In the past couple weeks, I have started to work on some walking stick ideas again. My focus when I first started wanting to learn wood carving, was on woodspirit walking sticks. I have always thought that they looked really neat and would be fun to do. Getting the faces to look like human faces, is the challenge when attempting wood spirits.
I call them wood spirits, because that is what they are known as primarily, but I really don’t like the name “wood spirit”, it may imply to others that we are worshiping the wood or making some sort of idol out the walking stick. That is not my intention at all. So I try to make my “wood spirit” walking sticks look like hillbillies. Therefore, I sometimes call them Hillbilly Walking Sticks. 
Here a couple hillbilly walking sticks that I have worked on in the last couple weeks, and one that I did the last part of 2010. The first two are my current hillbilly walking sticks in progress:
Here is the one that I worked on last year:
The hillbilly walking sticks are not completed yet, although I think that I am done with the carving part. I have also used a power hand sander to smooth out the rough spots on the stick. Now when I get a chance, I need to apply some polyurethane to the entire stick to finish it and give the walking stick a shiny look. The polyurethane also seals the stick and keeps moisture out. It will take 4 or 5 coats to give it the shiny, wet look that I like to have on my walking sticks.
Leave me some comments to let me know what you think. I use feedback as a way to make changes and reinforce what things are working for me.