Time flies and to try and catch up on what has been happening since March is a bit daunting, I started making a list then gave up. So lets just take a trip back a week to last Thursday the final day of a six week course for Urban Roots.
Urban Roots is a community project based at Tory Glen on the south side of Glasgow, www.urbanroots.org.uk. The group describes itself as being 'committed to working with local people on projects that improve the environment, health and nutrition, work and environmental arts.' They certainly have a keen bunch of volunteers and judging by the numbers of people who popped in to see what we were up to are well placed in the local community. Last year I ran a woodland workshop course with them where we made shaving horses and a pole lathe so they could use the thinnings, from the wonderfully names Mall's Mire, to produce green wood products. This year they fancied a turn at spoon and bowl carving.
The original plan was to keep the numbers to eight participants for both balance of tuition and safety. However over the six weeks I lost count of how many people made an introductory mallet, fortunately we did keep a central group making spoons and bowls. I find making a mallet is a good way to introduce people to safe axe work. It makes the point of hand above, axe below, as well as body placement. As for exploring the axe it provides a continuous task and moves from chunky to fine hewing.
Just about everyone made a spoon and a bowl, some just spoons and others made a second bowl. The concentration was amazing and we could have carried on for hours after the session ended. In fact a couple of people took their pieces home and continued whittling. Mention has to go to Sylvia who worked her way through three different axes and had perfect command of each. Great course.
