Back in October I went to the lovely Guardswell Farm near Kinnaird and held a spoon carving workshop for the wonderful family that own and run the impressive venue.
We had a brilliant day in the sunshine testing the workshop, they were top class students and all made unique, characterful spoons.
They enjoyed it so much Anna asked me to come back and run workshops for the public. Our first group workshop was one Sunday in January. We had 8 enthusiastic carvers come for the 5 hour workshop.
Anna put on the most glorious lunch (turns out there’s always delicious food at Guardswell!!) we stopped half way through our day to refuel. Although getting the gang to down tools and leave their spoons for a break was hard, they were all so keen!
After our amazing lunch the team got stuck in finishing their creations. Some of the super fast carvers were able to make wee butter knives too! The results were brilliant… check out all the happy faces!
Such a variety of designs! One of the reasons I love wooden spoons is that they all seem to take on a character, in groups they are like family portraits, each having their own style but all with one purpose. Was super impressed with the results!!
I’ve recently been back at Guardswell doing another carving class, this time over two evenings… which meant we got fed twice, did I mention how good the food is?! Ha! It was a smaller group this time, only 5 people. Two of them had been at the first course and loved it so much they came back again! It was great to have such enthusiasm in the room.
By the end of the first evening their spoons were taking shape, loads of different ideas. The spoon on the right was made by a chap who is left handed and wanted to make a left handed spoon he could use to get right in to the corners of his pans, he actually had time to make a second spoon, which had a spatula scraper type bit at the end. Super practical!
By the end of the night last night the team had (almost all) finished their spoons.
Ann and Graeme, the top pair were the couple who’d returned for another go. Graeme had brought along his Purple Heart spoon and his wee knife from the previous session. Check out his beautiful collection…
Ann hadn’t quite finished her spoon last night when we finished, but I woke up this morning to a lovely email and she’d gone straight home for some late night spooning and completed her spoon and sent me a pic. Also sent me one of their extending family of spoons – how cool is their collection?!
Anna and I will be getting more dates sorted soon for more carving classes! They are brilliant fun, can’t wait for the next one already!! If you fancy coming along there is a link on my website that takes you to the Guardswell site and you can check if they have any dates up. To be the first to know you can join their mailing list and follow them on Instagram 🙂 @guardswellfarm
www.getsomewood.com for more info on the classes 🙂
louiseforbesdesign 
Looks like a great time. You guys made some awesome spoons! Thanks for sharing.
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