Having foolishly expressed the desire to learn woodcarving, I was out grocery shopping with Kevin today, and he threw a three-pack of Ivory soap into the cart.

This is how the Boy Scouts do it. You get soap and a plastic knife and apparently this gets much of the stupid out of your system. Such is the theory, anyway.

I rather suspect I just want to use paper mache clay and learn to make molds, maybe do some resin casting, actually, but anyway, I took the soap and the plastic knife and stood gazing deep into the soap.

"What are you doing?" asked Kevin.

"I am waiting for the spirit within the soap to reveal what it wants to be."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Just…do a bear. Or a person. Something simple."

I went out on the back deck and spent twenty minutes with the soap, which taught me a lot about carving soap, if not wood, and returned.

"It’s a sperm, isn’t it?" said Kevin weakly.

"You said simple! One cell! It doesn’t get any simpler than that!"

"….I hate you."

(I am informed that it was actually a pretty good first attempt, what with the curves and all. I dunno. I don’t really think subtractive is going to work for me…need to learn how to cast in resin…)