Batch production or One-offs

It's funny,  but with any type of carving, such as spoon carving, caracature carving etc.. It is really easy to get sucked into a habit of carving lots of very similar things.
For carvers who sell their work on craft stalls or in shops this is often not just a good thing but positively necessary. A spoon carver for example needs to be able to carve a high volume of stuff in order to sell at a reasonable price. This demands practise and the discipline to stick with many versions of largely the same design, batch production.

I have a massive amount of respect for those people who find it easy to do this. I don't have the necessary attention span to carve multiples of one design, I get bored. Some might say that is a good thing as it adds to the sense of uniqueness of each piece. I suppose I would generally agree with that sentiment. Anyway my way works for me but it does mean that all of my carvings are one offs. That means they tend to take a bit longer though since they also do not tend to start from a pre-designed template.
I suppose also it means that almost all of my carvings are done with somebody in mind, sort of like personal commissions. The wood-turner mouse in my earlier post that I carved for my dad is a classic example of that. Sometimes I carve, just to try out a new idea or to try out a new knife to see how it performs.
Many of my "try-outs" end up with "The Babe", my darling Tracey. They may not have originally been meant for her but she has this knack of appropriating any prototype or first try-out. I recently did a little elephant for our friend Sheila who has a real thing about them. Before carving Sheila's I did a couple of really small ones to get a feel for the shape I wanted, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where they ended up...

It's a really good job that Trace doesn't like knives or I'd never get to use any of my prototype blades.