Post #316903 by Aaron's Akua on Thu, Jul 5, 2007 10:26 PM

Busted again. Sorry, Brad! No real A-A tiki carving happening lately. No good excuses - just been busy with too much other stuff.

Okay, a few of my tiki friends have been asking lately so here's the official scoop: No move to North Carolina for us, we've decided to stay right here in sunny SoCal. Instead, we're having a 2nd story deck/addition built onto our place with a little tiki workshop area to be included below. Maybe a little OC Chop-Chop in the works once it's done? August, September maybe? I'll know better once we get everything through the city plan check.

Just got back from 10 days in Maui, where I met yet another Tongan Carver at the Craft Fair down on Front Street in Kehei. This guy is really talented. Though I haven't been carving much lately, I feel like I obtained some serious contact mana from this brotha in the short time that I had to hang out and talk carving with him.

This is my daydream carving shack right here...

Tasini, the carver/proprieter, was taking an afternoon nap when we arrived.

And continued snoozing while we looked around...




(His wife was busy dusting the tikis)

He continued to snooze after rolling over and telling us to check out his "in progress" work out back. This is Hawaiian rosewood - really beautiful color and grain to this wood. Unbelievable.

Dig the mallet top center. Not polyurethane.

He woke up to sell me this piece. There isn't much of the old Hawaiian style carvings being produced in the islands these days, if any. It's pretty much all Tongan carvers now, and they've developed this exagerated style that the tourists like. This one is Mango and the grain is really nice. Reminds me of some crazy Lono wearing a Tongan style swimming cap.

Tasini tapped out his signature on the back.

And of course I had to bargain in an uncarved piece of that rosewood for later.

His wife fussed him back to work after that. Is there any such thing as true paradise? I guess it really is a daydream.

Cheers!

A-A