Carve a first-timer spoon - PEP BB roundwood.sand.spoon

Good morning,

here is the fresh cut of mastic (pistacia lentiscus) wood that had a dark hardened core.

Mastic wood has a pleasant scent to work with, soft wood but consistent strength.

Leaves, gum and fruit are all edible which is safe to bulid a cooking spoon.

Opted for a square handle for a better grip and keep the two wood colors display.

It will be flax oiled in another PEP BB.

I've made enough spoons in my day that I can't really make a completely "beginner" spoon, but here's a quick one I made from a dogwood log from my neighbor. It's a cooking or serving sized spoon.

I've read that dogwood is prone to cracking when it dries, so I'm trying to dry the finished spoon slowly inside of a bag, which has worked well to avoid cracks in other crack-prone woods in the past.

My attempt.

Here's the little spoon I carved un maple wood using my knife!

So I started the ladle first, but I didn't remove the core so predictably it split. Since I won't use a split ladle, I also did a spoon. I learned to remove the core and that curly willow is really hard to split.

My submission for the first timer spoon PEP BB. I chose birch as my material, because it is readily available to me. I invested in a cheap set of carving knives - would recomment to invest a little more and get a good hook knife and a good sloyd knife. I learned to charpen those knives though. It was a lot of fun to carve the spoon and it got me hooked: I'm setting up to be able to carve more.

This is the third spoon I ever made, but the first big spoon.
I used olive wood. The hardest part was where the handle meets the cup, if that description makes sense.
I don't know yet how thin I can go or how much power I can use before it would break, so that middle part is still quite thick, I find.
It will take many more spoons to find my confidence and take away more wood. Luckily my olive wood supply is kind of endless :D

My first spoon is made out of fresh trimmed apple I found. It was fine to carve wet and  I put it down for over aweek to let it dry. I did not enjoy the finish carving of the dry wood. I sanded the spoon down to 220 grit by hand.

Here is my submission for the Roundwood - Sand - Spoon BB.

Minimum requirements:   
- useful size and shape   
- smooth   
- something you might actually use   
- made with hand tools only

To get certified for this BB, post three pics.  
Attachment 1  - Your chunk of wood that you are starting with  
Attachment 2  - Progress about half way through, with the hand tools you have decided to use for this
Attachment 3  - Final product

I was very excited to use juniper for the pink coloration. I thought that this would be a lot easier than it was and I learned a lot. I've never carved a spoon before. There was a knot in the wood that was hard to work with so I tried to use an ember to burn the the bowl of the spoon but, in doing so, incurred some burn damage in the handle even though I thought I protected the spoon with wet clay. I used a mallet, an axe, a knife, a spoon carving knife, 3 grits of sandpaper, a pencil, and flax oil.

I spent at least 5 hrs on this spanning 3 different days because it was so demanding on my hands. I'm very happy with how the spoon came out and I'm looking forward to making a much better second spoon!

Second attempt.  Not totally happy with the shape, but makes a functional sugar spoon: