Reviewing the Lacewood Paddle

 

Satinwood Paddles is a company that I wasn’t familiar with until we attended the party. As I’ve mentioned before, we haven’t bought many implements over the past few years and most of the contents of our toybag are older than our marriage.

Satinwood had the table next to The London Tanners at the vendor fair, and since that’s where we started due to our friendship with Ian, we moved to Satinwood’s table next.

It was easy to see as we first approached that Satinwood is more of a “boutique” implement manufacturer. Each and every toy had its own character, and no two were exactly alike. A lot of this had to do with the woods used. These aren’t mass-produced plywood toys. Each one is made out of unique and beautiful woods such as cocobolo, purpleheart, jarrah and others. They do make some plywood toys too, but even those are much nicer than what you normally see. They also had a few leather floggers with nice wooden handles and some canes which Sparkle promptly steered me away from. They even had some fun little wooden nipple clamps (we didn’t buy any…yet).

Sparkle and I perused the table and stepped aside to discuss what we were looking for. She pointed out that one thing we didn’t have was a heart-shaped paddle, so we started looking at those, talking with the owner and his assistant about the merits and drawbacks of different types of wood: density, durability, etc.

One paddle that kept drawing my eye was a solitary heart-shaped paddle made of lacewood. I’d never seen lacewood up close before and I was quite taken by the grain pattern. This picture doesn’t quite do it justice, but I think you can see what I’m talking about.

The paddle was a bit larger than what Sparkle had in mind, but when I picked it up, it was surprisingly light for its size. Lacewood is not nearly as dense as some other woods. At the same time, however, it didn’t feel too light or in danger of breaking. Its a fairly thick paddle, probably three-quarters of an inch throughout. The owner did point out that its not intended for very heavy play, but that it would take a lot to break it, and we prefer to play longer rather than harder.

Since we’ve been home, we’ve played with this paddle several times. The first was a brief session the week following the party, and then Sparkle chose it for the first of her weekly “reassurance spankings” as a way to test it out more thoroughly. Last night, we used it during a fairly lengthy “stress relief” scene.

As I mentioned above, its a fairly large paddle. Its a hair over six and a half inches at its widest spot, and 12 inches in overall length. The handle is a very comfortable size for me, though someone with a smaller hand might have trouble hanging onto it. Because of its size, it very neatly covers most of one of Sparkle’s bottom cheeks with a smack, so it can be used to give a very thorough paddling. She seems to like it because its not too heavy, so it stings, but its not too wicked. While I was paddling her with it last night, she was actually raising her bottom to accept and welcome it, which is always a good indication of her enjoyment of an implement.

Unfortunately for the rest of you, this appears to be a one-off paddle. In looking through their website, they don’t have any other paddles quite this same size/shape and nothing else in lacewood. I’d still recommend any of their other toys though, and who knows, another lacewood paddle may show up sometime again. Yet another reason to visit a Shadow Lane party.