Weekend in the Woods

Bridget gave me a bit of a shove out the door last weekend – making the actual booking, getting and sending the money order, and packing my food – and I was off to a pretty seriously alternative ‘Weekend in the Woods’ put on by CELT. I am now a card carrying member.

Most popular courses by far were Herb Lore (drawing two VW buses from Germany) and Sugan chair making, and I was in the minority for the weekend with no dredlocks, but I was attracted to the weekend specifically by one course – Blacksmithing.

There were five of us working our instructors hand-crank, home-made forge. Both Instructor and forge were 72, even though they looked and acted only 70. Everyone got a minor burn or two – but the weekend was great. Light on instructor lead education, heavy on mistake laden experience.

We slowly plodded along through making a decorative toasting fork the first day and a half. I made the first mistake of the group by overheating my piece early the first day (not that he warned us about overheating mind you) making me feel pretty ‘special needs’ for most the rest of that day – even though all the others went on to burn their pieces at least once each. This fork was started from a piece of rusty flat bar steel, and took a lot of hammer work, so good educational project, but pretty useless. It won't be hanging on my wall at home at least. Good for poking dead things I guess. Just to prove it's mine, I drew a matching picture.


Sunday afternoon we were shown how to make a horses head on a horse shoe, and then let loose to make whatever we wanted. That last afternoon was a lot of fun. I felt extremely creative when I turned the instructors horses head idea into something actually useful. Not a fantastic work of art, and I'm not a big fan of horse paraphernalia, but it's functional and cute for kids. A coat hook for Silas! If I can get just 200 pre-orders of these at 30$ a piece I can start up my own blacksmith business...