Knowing When To Quit!

NO! not whittling or carving. Keep on whittling and carving. It suddenly dawned on me, that it is extremely important to know when to just stop making cuts on a carving. As a beginner, I spent more time trying to "correct" a carving than I did in doing the initial carving. This always resulted, at the least, mucho "fuzzies", and at the most a carving that was completely ruined. This whole thing reminds me of the chair that wobbled because the legs were uneven, where the carpenter kept cutting one off to even them. You know what happened there. There is a better way to approach and complete a carving. Try to think of a carving as having two phases. The first being "roughing in", the second "detailing". Most beginners skimp on the roughing in phase, and go to the detail phase way to quickly. This results in way too much time in the detailing. "Way to much time" for me meant noses too small for the face, fuzzies at the bottom of every cut, and split out pieces in tight areas. It might be better to get as close as you can to what you want in the roughing out phase, then make decisive final cuts in the detail phase......This come with practice, practice, practice.