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What a delight! On Sunday Feb 9th I ran the first "Intro to Green Woodworking" Workshop at Earthwise in Subiaco. Fantastic. My trip to the USA last year was all about this - to increase my skills and experience in this exciting area so that I could then better share the joys of green woodworking with others here in Western Australia. This workshop, the first of many I hope, was the result of 3 years of dreaming, reading, learning, upskilling and preparation. A truly joyous day! Carving spoons from green wood is a wonderfully relaxing activity. We spent the day under the big mulberry tree at Earthwise. A very nice and appropriate location. Why no green wood tradition here in Australia? In North America and Europe, there is a long tradition in green woodworking going back many centuries. However here in Australia there appears to be very little tradition in green woodwork in our European history. Here in the early days of the Western Australian colony, roofin...

We had a great time on Saturday 8th February with two public Joy of Wood workshops at Earthwise in Subiaco. The morning workshop was "Making Kitchen Spatulas and Salad Servers". The 12 participants made a wonderful array of spatulas and salad servers. Most people made at least a spatula plus a pair of salad servers, from a range of nine different hardwoods, using coping saws, small panel saws,  spokeshaves, rasps and block planes. A final bit of sanding before the Orange Oil was applied. The afternoon workshop was "Making a Kitchen Chopping Board". What a beautiful bunch of boards were crafted by the 8 participants! Starting with a variety of pieces of wood, most of which had had a former life, each person designed and made their boards using hand tools including saws, spokeshaves, planes, rasps and even caving tools. Once again  I was too busy to take photos - except for just one at the end of the second workshop. The pic below is of 12 year ol...