Managed to find Mike Wilson’s film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lwYVm7_7Mw

Not the most professional film but has some good ideas to work on.

Actually did some bending today myself.

The family is still asleep and I found my blog login details a few days ago, so after a flurry of activity on Facebook, Steve Tomlin led me back to the blog. I looked at the stats and was amazed to see 3000 or so hits, considering I never do anything on here. I also see there are 5 of you who follow this. A big hello to you!!!

Just to update you 5 and anyone else who drops on here. Half my courses for 2012 are full and the other half are about half full, so don’t hang about if you want to spend a creative week at Brookhouse Wood.

Also my second book ‘Living Wood” is now sold out and I am working on a complete revision which will hopefully be out in Sept, incorporating some of the best from my first book “Green Woodwork’ also out of print.

Time to take Tamsin a cuppa then light the fire in my workshop at home for a session making chairs with my mate Hamish.

I received my copy of  ‘Walden and other Writings’ the other day and a have just finished the introductory bit about Thoreau. One inspiring section talks about the common feeling that the more we have, the better the quality of our lives. Thoreau set out by living in his cabin, to find out how little one needs to live a satisfactory life – a very rough paraphrase.
I gain hope from the fate of Concorde (the aircraft). If we want to travel, we need a certain velocity. So the concensus is the faster the better. but one gets to a point (in this case, the speed of sound) and it becomes unproductive to go any faster. So despite mastering all the technology to achieve supersonic commercial air travel, it ain’t viable.
This can be applied to the home. Washing machines are great – especially in a family household – but that doesn’t mean that tumble dryers and dishwashers add to the quality of life.
We should all be encouraged to see where we draw our lines of what really adds to our lives and what just clutters it up and makes us have to work frantically to pay for it, using up lots of the Earth’s limited energy at the same time.