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OK so I thought it was about time I did a little blog.
Beth normally does them as she is the one that actually does things and has friends, but I have done something.
As some of you may be aware I went to a class at Geraldine High School a few weeks ago to try my hand at wood carving. Before going to the first class I had given it ago on a peice of wood found in the garage, and with no help from anyone other than the internet I managed to carve out a flower. The first attempt was rubbish, but the second was pretty good and I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. So Sam and I turned up to the school abit early so that we could talk to the person running it who happened to be one of Nans friends, and was also a teacher who I recognised from my stint there many moons ago, but he was late so we didnt really get a chance to talk to him before the other people arrived. The class is very small with us making the numbers up to 5. The other people have obviously been doing it for a while and some of their work is amazing.
He had a talk with us about the basics and then got us to chip carve, which is taking bits of wood out so that the pattern is lower than the wood. Most commonly seen on cupboard doors. We were amazing of course and got moved on to a flower pattern where we had to make each petal look like it was tucking underneath the one infront. That was abit harder but we managed it. We were given a couple of magazines to have a look through and the things that people have come up with are fantastic. In one of the magazines which we only noticed the other day are a couple of horses which have been carved, and we think that they were done by Beth's friend's mum. We have taken a photo copy so you can have look.
After that initial class I tried another carving which looks good in the picture but in real life you can see it's not too flash as it has bits of splinter and marks from the chisels. But it's not too bad really. I tried a few other little bits and peices but nothing worth keeping. So the next Wednesday came around and it was time for the class but this time it was just me as Sam had to work that day and couldn't come back for it. So I went along, early again. And I was given a new project to work on, I was going to be carving a mouse. If you look at the pictures in the album you will see how it started off. The wood is Silver Birch and is quite nice to carve, my bit does have a big knot in it but thats only in the base so didn't affect how it did it. Jim (the teacher) started off drawing bits where I needed to cut and it didn't take long before it started taking shape and the mouse was coming through. It was pretty difficult to get it right and there was always bits that I wasnt happy with, but as it was rough stage of it I kept going knowing that at some point it would start to look good. Before I knew it it was the end of the class and 2 hours had passed and I hadn't got as far as I'd hoped I would. I was told that I had done well though, so that made me feel good.
I continued to do little bits to it at Nans. Nothing major as I didn't want to ruin it. So I just tried to round it off abit.
The next Wednesday (yesterday), Sam was back so he was able to come with me to the class and he got started on his own mouse. I continued to round my mouse and shape his ears. Now though it was time for the hardest part, the tail. This was hard because there isn't alot of room shape in between the tail and definitely no room for mistakes and one slip would have left my mouse looking like a cat had got it's tail. By now it is actually looking like a proper mouse, and although I didn't think I had much left to do I still didn't manage to get it all finished in the 2 hours. One thing Sam and I noticed was that we seemed to be the only 2 swearing, every few seconds one of us would mutter something as we did something wrong. At the end of the class one of the other people, Mike, came up to me and said that if I wanted to I could go over to his house on Saturday afternoon and finish off my mouse, I have taken him up on his offer and will cut the mouse off the block, round it at the bottom abit more, sand it and add in the eyes, which I will do by drilling to small holes and gluing black dress makers pins in place, I'll also was it so that it has a nice colour and shine to it. This should really finish it off and have it looking brilliant.
I will then leave Geraldine on Sunday night to go up to Christchurch and stay with Christina before starting my 28 hour journey back to England. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again.
Lots of Love
Josh xx
p.s. I will put up a picture of my finished mouse on Saturday night.
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