sutton046

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...

While spending Christmas/New Year in Albany, Western Australia, I gave a hand to help with some gardening in a friend's garden. (For those of you readers in the northern hemisphere, this time of the year is early summer. While you were hunkered down hiding from the cold singing carols around the fire in your winter woollies, we were having Christmas lunch at the beach under a gazebo to save us from the scorching sun.) One of the garden plants we were cutting back was a Eucalyptus caesia. This species of eucalypt is grown as a decorative garden plant, with silvery leaves, drooping foliage, and beautiful bright red flowers. In its natural habitat it grows in arid areas as a sparse spindly small tree or mallee. There are two main forms in cultivation: the really weeping version and a more upright version. The one we were cutting back was the more upright. The wood is very dense, even outside of its normal habitat. An example of the version with with a more weeping habit. Pic thanks to...