I carve spoons from freshly cut wood on a small bench on my balcony in Šiauliai, and I write down what each log, cut and mistake taught me before I forget it.

Whittle Bench Spoons is one person, two knives, a small axe and a pine bench that fits exactly between the balcony railing and the kitchen door of a flat in Šiauliai. I carved my first spoon in the spring of 2022 from a birch branch that had come down in the yard behind our building, and it was a bad spoon, thick and lopsided, but I ate porridge with it for a month and wanted to make a better one. This notebook is the record of trying.

Everything here is green-wood work: wood carved while it is still wet from the tree, split rather than sawn, shaped with an axe at a chopping block in the shared yard and then with knives on the balcony in the evenings. I write in English because the carving books and old notes I learned from were in English, and it keeps the vocabulary straight in my head. The entries are practical, and when something cracked, snapped or went into the stove, I say so.

I do not sell spoons, run classes or recommend shops, and I do not name the neighbours who give me wood or the people who have sat at the bench with me. Most of my wood comes from pruning and storm damage around the district, offered by people who know I will take it away. If you carve too and have a question about something written here, the address at the bottom of each page reaches me, usually within a week.