Autumn

Obviously Autumn has been here for a little while now, and brings with it a changing canvass of colour, texture, sounds and smells, although with the warm weather it is coming late.  The leaves start to turn, the berries are ripening, the swallows think about leaving for a warmer climes, and the woodland scent changes from freshly trodden grass to slowly decaying vegetation, to mention only the minutest of changes that we see going on around us. It is, for these reasins, one of the seasons I find most beautiful, the ending of lush green hedgerows is almost a rest bite before the hard winter starts.

Haiku, something I enjoy reading, expresses it well in this poem by Takahama, Kyoshi 

'The winds that blows -ask them, which leaf on the tree will be next to go'

Being out on a walk is  a wonderful place to contemplate life's direction and is great for re-connecting with what is most important, for finding calmness in the simple things of life such as family, nature and the beauty around us, and as normal I have been snapping away with my Canon.

Here are a few recent pictures.  The little fella at the top was taken with 35 X's optical zoom, hand held so I was surprised when I got back to find so little camera shake. A mono pod is the next investment as I have tried to get by without one but I have to concede and get one.

The bottom picture is of Rinodina roboris, lichen which to give some scale the largest rounds are approximately 2mm

Walford Mill Crafts

Recently I have been contacted by Walford Mill Crafts and will be running a course on woodturning on the 17th and 18th of November.

For more info have a look at the link above. It may be that I will become more involved in this location and will update if this is the case.

A very sad time

Normally I keep my blog for wood turning and related subjects.

However having previously been a serving Police officer, the recent murders of PC Fiona Bone aged 32 and PC Nicola Hughes 23 of Greater Manchester Police is a dark and very sad time.

PC Bone and PC Hughes were murdered attending a routine call of a burglary in Manchester, unarmed and died serving their community, in an act that none can comprehend.

The cameraderie felt by people that serve in such a close unit such as the Police cannot be explained, it remains part of your core long after the uniform is taken off, I don't think it ever goes away.

A sad time for all but no more so than for the parents, children, family, friends and colleagues of these brave souls.

My thoughts are with them all in this terrible time..

Their sacrifice will ever be forgotten.

Painting techniques

Recently I attended a friends BBQ for our woodturnign club at Burnham-on-Sea. Bella and Bethany took  along some of their turnings to show and some were taken with her colour mixing, shown at the top of the page and below.

This technique is obviously not a new, and using the back of some of the pieces she had parted off Bella played around with some poster paints and these are two examples she came up with.

On people being shown these we started dicussing paint pouring as in the video link here , it looks great fun and worth a watch.

Latest Piece

 With this latest piece I wanted to return to simplicity and work with a few complimentary materials with the intention of producing a peaceful  grouping, something to contemplate, to reflect my mind set at the time of making.

By returning to minimal materials and methods I wanted to observe closely the relationship of these materials and how they can effect the piece through composition.I wanted to view how the materials and subtle changes compliment and/or contrast, thus connecting with and continuing my interest in Wabi-Sabi and the subtlety of understanding behind this vast and deep subject.

Of course from my own research and understanding I can only produce a piece or pieces from my own interpretation.

To me it means the subtle and beauty of nature and the way in which perfection is often just so and therefore needs little input from us to see its full beauty, other than, just opening our mind and seeing what is in front of us.To a deeper level I was taught that things are not beautiful, ugly, hard or soft, they are purely as they are, or as I was told, ' they are just so'.

Here I tried to let go of the desire to over manipulate the composition, or to inject to much of my own personality, but to let the piece develop and to let go as I worked and to 'feel' if it was right or not.


The pebble and shell have been added to bring the eye and thoughts to pure place of calmness and contemplation, to connect the minimal form and materials of wood and bamboo to the hardness and contrast of found items in this case a shell and pebble, to sit next to the manipulated/turned form.

Both have their own beauty, far greater than I could possibly produce and are therefore 'perfect' in the possibly perceived 'imperfection' of cracks and holes produced in the sea for possibly many hundreds of years. Of course only each individual can decide what the seperate parts and the whole mean to them.