These past few weeks have gone by in a blur. April, the Kids and I were part of the Traditional Ways Gathering the 3rd week of August. I will post pictures of that in a bit as I have to get the pictures sorted out.
Midway through that event I left for Edale, England for the first annual Spoonfest, a gathering of wooden spoon carvers and enthusiasts from around the world. I first heard about it on Facebook in the spring, when organizers Robin Wood and Barn "The Spoon" Carder announced it, both of whom are spoon carvers and green woodworkers. I love carved wooden spoons and have been carving them pretty seriously for years so when I read about the event I realized I had to attend. I also was invited to teach a bark sheath class at the event, that was a real honor to be in the line up with folks I knew about through researching spoon carving on the Internet over the years. I met lot's of friendly folks from the UK but also from all over Europe as well. What fun to be in a group of 150 people all attending the event for the very same reason...the wooden spoon. I guess that makes me kinda a geek when it comes to this subject. Being able to talk spoons for hours or more like days on end with folks is a pretty special thing. Usually after a few minutes most folks' eye's glaze over.... I know my wife's do....not at Spoonfest we were still talking spoons 5 days after the event! The event had an instant gallery with attendees spoons on display as well as a private collection of spoons from around the world. There was a space for spoon for sale as well. Over all there were 100's and 100's of wooden spoons, all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately too many to post photos of here, I posted a few below. There were many other blog posts on the event, Robin's link
here has a bunch of other blogs on the event and some posts with photos
here and
here.
I also taught a 2 1/2 day class on making and using Crooked Knives the week after the big event. My thanks go out to Robin for making that class happen. It was a great bunch of guys who made some really nice knives. Here's
a blog post on the crooked knife class.
I also got to spend some time with Robin turning nesting bowls in his shop more on that later......
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huge tent for the event |
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the line up |
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spoon shop with workshops underway in the background |
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One of Robin's workshops |
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Jogge Sundqvist from Sweden talking about spoon design |
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Barn giving lessons in how to use the Twca Cam, large hooked tool |
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who's this goof ball? |
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Wille and Jogge Sundqvist's spoons |
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Fritiof's spoons also from Sweden |
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Fritiof's eating spoon drying after breakfast |
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My friend Fred Livesay from Minnesota teaching a young spoon carver |
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