I posted these pictures on a thread for Karenanne61 but thought I'd share them with you all. This past week I've been picking up conkers near to where i live, and put a couple in my coat pocket to jiggle in my hand as i walk to the local shops and back.
There's just something good about jiggling conkers in one hand. As for the bowl it is carved from laburnam wood and is one of two i bought at an art fair last July. I got talking to the sculptor and he knocked £10 of the price so i bought them for £40 each. I normally keep my Derwent soft lead pencils in the bowls. Hope you like them.
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Greenthorn
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Yes very nice…I would say anything carved or made from natural wood must be lovely. I have a beautiful old antique wood carved torchere which I use for a Boston fern and it looks lovely. Enjoy those conkers 😉
Can I call you 78 for short? 😀 I had to look up torchere to see what it was but now realise its something my parents had. I can imagine your looking pretty with a Boston fern decorating it. Thanks for replying.
Oh yes… I love them. And bonkers. That was what autotext did to conkers, but I left it because I like bonkers as well. What do you write/sketch with your pencils?
Good question Kate! Mainly i use them for note taking, either at home or on the Wards but they are ideal for writing chord charts for songs On landscape A4 paper (100mg) I can write the chords for two songs. With a 6 or 7B i can press down to make thick bold black lines eg Fm7, Bbm7, Ebmaj etc. And it can quite complicated with the additjon of a sharp 11 (#11) or a flat 13th. Mostly jazzy extensions. Lots of people come up to me and ask what the hell it is that I'm reading when playing in public. Its like my SatNav for a song!🎶
A conker is the seed of a horse chestnut tree. I think they can be roasted but i wouldn't eat one. But if a,buckeye is made from peanut butter, then YES PLEASE!
Conkers are poisonous and cannot be eaten, as are horse chestnuts. It is only the sweet chestnut this is edible, please dont try this x i do love your bowls x
Thanks for mentioning that Iris. I sort of knew something was wrong. All I remember as a kid in London were some guys selling roasted chestnuts outside football grounds on match days. But I never did taste a sweet chestnut. And not sure that I would want to.
Oh you really must they are lovely, roasted chestnuts are sold on the streets in some cities at this time of the year. I tried to roast a conker on the fire when visiting my sister when i was younger and thought my brother in law was going to have a fit, they lived on a farm and had conkers lying around, i didnt know they were poisonous until he told me, yikes lucky for me they put me straight. Irene x
Chestnuts are the ones that are edible with the prickly hedgehog type covering and conkers come from the horse chestnut tree - they are the ones with the smoother hard green covering with sort of slightly pointed nodules all over. When I was at school boys would have conker fights but I doubt any children do that these days, probably too busy looking at their mobile phones. Jan
Beautiful bowls, Greenthorn! I love natural wood. I have a bowl too, carved from yew, that also has some lovely figuring on it. As for conkers, I always found them magical as a child and still love collecting them even now. I put them in the corners of my rooms to keep the spiders away. Of course, the cats think they’re great to play football with, too 🙄😂
Thanks Threecats. Actually the two pictures are the same bowl but I wanted different elevations, one to show the conkers and the other to show the side of the bowl. The other bowl is more shallow. Do conkers really work to keep spiders away? There was quite a large spider on my living room ceiling the other day, but I guess he is hiding now behind a chair. I could easily get obsessed with wood carving now and may well get in touch with the sculptor nearer Chrsitmas.
There are far worse things to become obsessed with 😊 As for conkers and spiders, I reckon they do but the cats say they’re better at catching spiders than any conker😹
I'm conkers bonkers too, I come back from dog walks with all, my pockets bulging. It must be a subconscious thing from the days of childhood & teen conker fights, searching for 'the one'. Right now there are dozens & dozens below every horse chestnut tree in my town, I guess that's because conker fights were banned many years ago and the conker magic has gone. I still get that excited feeling and rush to choose the best. Now my doorsteps are lined with them, friends and neighbours think I'm mad so I tell them it's to repel spiders and offer to get them some too.
I know that really that conker/ spider thing isn't so, it has to be actual conker oil 🤔, ah well.
Thankyou for your lovely reply. When I bend down to pick up a conker or two from the ground I wonder a little what people think of me. But if they think I am eccentric then I accept that I am. Once two or three conkers are in my pocket I feel like I'm King of the Castle and its gonna be my lucky day. 😂
I’ve got conkers all along my door to outside. Hopefully to keep the spiders out. I do get the odd small one in but that could be via the bedroom window.
My mother told me, "if you want to live and thrive, then let a spider run alive." Or something like that. I just mentioned in a thread above that there was a fairly large spider on my living room ceiling. But now I am unconcerned ... except if they start running at me!
very true. I would never hurt a spider. But they are not welcome in my house. My Daughter in law got bit by one. She was sat at the table and a spider lowered itself from the ceiling onto her arm and bit her. It was a false widow spider and she had a nasty infected arm. That just reinforced my dislike of spiders in house. They can do what they like outside.
I’m slightly confused Greenthorn because the pictures look like beautiful paintings 🤔 , I was hoping ,because you mentioned the pencils ,that they were your own artwork but it seems not . No matter the bowls are beautiful 😍 I love wooden sculptures , I have a large one in my living room ( not sure what type of wood as it was given to me as a present ) I especially love olive wood , I have a lovely big olive wood mortar and pestle but I would really love to own a large olive wood nativity , sadly the really nice ones are a bit out of my price range - it’s on my list for when I win the lottery 😃
Thanks. I did take a lot of care in framing those shots; one of which caught the suns rays late afternoon. There are in fact the same bowl from different angles. The other bowl (not in photo) is more shallow. I dont know about olive wood but the subject is beginning to fascinate and I can see myself investing in other wood sculptures. I will google olive wood nativities!
Love the bowl, I brought a vase shaped bowl back from Fiji, done in a very pale wood, then holes artistically done on the sides, Burnt in rather than carved, so interesting black smoothed edges to these openings.
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