I spent a great couple of hours yesterday at Spoonfest in North Derbyshire along with over 100 other green wood enthusiasts. I watched an inspiring spoon making demo by Jogge Sundqvist and met lots of familiar faces from the near and distant past. I gave a spoon-making demo using the lumber-horse, then had to shoot off to a family event in South Derbyshire at lunchtime.

Today I plan to continue the interior walls since filling the front walls with insulation board after Owen did such a great job fitting the French doors – yet again ‘a square peg in a round hole’ springs to mind. We hope to have the electrics completed in the next few weeks so that Tamsin can use the room to display her beautiful stained-glass during Herefordshire Art Week, 8-16th Sept, which is rapidly approaching.

We are now over half way through this year’s season of courses. The latest course was blessed with some lovely weather at last as well as a lovely mixture of people taking part including: A woman receiving her course place for her 65th birthday present. A couple making a ‘his and hers’ chair. A father who brought along his son to help with seating the chair on the final day. We are still progressing in developing seat patterns, this week most people choosing Danish cord, in some cases combined with cedar bark.

For the remaining courses this year we have just one place available from 28th August to 2nd September, when we should be harvesting blackberries from the edge of the woods and apples from our garden, so expect a few delicious crumbles and pies baked in the woodland oven.

You can also find 3 new films that have just been uploaded onto you Tube which give a flavour of what you might expect on a course – more to follow this winter.

You Tube films

Chair-making – cleaving an ash log

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As_U9-b10GM&feature=plcp

Chair-making – the final squeeze

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsvRJIquuXE&feature=plcp