

This winter, I have been exploring the book "The Organic Artist" and finding it so inspiring! I have gathered some mountain ash and alder twigs for charcoal - still seeking some willow and black birch.  I have made some drawing pens with bamboo and some of my own paint brushes already.  I am eager to make some pigments for ink and to add to beeswax for crayons.  There is something so inspiring and rewarding about making ones own tools. My friend Coral and I share that enthusiasm. I have made my own bone awl (after she showed me the one she made for basket making) - it works great!  I made another basketry tool with a rib bone and piece of spruce root. I have transferred all of my hemp twine to wooden spools made from driftwood roots and branches.  Excited by the traditional willow basketry, I gathered alder and salmonberry to try my hand at this type of basket making.  My first attempt did not work out - with the alders. They are much larger than willow. I think the salmonberry canes will work better!  

Even though these tasks are seen as "craft" - working with my hands and making my own tools or making baskets, gathering the materials - those tasks get my mind into creative mode, and it is a meditative and part of the thought process of making art.  I don't get the same pleasure from many other activities - other than cooking.  
 
Daylight hours are rapidly growing.  This time of year - spring - with the birds returning, buds ready to open, crocus blooming - it brings the sap of life into me as well.  My brain cells are alive with it!  Happy Spring!