***This blog has moved to my new website. New posts will be made here*** I recently held a couple of carving workshops in London. One near Old Street and another in Victoria Park. Both of them were great fun and they kind of surprised me with how eager people were to learn crafts. Both of the workshops were a part of Keep Britain Tidy's Waste less, Live more Week. The week was themed 'Be Resourceful' with daily challenges. The first challenge was 'Make it' and that was where my workshops came in. While I spend most of my time making spoons, butter spreaders are a better project to start with as they only need a knife and are less complicated objects to make. I split billets of cherry ready for the event. I also brought along some thin sticks for people to practice the various cuts with. For the workshop in Old Street, I took bookings and the seven spaces available filled up very quickly. Very impressed by some of the work they were able to produce in the short time available to them. The Victoria Park workshop was slightly different. There's a patch of land currently being turned into an outdoor classroom/community garden. I was there to help encourage people to get involved in that project. I was set up next to one of the park's entrances and sat there whittling away to get peoples interest. Over the course of about three hours I had seven people take part in some carving. Three of them were children, whose behaviour and attention to instruction I was very impressed with. It did feel a little strange to be in east London handing out knives to people! Fortunately we didn't have any accidents, just several happy folk who now know a little more about woodwork! The workshops in Victoria Park might become a regular, monthly event, so if you live near there, let me know and I'll send you the details of the next workshop once the details have been sorted out.
