Elvaston Castle Wood Fair 2011

Following the manic day at Wollaton Park, William and I packed up the Micra and headed off down the road to Elvaston Castle to their first Wood Fair.
We spent the evening sheltering under the bodgers tarp drinking home brew beer made by Mike Bramley the urban bodger with Clive

Following a bit of a broken nights sleep with bodgery snoring and Mr Pork the Hog Roaster switching on his generator at 4 am! I decided to go for an early morning stroll round Elvaston Castle to see the sights

Beautiful view of a misty church.

A quite magical topiary garden

Steamy bushes!

Baby fir cones

Mist rising on the lake

Water wheel house

View accross the lake to the Castle
 
After a beany breakfast it was not long before Myself and William skived off to do some essential research! The first stand we found was http://www.clogmaker.co.uk/index.php a wonderful crafts person called Jeremy who makes traditional clogs using a set of stock knives.

Jeremy is shown here assisting a very talented spectator how to use the stock knife.

Close up of the blade

Examples of his clogs

Jeremy explained the difference also between a stock knife used to make clogs and the much smaller peg knife used amazingly to make tent pegs!

We then found a Wheelwright,

A blacksmith

The bucket and lilo pump black smith who made some lovely stuff. £450 seems very reasonable for this fire place.

One of the stalls I really loved too was http://ecopodholidays.co.uk who make these lovely things to holiday in and to buy! the Idea is they need no planning permission and they make their own power please put one on my christmas wish list!

I suppose I had better show the bodgers having a bodge too

All in all a wonderful weekend and well done to Derbyshire County Council for a well run and interesting show.

Wollaton Park 2011 Notts Wildlife Trust Welly Wanging!

On Saturday  William and myself were invited by Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust to do some green wood work with visitors to their stand. As part of the activities to support the Welly Wanging, William made some Gypsy flowers using some green Willow cut that morning from the river bank behind my house.

William can be seen in this photo using a draw knife to cut thin slithers of willow to form the flower shape. Eventually taking the slithers cuts through the willow stem leaving a head of shavings. A little hole was then made using a gimlet and mounted on a thin willow twig. You can see examples of the finished work by the pole lathe in the first photo in this update.
I was helping customers use the pole lathe and I have learnt from experience that small children can be put off using the lathe due to getting the shaving into their eyes. Thankfully I had a brillient model for my shaving protection system or Goggles for short in the guise of my great nephew he decided they were "cool"!

Wollaton park is a wonderful venue known for its deer herds, the stag do not seem to be phased by anything and a bit of Welly Wanging was not going to stop them going for a stroll in search of acorns.

They even wanted to get involved in promoting the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust it seemed

Also at the event was Bob who is a wonderful bloke, here he is making traditional besoms

I would like to say thanks also to Bob for the wonderful ash wood his team supplied to me it has been much admired by members of the east midlands bodgers.