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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...

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...

The next group of public workshops I am offering will be held at Earthwise, Subiaco, over the weekends of 18 & 19 January and 8 & 9 February 2014. What a fantastic line up! If your kids are cranky and bored with school holidays, the January weekend is set up predominantly to provide some great activities for kids to be creative: Make a Useful Carry Box. Make some Musical Instruments. Make a Three Legged Stool. Make a Garden Planter Box.    The January weekend also offers adults the opportunity to discover the wonders of the Dovetail Joint on the Saturday evening. Learn to cut your dovetails by hand - a very satisfying thing. They are not that hard to cut really, once you get your head around it! The Saturday on the February weekend is set up to offer the opportunities for young and old to be working side by side, with kids and adults together. We will have fun making Kitchen Spatulas and Salad Servers and  making Kitchen Chopping Boards . Saturday night on ...

I love my growing array of nice axes and hatchets. Used for hewing, waste removal and other green woodworking tasks, like all edge tools they need to be very sharp. Edge protection both protects those edges and protects the people handling them. What better way to protect these sharp edges then by making leather edge guards? Hatchet edge nicely protected by the removable leather guard. This warms the cockles of my sentimental heart. You see, back in the late 70's and early 80's I was a youthworker and a leatherworker. At that time I was making belts, bags, sandals, hats, book covers, and many other items. Lots of this stuff was tooled to create decorative patterns, etc. I was also teaching leatherwork. That's a much younger me doing leatherwork back in 1977. In the late 80's I started making leather campaign chairs, and did this into the 90's. Throughout the 90's I made leather seat and back components totaling over 900 chairs for another furniture maker! Each c...

What a great project! The Swan Valley Anglican Community School approached me to build a Sound Garden at the school with the students from the Student Council. A small piece of garden with two trees in it was set aside for the task. We would be using mostly recycled materials for the task. Our workforce comprised about 16 students, two wonderful parent volunteers, a couple of fantastic staff, the very handy Thom Scott and myself. It would be very full day. Before we commenced on the day, I asked each of the students to say what they hoped the Sound Garden space would provide. The kids came up with some very thoughtful comments, with a few common themes: Somewhere to have fun,  Somewhere to express your feelings,  A place to go when you feel down, A place to go when you feel good, A place to enjoy playing music with your friends, and A place to help you feel better. Clearly kids, too, have an appreciation of the connection between music and emotions! Well, the aim of the Sound ...