Newton Jul 15 (US): Many people have discovered their inner cook during the pandemic. I unexpectedly discovered my inner woodcarver, making a butter knife.
It wasn’t something sharp, but something to smooth a sliver of butter across an entire piece of toast in one fell swoop, the AP reports.
I’m probably not the first person you’d expect to find at a woodcarving lesson on a Sunday afternoon. As a working mother of two young children, I have all the semblance of middle-aged life, and the little spare time I’ve had lately has been devoted to wine and mindless television.
But another mom and I signed up for a green woodcarving class on a fundraiser for my children’s elementary school, and I learned a whole new way to relieve stress. It’s a hobby that I like to practice regularly, although I’m not sure I would.
“You can tap into creativity, tap into working with your hands, and tap into this meditative aspect,” said one of the sculptors, Kaylyn Messer. “Community is also an elegant connection with people, where you have a common topic to talk about with a lot of people.”
One hot afternoon, I arrived in Newton, Massachusetts, the home of our coach, Matt Day, a 43-year-old insurance actuary. Dai was engaged in the woodworking industry from a young age, helping with his father’s projects. He’s been carving on green wood for about seven years and sells his wares – spoons, bowls, and more – online.
“You can’t take power tools on vacation,” Day said, explaining one attraction of green woodcarving, which uses only a simple knife called sloyd (after the Swedish slojd, which means handicraft).
“It’s sharper than anything you have in your kitchen,” Day said.
In class, Day asked us to sheath the knife any time we weren’t using it. There was no putting it aside for a quick second. And indeed, this knife was sharp. When I turned away, I ended up barely touching the tip of my thumb. I felt such a tingling that I thought blood might rush out. you did not.
Green wood carving, also known as spoon carving, uses fresh wood. The wood is still wet since the tree was alive. It will dry out within days or a few months if kept properly. Working with dry or fresh wood is a personal preference, and each requires a different set of skills.
Where do you find that fresh wood without killing a tree? Day said woodcarvers would trade more often. Perhaps a neighbor cut down a large tree or knows someone who has. But you can also order it online.
Use a power saw to cut out the outlines of the brush knives that were our initial project. He said: Cut the grain. And when we didn’t, it was immediately clear: the bark would almost curl rather than fall to the ground.
I discovered that sculpting was therapeutic, and time passed without us giving much thought to it. The knife polishes over fresh wood and peels it off.
Since this class, I’ve learned about the community of wood carvers – people who are eager to talk to shop and enjoy company, or make and sell craft tools.
One of them is Chuck Trela, 60, from Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. He began by sculpting walking sticks and small figurines. He found that creativity with his own hands was a wonderful complement to his professional IT career.
In the pre-pandemic era, Trilla and a few sculpting buddies started Rise Up & Carve, a group that meets on Zoom and sculpts for an hour or so.
“I started it because I wanted to develop a daily sculpting habit,” Trilla said.
At Rise Up, people chat and sculpt, or simply sculpt alongside others. After COVID-19, this woodcarving zoom group started to attract people from all over the world.
“It’s basically a 24/7 operation now,” he said.
Many sculptors will say that woodworking results in a state of flux. You can sculpt for hours and not think about a lot of other things, Trela said.
There is also something special about making something physical with your own hands, especially if the artistic medium comes from nature.
“I was drawn to doing spoons because it’s something you can do really fast,” Trilla said. “Spoons are a simple geometric shape, and it’s not a huge time commitment.”
However, do not underestimate the skill required for spoon carving. It involves an ax and a few different knives.
“Making a really good spoon is quite a challenge,” said Peter Follansbee, a professional woodworker, furniture maker, teacher, and author.
Volansby, who made his first spoon in the 1980s, taught ancient carpentry at the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, a living museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, honoring the Aboriginal people and the early American colony there.
The craft dates back thousands of years.
Follansbee also helped start the nonprofit Plymouth CRAFT, which hosts craft classes, including the Greenwood Fest, which attracts hundreds of woodcarvers from around the world.
“We often get people who have no experience and after two days we will have their first spoonful,” Volansby said. “I always tell them to burn the first two they make and then go and earn another 10 to 15.”
More and more women began to carve wood.
“It’s a friendly hobby,” said Messer, 37, who lives outside of Seattle. “Expectation of perfection does not exist, and everything is useful.”
When Messer’s IT job became distant due to the pandemic, she found that online wood digging was a way to connect with others.
“Now that I work at home, it’s fine because I don’t see people as much,” she said. “It has been good for my mental health and creative expression for the past two years.”
The facilitator is also a passionate cook, and wooden spoons are useful. She gifted her spoons to her friends who enjoy cooking.