Spoonfest

September 5, 2012jarrod

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......