A Holiday Souvenir

Other people usually bring sea shells, fridge magnets or bottles of some local booze from their vacation. This time we brought a broken olive branch that we've found during our trips on Krk island. (Well okay, we also brought some pebbles from the beach...)

I cut the branch into two bent pieces. One of them is already split and prepared for carving on the picture below.

Sometimes you have to shape the bent branch properly, otherwise you end up with a spoon that looks crooked.

And here is the result. The branch was too thin to have the typical wavy pattern of olive wood, but it was just as hard as heartwood. I also realized that only dead wood from some side branches had the typical olive smell. So I think that an olive tree uses the aromatic oils to preserve the inactive parts of wood from decay.