A Pear

Hi All,
My wife does a bit of pyrography from time to time and just recently she took interest in doing it on some gourds after seeing some examples on the Internet. For those who are not sure what a gourd is, it is a strangely shaped member of the squash family, which can be dried our after contents have been removed. This provides an hard shell upon which many types of art can be applied, including pyrography. However, there is one big problem regarding gourds in the UK they rarer than having two sunny bank holidays on the trot.

Have you ever noticed how much arty crafty stuff is easily available in the USA. Well it's the same with gourds, they are easy to come by at farm shops and the like over the pond. Anyway, after realising that it was futile to carry on trying locate a supply of gourds in the UK, my wife gave me a commission. "You can turn one for me from wood," she said, "make it roughly the shape of a big pear."

Well I did has requested and turned a piece of 75mm square of lime wood into a big pear. Upon this my wife did a pyrography design and commenced burning it in.

Here it is, the finished gourdy pear thing.

It came out quite good despite my wife's complaint that the shape was all wrong. "it's too big at the top," she said, "pears don't look like that."

"It's no supposed to be a pear," I said, "its a gourd made from wood shaped roughly like a pear."

I don't know if it not being the exact shape she wanted had a bearing on the situation, but after she got about a third of the way through the pyrography, she decided she'd had enough and was ready to toss it in the bin.

"I'll finish it off," I declared, not wanting to see my lovely piece of lime wood going to waste. When it was finished my wife decided it was good enough to go on a shelf in a lounge, but there was a catch because she had another request. "I want you to make a bit of stalk to stick out of the top and then it will look like a proper pear," she said. "I thought it was supposed to look like a gourd," I replied, but then she gave me that look, No need for more word, I'll just make a stalk.

By the way, one on my books can be downloaded free from a amazon, until and including Friday 19th of May.

Just go to the books tab at the top of the page, click on the cover and you will go straight to amazon for the free download.

If you fancy having a go at the pear, please feel free to use the design above. I would love to see how you get on and a picture would be nice.