In working on wooden footballs, I took a side a few detour explorations.

The first came as I was partway through building a football and noticed that the two halves (before joining) looked a lot like a pistachio.  So I decided to make a wooden pistachio with the shell made of leopard wood, and a very slightly smaller seed (same shape as a football).

The second was an egg made from spalted mapled.  Spalting is wood coloration caused by fungi.  Though it weakens the wood and makes it trickier to bend, the patterns are amazing.