Wood carving lessons

About 6 weeks ago Jenny and I started attending wood carving lessons given by an experienced artist in a Victorian school building near Street in Somerset. We quickly learned that wood carving is very different to stone carving, using different techniques and tools. It is also a lot cleaner and needs less muscle power, especially when working with a soft wood such as lime, which we are. Jenny is working on a formal design, whilst I am trying to copy a shepherd scene from a pew end in Beverley Minster in East Yorkshire. We are making slow progress, as the photos show - just in case you are confused our work is in the lower half of each photo!

Village hall floor

The new floor in our village hall had its first real test on Tuesday evening when 128 people paid £10 each to see and hear the Budapest Cafe Orchestra playing their marvellous music on violin, guitar, double bass, accordian, balalaika and more (http://www.budapestcafeorchestra.co.uk/). Feet stamped to the rhythm of the music but no chair legs went through the floor, as happened at an event earlier in the year. The village hall building is a First World War Army hut moved to its present location from Salisbury Plain in 1923. Over the 95 years of its life the floor had rotted in parts as had some of the wall plate timbers under the floor which support the vertical beams holding up the roof joists. So in August the committee and friends (including Jenny) stripped out the old floor, replaced the rotten parts of the wall plates, fitted new joists and floor boards and sealed them. The photo shows the job half done.

English Country Dancing

Last week Jenny and I attended a four day residential English Country Dancing course at a Tudor manor house in north Somerset (www.halswaymanor.org.uk. To my surprise we very much enjoyed ourselves and have already booked for another course next year. We danced in the morning, had the afternoon free, then danced again after dinner, all with experienced callers and a small band comprising accordian, fiddle and flute. Sorry no photos, we did not take our camera.