London's Carving Workshops

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I recently held a couple of carving workshops in London. One near Old Street and another in Victoria Park. Both of them were great fun and they kind of surprised me with how eager people were to learn crafts.

Both of the workshops were a part of Keep Britain Tidy's Waste less, Live more Week. The week was themed 'Be Resourceful' with daily challenges. The first challenge was 'Make it' and that was where my workshops came in.

While I spend most of my time making spoons, butter spreaders are a better project to start with as they only need a knife and are less complicated objects to make.

Butter Spreaders

***This blog has moved to my new website. New posts will be made here***

When I'm not carving things or out in the woods, I'm usually found in an office in London working on Eco-Schools for the charity Keep Britain Tidy. Each year in September Keep Britain Tidy has a Waste Less Live More week. Last year the theme for the week was food and food waste. This year the week is running from 22 - 28 September and the theme is 'Be Resourceful'. 

To encourage people to be resourceful and to raise awareness that what's good for the environment is good for us, I decided to teach people how to carve wooden butter spreaders, a nice introduction to green woodworking. 

Charcoal Making

While this isn't wood carving, charcoal is a cool sustainable product and making it used to be a really process widespread across the UK. It's a great way to use smaller diameter wood that it can be hard to find uses for. 

I often help out at Pound Wood, an ancient woodland that's managed by the Essex Wildlife Trust as a coppice site. A common product from coppice woodlands is charcoal. Charcoal is wood with the water removed by setting fire to it and then severely limiting the oxygen it receives. The charcoal from Pound Wood is sold locally. A fantastic British product made very sustainably.

Spoonfest

A Year of Spooning

Returning for its third year, Spoonfest, an international gathering of 200 spoon carvers in Edale, a scenic village nestled in the stunning Peak District has come to an end

Decorated Silver Birch Spoon

I don't tend to do much decoration on my spoon handles, but when I found out my friend Simon Hill would be teaching spoon decoration at Spoonfest in a couple of weeks, I thought it best to get some practice in! 

So practice doesn't make perfect?

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea that the mastery of a skill requires 10,000 hours of practice. This idea quickly spread, for it seemed logical. The more you do something, the better you become at it. Throw 10 years at something and you'll be at the top of your game.

Waste Less Live More Partner

Waste Less Live More is about rethinking how we live our lives in ways that reduce our environmental impact, whilst improving the health and happiness of ourselves and each other.