Whittling not Wooling

The day after my last needle felting workshop, I was invited to a workshop of another kind. My bete noir: wood. I have never been good with wood. I have no feeling for it, no magic in my fingers. But Ian the Toymaker was going to initiate me into the gentle art of whittling. I wished him luck.

 

We had limited time, so I was to start a little bird project, from an original design by a Czech puppet maker, Martin Lhotak. A little bird wired to a peg. It's the simplest of moving toys. How hard could it be? We started off with a block of lime wood and I drew out my design, with a little advice from Ian.

The next stage was to cut the lumps out, on a saw. I think it's a band saw, though I'm not very good with electrical stuff. Actually, I have a healthy respect (fear) of any moving sharp things, so Ian started me off, showing me how to gently guide the wood through the blade.

I managed to get the rest of it done on my own, with much deep breathing and concentration.

Then the next stage - the whittling. another sharp blade. A Swedish whittling knife. Again, I'm a bit lethal with sharp objects. Except felting needles, I'm ok with them.

This is Ian showing me how to polish the blade - you don't sharpen it, but it does need polishing, which helps shine up the wood as you work.

And off I went. Totally out of my comfort zone, feeling a little like many of my students must feel when they are picking up their first needle felting project.

The workshop is a wonderful treasure house.

 

Intriguing drawers and boxes full of useful things. Rather like my own studio, but less haberdashery.

And works in progress, displaying clever automata mechanisms which make things move. 

After less than an hour - and having been taught the correct way to hold the knife and carve - I had, to my amazement, managed to create a crude bird. Admittedly with some help from Ian. And even more miraculously, I had not cut myself.

I swapped a needle felting kit with Ian for a lump of lime wood, determined to go home and try some more whittling. It's a bit like needle felting; addictive once you get going.

So later, with my special new birthday whittling knife from Joe, I finished my wonky bird. He remains pegless, and resembles a shark without fins. I poked some bead eyes in him, so that he could see. I no longer fear wood. But I am much better with wool.

Ian was a fabulous teacher and often holds workshops with similar projects - the results of which can be found on his website, here.  

Wool, automata and cake

Sometimes I am asked to do private workshops and it is always a huge pleasure. Apart from the fun of going away visiting, I am always treated like a visiting princess and thoroughly spoiled. This month I stayed at the home of Ian Mackay, maker of exquisite automata and Fleur Hitchcock, the children's writer. Here is Ian, making a needle felt version of one of the chickens on his amazing pecking chicken machine. Needless to say, as a skilled craftsman, he picked it up at once.

 

It was a fairly informal workshop, and people pretty much free ranged their designs, which was interesting for everyone and made me think on my feet.

There are wonderful examples of Ian's work all over the house, with intriguing handles which beg you to turn them. And when you do, magical things happen.

Driftwood houses are so much the in thing now, with so many people making them,  but Ian was one of the early originators and I loved this little wooden street.

Lunch was pretty darned splendid.

 Amazingly, after all that, people carried on working. This was a particularly splendid guinea pig.

And the youngest member of the group produced her own version of Totoro from Studio Ghibli.

I am always thrilled to bits when someone who has never needle felted or indeed crafted much, produces something lovely. Often they start out with a little trepidation, but at the end of the day, they have made something beautiful, and in this case, entirely their own design.

Naturally, mid-afternoon, there was cake.

The next day, I myself tried my hand at creating something outside of my own comfort zone, in Ian's workshop, but that's another story for a later date. Thanks so much to Ian and Fleur, for making my weekend really special and reviving my own creative batteries, which have been a little flat for the last few years.