I win!

Sometimes a carving wrestles me to the floor before finally relenting and bending to my will. 

We battle and I threaten to make it into firewood, I abandon it overnight and then come back to fight once more in the morning. Some artists will start something and never finish it. In carving, and sadly not in more useful things like chores and obligations, I am tenacious and cannot leave a piece unfinished. It's obsessive, determined focus that keeps me coming back until I finally can either admit defeat (rarely) or turn it into something I can live with. 

I had the worst battle with this piece. It was ugly last night. I mean, don't show my family ugly. I thought I might nail it to a tree in my garden and let it moulder away as a reminder of my failure. 

Then I got up this morning, drank too much coffee, and wandered across the lawn to confront that ugly b***h one more time. 

I carved it's face off. Seriously, it was all dark like the leaves and I just carved off the original features and started again. 

It's not my best piece. It's not my favourite. But dammit, it ain't butt-ugly and sometimes the hardest pieces teach us more than twenty easy ones. So I'll keep learning how to do these beardless faces because it makes me crazy that I can't. Or at least can't the way I think I should be able to. 

So Liz one, carving zero.