The Warped Woodturner (TWW) is a local artist traveling his artist's journey in a suburb of Springbrook, WI (pop. 536). TWW's creative calling is to use a wood lathe to make useless objects from locally-sequestered organic carbon for tourists to bring back to the city to give to people they had to buy something for but do not like that much. His target market is the senior citizens since their vision is not as good as it used to be so cannot see the defects as well. His marketing jingle is: “Bowls as simple as their creator”.

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Beta of the Swedish Calabash Bowl story



Warning: If you have too many years of college majoring in subjects that make one look down on the uneducated
people who live in the country you will not enjoy reading this story. It may cause acute anxiety, anger or anorexia.

The Swedish Calabash Bowl Legend

(Antique painted birch bowls. Do not expect this quality from TWW Enterprises)

As the tale goes last century there were two former Swedish bachelor farmers named Gunner Bjorkquist and Torn Castner farming near Scandia, Minnesota who got married and had wives, Anna and Elsa, who both wanted to go to Hawaii together one Winter. Being good Swedish-descended husbands the guys relented and tried to make light of the situation saying they probably couldn't catch bullheads through the ice anyway.

While in Hawaii the wives dragged the guys to a souvenir shop. The guys soon tired of seeing things like signs saying “Hawaii you?” and other touristy slogans and wandered aimlessly in the store to see if they could find something that said “I'd rather be ice fishing”. After a while they came upon a display of native (well at least the sign said that) bowls called calabash bowls. The sign also said the wooden bowls were made from an erotic Pacific tree shaped to look like the top of a calabash gourd.




Gunner said to Torn “I'll bet I could make dose funny lookin wobbly bowls out of Swedish vude on my vude lade and ve could sell dem to da tourists who visit Scandia. Dey will buy anything”. So when they got back to Minnesota Gunner started turning out calabash bowls. He wanted to use wood from trees like those found in Sweden but had to settle for Red Pine (with a little oak thrown in to catch the rich tourists). Gunner hoped the tourists would not realize Red Pine was also called Norway Pine and start trouble. The rest is history.


The Warped Woodturner continues this tradition with his Wisconsin version of Swedish calabash bowls using Norway Pine made especially for the tourists since he knows they will buy anything grown or made in Wisconsin and his Norwegian relatives in Odin, MN told him the Swedes are easy to fool. He also rebranded the Swedish calabash bowls as Swedecalabash bowls to increase market share for the Millennials since they will buy or vote for anything that sequesters carbon.


Product Warning: It is OK to put lefsa in these bowls but putting lutefisk in these bowls could spoil the finish.


The Artist
The Warped Woodturner (TWW) is a local artist traveling his artist's journey in a suburb of Springbrook, WI (pop. 536). TWW's creative calling is to use a wood lathe to make useless objects from locally-sequestered carbon for tourists to bring back to the city to give to people they had to buy something for but do not like that much. His target market is the senior citizens since their vision is not as good as it used to be so cannot see the defects as well. His marketing jingle is: “Bowls as simple as their creator”. Visit him at http://warpedwoodturner.blogspot.com/

Copyright notice: None (who in their right mind would want to copyright something like this?)



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