Goblins

Goblin #11
"Bumblewug"

I had intended to do a whole series of Christmas Goblins, but somehow this month has just totally gotten away from me, and I've ended up making bulldogs all month. So, this may well be the last Goblin of 2007, though I'll certainly try to do another. But if this closes 2007's Goblins, I'll be happy, because it's a wonderfully fun and fat thing. I wanted something evocative of a pitcher plant, which would combine a really fat, round bowl with a very long and elegant stem for contrast. What I didn't expect was the incredibly warty and weird sandblast grain pattern that this block produced - See the bottom close-up for the best example of this.

This seems almost small after the massive Grumblesnort, but in fact it's a plenty-big pipe in its own right - I used our largest diameter 2.4cm bit for the chamber, so even with a bowl height of around 4.5cm, it still has a big chamber capacity. And like the Grumblesnort, it also has walls that are a good 1cm thick.

I'm happy - after some light level tweaking in Gimp, I think I've gotten one of the better pics of one of these horn stems that I've managed so far. At least it shows the grain and the subtle color variations - usually my horn stem pics just look opaque dark brown.

I LOVE a neat effect on this side that's hard to describe - the rings stack their way up the bowl but bizarrely, begin to tilt sideways as they rise, producing that funky warty look in the front view. But in the pic above, you can actually see the little individual pinpoints of the grain fibers as they gradually start to angle outward until they're pointing straight out as tiny points up near the rim. These fibers are what we see as the 'grain' on smooth pipes. Within the structure of the wood, they're like bundled stacks of piping, held together by the horizontal "tape" of the age rings.

The staining on this is another variation of mottled green - dark in the recesses and varying green & earth tones across the highlights. The pic below really showcases the weird tilting grain effect I described above. No one's going to mistake this for anything but a natural product! In fact, from the front view it bears some resemblance to the alien eggs from the movies.

Is this the last Goblin of 2007?

Length: 16.5cm

Bowl Height: 4.5cm

Chamber diameter: 2.4cm straight-walled

Chamber depth: 3.5cm

Weight: 79.1 grams

To Purchase: Just email me and request "Goblin #11"!