Three simple things.  

I have some basswood on hand.  And a pocket knife.  I started doing a tiny bit of carving and decided that the knife was not sharp enough.  I need to strop it.  So I built a strop and have sticks of polishing compound on order.

As I was building the strop I found a sheath knife (see image below) that I've had since the '70s.  Never used it.  So I decided to modify it to make a 1-3/4" carving knife (see image below).  The process was not difficult but it did take me about 6 hours.  I'm still not satisfied with the blade and am looking forward to stroping it into final shape.

The steps I took to modify this knife were:

And then right after I completed that I had a small Swiss Army Knife fail (see image below)...the plastic cover came off of one side.  So I disassembled the Swiss Army Knife and used the blade and a piece of Myrtlewood to create a "detail" carving knife (see image below) with a blade about 1-1/4" long.

At this time I'm sitting with two carving knives that I've created, a strop that I've created, and polishing compound and more basswood coming in the mail.  I feel much better equipped to deal with future bipeds.  I'm excited, actually.  This morning I spent a couple of hours carving a small hand (3/4" X 5/8").  I did use both of the carving knives and also a scalpel.