Plymouth CRAFT spoon classes with JoJo Wood

Twain didn’t really say “reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” but it’s a good line. In a similar vein, if you’ve heard that Plymouth CRAFT is defunct – it ain’t so. We just sat out the pandemic and then some. There was no need for us to dive in earlier, so we just waited. But one thing or another has happened lately and we’re pleased as punch to have JoJo Wood coming back to teach our first next workshop. I’m late in getting this notice out so I’ll just shut up & put the links in.

JoJo

There’s two classes, 2 days each. One is the pocket spoon – https://www.plymouthcraft.org/pocket-spoon-with-jojo-wood

The other is an eating spoon intensive – https://www.plymouthcraft.org/jojo-wood-forms-and-motifs

Dates are Aug 1 & 2 and 4 & 5. At the Wildlands Trust building in Plymouth Massachusetts.

JoJo hewing a spoon

I see on the events page that Paula has posted that I’m teaching the JA chair this fall. That’s true, but I think the dates listed there are speculation. I guess she & I need to get our shit together. We’re out of practice. Come take a class with JoJo – I’ll see you there.

Plymouth CRAFT’s weekend of spoons & bowls

It’s taken me a while, but here’s my post about Plymouth CRAFT’s recent weekend of woodworking. We had JoJo Wood back for her Pocket Spoon class; and Darrick Sanderson came back to help folks dive into bowl turning on pole (really bungee) lathes. That’s JoJo’s students above, deep in concentration, also following the sunshine as the day went on.

If Plymouth CRAFT had a spiritual home, it would be Overbrook House. http://www.overbrookhouse.com/  It was here that we had our first workshops, and we’ve returned many times. In real life, it’s a wedding venue & more, but we turn it into something altogether different. The Ingersolls, our tolerant hosts there, are the greatest. The students know they’re close when they see this sign by our board member David Berman http://trustworth.com/index.shtml

It points them up to the house; which is the center of our world there. Paula’s lunches happen here…

All right, back to the woodsy bits. JoJo’s pocket spoon is a revolution in the making. Go read what JoJo says about it, I don’t need to repeat all that. She started the whole idea of pocket spoons, as I recall…  https://pocketspoon.co.uk/

Here, she’s showing (at my request) the 7 blanks she just split out of this one quarter section of black birch. She squeezes out a lot of spoons from a small section of wood.

Hewing the shape with her hatchet.

A new pocket spoon in the making.

Meanwhile, down at the dance hall, the bowl turners were hewing out blanks

Darrick Sanderson showing them how to rough-turn the outside of the bowl.

A shot showing the hook as Darrick comes up toward the bowl’s rim.

We (well, Pret really – I had nothing to do with it) recently adapted our 8 lathes so they could work without a pole. Two uprights are dropped into mortises in the bed, then heavy-duty bungee strapped between them. The lathes worked very well, and the students worked very hard. Two full days of kicking that treadle is no joke.

Our friend Marie Pelletier always shoots photos at our events, and they end up here: https://www.facebook.com/PlymouthCRAFT/

Upcoming classes in October

Last week we announced a couple short-notice classes with Plymouth CRAFT. https://www.plymouthcraft.org/events

The lineup is Pocket Spoons with JoJo Wood and Bowl Turning with Darrick Sanderson. Two great instructors, one weekend, fabulous venue – October 5 & 6, 2019 at Overbrook House, Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.

JoJo Wood returns for 2 days of spoon carving. JoJo is a great teacher, and has spent a tremendous amount of time perfecting her techniques in carving. Noted for clear, distinct facets and beautiful shapes, her spoons are easily picked out of a crowd. She was here in June to teach two classes and those went over very well. This class will focus on her “pocket spoon” – it’s a social movement – you make great spoons and improve the planet at the same time.

There’s still room in this class, so you can sign up now. October is coming soon. At some point, she’ll get sick of that trans-Atlantic flight and we won’t see her as much. Get it while you can.

Darrick’s class is essentially sold out – (there’s a waiting list) EXCEPT – we’ve kept a spot in both Darrick’s and JoJo’s for a scholarship applicant. Maybe we’ve been too quiet about this, but here’s the story, clipped from our website:

“We get it that registration fees can be a stretch for plenty of people. A community conversation about how to foster broader, more diverse, participation in green woodworking began at Greenwood Fest 2018 and is still ongoing; many present last June made donations to support that goal. Since then we at CRAFT have been trying to figure out the best way to extend the largesse of those generous folks who can afford it to those who cannot.”

Our audience has responded very well to our request for help in offering these scholarships, for which we are grateful.

Read about it here: https://www.plymouthcraft.org/craft-green-woodworking-sch

At the bottom of that page are two buttons – one for “apply” and one for “donate”

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My own classes – I have two left for this year that have space. Both at Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. One’s a 2-day class in carving oak patterns; Sept 28 & 29;  https://www.schoolofwoodworking.com/class-schedule/29-speciality-weekend-classes/626-carving-in-the-17th-century-style-with-peter-follansbee-2.html

carvings for new chest

the other is a 5-day class in making (& carving) an oak box with a pine lid; October 12-16.

https://www.schoolofwoodworking.com/class-schedule/37-week-long-classes/635-make-a-carved-oak-box-with-peter-follansbee.html

 

 

June 2019 with Plymouth CRAFT

 

Paula wrote somewhere that we’re all going to miss Greenwood Fest this year; but all the time she’s saved not organizing that event has allowed her to organize some woodsy classes as well as a new idea – Spoon Day. If you’re on Plymouth CRAFT’s mailing list, you got a notice about it today. If you’re not – we’re having two classes with Dave Fisher & JoJo Wood. These happen either June 7 & 8 or June 10 & 11. So what to do on the Sunday in between? We made up Spoon Day – one-day event wedged between sessions.  It’s all on the events page – https://www.plymouthcraft.org/events

 

Here’s the blurb about Spoon Day – we’ll announce other carvers we’ll have there shortly. https://www.plymouthcraft.org/spoon-day 

(but you there, block #3, watch what you’re doing! Is that you, Robert Newmyer?)

Tickets go on sale February 2nd. In case you didn’t hear that –  TICKETS GO ON SALE FEBRUARY 2ND.

Sign up for Plymouth CRAFT’s emails here – https://www.plymouthcraft.org/contact

Greenwood Fest 2018 is nearly here

Next Monday, June 4th, the Plymouth CRAFT crew and most instructors descend on Pinewoods Dance Camp in Plymouth Massachusetts to begin setting up Greenwood Fest 2018. We’ve been working pretty steadily prepping stuff for a couple weeks now – Paula wrangling schedules and logistics and Pret & I have been making the next batch of lathes for bowl turning. The first season, we used Jarrod Dahl’s lathes, then last year we built 4 lathes and Jarrod brought 4. This year, we’ll have 8 of our own, and we’re gathering all the necessary gear – hook tools, treadles, mandrels – Plymouth CRAFT will now have the necessary equipment to host bowl turning classes outside of Greenwood Fest. All we’ll need is a venue and an instructor. You can tell I made the poppets for the lathes – the wedges that secure some of them are carved.

I kept thinking I had loads of time, and at one point I did. But no more. So now I have a scramble to finish up whatever I can so I have something to show in the retail “Greenwood Shop.”  Will it be the joined stool? The ladderback chair? The carved box? At least one of those things, I hope.

Once the Fest sold out, we started a waiting list. As we’ve got closer to the date, here & there some people have had to drop out for one reason or another, and people from the waiting list get contacted and some of them drop in. The Fest is still full, but the 7 pre-Fest courses have some spaces and no waiting lists. So for any last-minute people with flexible schedules – we have some openings you might like to jump on. If you missed out on the Fest and can come at the nearly-last minute, the pre-Fest is almost as wild an event as the Fest itself. Or if you’re in the Fest, quit your job and extend your stay forward with us. Mid-day Tues June 5- mid-day Thurs June 7th. https://www.greenwoodfest.org/course-details

Spoon carvers – Jane Mickelborough’s folding spoon class (hinged spoon, we call it both names) has spaces. It’s an amazing exploration of a traditional form from Brittany. Something different from a lot of the spoon carving going on, but rooted in a local tradition. No one alive knows more about those spoons than Jane.

JoJo Wood’s eating spoon class. Someone can get into this fiercely popular class. JoJo has been part of both our previous Greenwood Fests. I’ve written lots about her work since we met in 2014, and I continue to be so impressed with her amazingly detailed and nuanced spoons. If you’ve paid any attention to spoon carving, she’s one of the top spoon carvers out there.

 

Tim Manney’s class in sharpening is a real eye-opener. In woodworking, sharp tools make everything better. Tim makes tools sharp, easily. He’ll demystify the processes to sharpen all kinds of tools; hatchets, knives, gouges, chisels, most any edge tool. I have often told the story of the first time we offered this class at Plymouth CRAFT – we had beginning woodworkers running around asking “What else can we sharpen?”

 

If you’re signed up for the Fest, there’s one thing I’ve been meaning to mention for some time. Paint – as far as I can tell, we’ve not addressed painted finishes in our Fest before. Although we have two masters of milk-paint; Curtis Buchanan and Pete Galbert in attendance, in addition to Jögge Sundqvist (who is not afraid of color) – we have a “new-to-you” artisan –  Pen Austin doing some workshops and open demonstrations concerning paint; milk paint and distemper paint.

Pen is British, living in Massachusetts, where she is involved in restoration work in plaster and painted finishes. She trained in architectural conservation and she’s a member of the Worshipful Company of Plaisterers of London. Pen was there for the first-ever Plymouth CRAFT event, back in 2014 https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/plymouth-craft/

And featured in Rick McKee’s blog post about building a Shakespearean stage – https://blueoakblog.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/playing-marbles/

I’m looking forward to seeing more of her work and also seeing people work with her. Should be something. I hope I can poke my nose into some of her sessions, I’d like to learn a bit more about manipulating paint. Back to my list of to-be-dones. 

 

 

Greenwood Fest instructors: JoJo Wood

It’s spoon-heavy this time at Greenwood Fest. For several reasons, primarily because I went to Spoonfest last summer & got to meet a bunch of new people. But…in any event, this spoon carver was coming back no matter what. JoJo Wood was one of the first choices last year, and so again for 2017.

If you are paying attention to spoon carving craze that’s sweeping the world, JoJo is one of the highlights. Her work just stands out in many ways.

In the first Greenwood Fest, she brought along her clog knives, and showed us how she roughs out the wooden blanks for the soles of the leather-topped clogs.

And otherwise, she carved spoons. Her 2-day class in carving eating spoons produced some of the nicest spoons – there were no clunkers at all. Step-by-step she showed how she uses the hatchet and knives to work a disciplined shape that performs just as it should.

JoJo & I were on the festival circuit last summer; here in Plymouth, then England & Sweden in August. I got to see a lot of her carving, and it keeps getting better. I wrote a profile of her & her work in Popular Woodworking Magazine, #229, December, 2016.

Come see for yourself. Your spoons will take off. Her eating spoon class before the festival is not to be missed. We expect it to sell out, so if you want to get in it, registration opens January 4th. http://www.greenwoodfest.org/  I’ll have reminders here, and the Plymouth CRAFT newsletter will announce it too. sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already (under the “registration” tab on the GWF site). 

Plymouth CRAFT’s post-Greenwood Fest workshops

Plymouth CRAFT hosted 2 workshops after the Greenwood Fest 2016. Our model festivals do the workshops first, but we were making things up as we went along, or had scheduling conflicts, or something. So we did them after. One way this was an unexpected benefit is that often you don’t want an event like this to end. So it didn’t have to…

JoJo Wood taught her master class in eating spoons. These are the hardest spoons to make – they HAVE to be right. Cooking spoons & serving spoons can be strange & still work. Just look at my work for evidence of this.

It begins with accurate, well-thought-out hatchet work:

Then, she was not bashful about telling all the old duffers where to cut their spoons to shape…

Working right beside Chris, saying “have faith, cut it like this…”

Meanwhile, Jogge Sundqvist taught his distaff class…a real challenging exercise in shapes, knife, hatchet & drawknife work, & design.

The tin-can opener grasp can be hard to grasp. Jogge helps illustrate proper technique.

Showing where some of these cuts are applicable in spoon carving.

These students made excellent examples…

Except this one – it doesn’t count. It’s Dave Fisher!

His class in bowl-carving is next – July 30/31 http://www.plymouthcraft.org/?tribe_events=bowl-carving-with-dave-fisher

 

JoJo Wood – the apprentice clogg maker

This short film has been bopping around the web today; I’ll add it here just in case some have missed it.

Plymouth CRAFT spoon-carving & sloyd/slojd update

Plymouth CRAFT is now a year old. http://www.plymouthcraft.org/ It’s an organization with which I’m thrilled to be involved.  After a great first year, 2016 looks to be even better. As you have read here, Greenwood Fest in June will be a memorable event. I’ve been working with Paula Marcoux as we coax all the instructors for details about their sessions. We’re close to the point now where Paula & I have to sit and figure out who does what where & when.

In the meantime, Paula took the chicken way out and booked two workshops that happen after the festival. We had wanted to pursue having the instructors stay a few extra days and teach in-depth classes – but the hardest part was deciding how much of that we could do, then who to tap. It being our first venture, we decided to have just 2 classes – that’s enough for now. These classes will be held at the Pinewoods camp where the Greenwood Fest is happening. Dates are Tuesday and Wednesday, June 14 & 15. Tomorrow registration will open for these small classes – one with JoJo Wood and one with Jögge Sundqvist.

JoJo will explore the finer points of spoon design, concentrating on the most demanding spoon, the eating spoon. I spent about 20 minutes carving with JoJo once and it changed the way I approach things. This class will be small, 10 students. And it will push you in ways you can’t fathom.

See the description here http://www.plymouthcraft.org/?tribe_events=an-in-depth-look-at-the-eating-spoon-with-jojo-wood

Jögge has a treat in store, making a distaff…”A what?” you say. This class is a crash course in Swedish design, tradition, culture and more. Emphasis is on the use of the drawknife, slojd knife, and a couple of other common hand tools. This is a class in technique and thought, not a project-based workshop. Yes, a distaff is a useful thing, for spinners. Here, it’s a symbol.

Here’s his photo of some of his distaffs

photo JöggeSundqvist

http://www.plymouthcraft.org/?tribe_events=distaff-the-passion-of-carving-with-jogge-sundqvist

I’ll be skulking around both of those days, trying to eavesdrop on these two exciting workshops.

If you can’t make it to those classes, or need a warm-up, I have a spoon carving class with a few openings left; coming up in February.

We’ve had great response to spoon carving; each class has its own dynamic. But the common threads are people get started and can’t stop…so come & make some wood chips. http://www.plymouthcraft.org/?tribe_events=spoon-carving-with-peter-follansbee

Then in April, Tim Manney will come down from Maine to teach his methods of steam-bending spoon blanks. This will be a real treat. I have written about Tim’s methods before, and I continue to enjoy his work. https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/what-if-a-chairmaker-made-spoons/

Tim will be at Greenwood Fest too – I just haven’t got around to posting his bio yet. But this weekend in April is a chance for close instruction in a mind & wood-bending approach to a traditional craft. http://www.plymouthcraft.org/?tribe_events=steam-bent-spoon-work-with-tim-manney

 

Greenwood Fest, June 2016, instructor JoJo Wood

Spring of 2014. There I was. Just finished shooting my video Carving Wooden Spoons with Lie-Nielsen https://www.lie-nielsen.com/product/carving-wooden-spoons-with-peter-follansbee. Just gave notice to my then-employers that I was striking out on my own. And, off for a great vacation to Lake Woebegon to meet Jarrod Stone Dahl and Robin Wood – enrolled as a student in Robin’s first bowl turning class at North House Folk School.

While farting around the shop there in the evenings, I got out my spoon knives and did some carving. After one particular dismal outing, up comes JoJo Wood – she looks at my spoon & says, “I can show you a good way to shape a spoon from a straight-grained blank” – so there & then I got a real eye-opening lesson from someone who was not even born when I first carved spoons! And glad I was. JoJo knows what she’s about…

The lesson? We can learn from all kinds of people, young & old. Woodworking instructors don’t have to be 60-yr old grey-haired men.

And, now – your turn. JoJo is coming to Greenwood Fest to show us what’s what. Her work is great…she puts more thought into spoons than you can imagine. She really breathes these things. AND – she’s hoping to be able to bring some of her clog-making tools to show us some of that as well. Here’s a blurb she wrote up, at great personal cost to herself.

“A second generation green woodworker, JoJo Wood has been making almost since she could walk. She spent her early years travelling the world with her father, meeting craftspeople and amassing woodwork skills and knowledge, building the perfect foundations for mastering her chosen crafts. She is now one of the UK’s leading spooncarvers, and is training under the last of the English clogmakers, Jeremy Atkinson. JoJo hopes to inspire more women and younger people to get into woodworking, teaching that technique wins over physical strength every time.”

www.jojo-wood.co.uk

https://instagram.com/jojowoodcraft/

Here’s pictures:

and yes, JoJo – I wanted you to be a part of Greenwood Fest because you inspire young people and women to take up edge tools, but also because you’re good at it.