This past year has been unbelievable…really. We bought a small garage on a double lot, a few blocks away from our home. In that time we nearly rebuilt the existing structure and added a whole second story, built a fence, planted 100 basket willow cuttings, and garden with woven willow fence. What was supposed to be just a few months work of construction work turned into over ten. With the help of two good friends (thanks Jeff and Garit, I couldn’t have done it by myself)—we’re done. Well almost…there’s the siding, but that’s cosmetic, right?

Jeff and Garit preparing to demo the existing roof

We also launched a craft school! Which has also been an amazing amount of additional work. Jazmin has pretty much single handedly been the administration team of the school. She does it all. I just pop in once in a while to give my unsolicited opinion about this or that and check for bad links on the newsletter.

ready for our first class of the year—spoon carving

With the stretched out completion date—we had to run classes in a construction site. During the Spring Spoon Carving Class there was no insulation or drywall. The first Willow Basketry Class had both, but no mud or tape. The Pole Lathe Class had those, but no paint. By July we had a finished floor and paint, but no cabinets (that’s a whole story in itself). By August we had the finished stairs and railings and cabinets. My shop was nearly complete with a ceiling and paint (thanks Rude) and we hung our shingle (our sign) and had an Open House. By late October during the Forge, Build, and Turn class—I installed the heaters. We were ready for winter. And all the while we hosted Community Craft Potluck Nights every other week. In total we hosted 14 workshops. Phew. It’s been a blur. Thanks to everyone who took a class and put up with all this!

knot basket (Knut corgi) class in the finished classroom space.

While the dust was settling, I moved my basement workshop into the ground floor of the new space—subterranean no more! And now that it’s operational I’m sitting pretty good to end the year. I have a big pile of wood behind the building ready to be turned into wooden tableware. Our Urushi curing cabinet has been brought back up to humidity after a year of drying out. I’ve had time to edit my book manuscript—I’ll update on that soon. (Sorry I’ve said that so many times, but trust me it’s coming and it will be worth the wait.) I also have 5 essays (blog posts) in different stages of completion.

Looking forward, I’m excited to announce that next year’s calendar is live. Go check it out here. If you’re interested in the classes we offer and haven’t done so yet, sign up for the school’s newsletter for updates. Besides Barn Carder’s class (sold out) we’re excited to have Japanese spoon carver, Kotaro Okubo coming to teach in August. This is a rare opportunity. Details about the course are here and spots are filling fast. There’s more—check it out. We also have Dawson Moore aka Michigan Sloyd teaching a Danish stool class here and Mike Loefler’s bird carving class here. Both great woodworkers and teachers. Among some of my usual offerings I’ll be teaching a make your own crooked knife class here.

I hope to see you here in the coming year. And if it’s not in the cards for this year…..we’ll be here when you are ready. Well… we might come to you. I’ll be teaching a spoon carving class with teaching add on in Oakland-CA, and a spoon carving class in Olympic Peninsula/Seattle-Wa, The Bowl Gathering-England, Von Hand-Germany, and we’re working on setting up some classes in Sweden too.

Here’s to 2023.

Here's to 2023 - Teaching and Classes

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