Blog
View with Stone
I sat on this stone – it was warm from the morning’s sun – and took in the view whilst eating lunch. An excursion to explore an old quarry site, now overgrown with saplings, bramble and wild flowers. I disturbed a deer, surprised a Tawny Owl, watched rabbits scamper and squirrels scurry. Butterflies basked […]
The Shape of the Dawn Chorus
Tomorrow I’m getting up early, really early. Before dawn in fact, as it is International Dawn Chorus Day – a worldwide celebration of nature’s early morning music. The dawn chorus occurs when songbirds sing at the start of a new day. It tends to be most noticeable in spring, when the birds […]
Spring Stone Carving Course
Over the weekend Lastingham rang with the sound of stone carvers – all busy on my Spring Stone Carving Course held in village. I know I’m repeating myself by saying how delighted and astonished I am about the ability of first time carvers, but just look at what was achieved in the allocated two […]
York Minster Stone Carving Festival 2018
I heard yesterday from the Stoneyard at York Minster that I have been allocated a place at the York Minster Stone Carving Festival 2018. This will be a new experience for me as I haven’t carved at a Festival before, or for that matter, ever attended one. It is an international Stone Carving Festival, […]
North Yorkshire Turtle Dove Project
The beautiful Turtle Dove is our smallest European dove. This tiny power house of a bird flies 7000 miles to reach North Yorkshire from Mali in Africa each spring. Unfortunately Turtle Doves are in big trouble; their population has declined in both the UK and Europe to such an extent there may now […]
Fog and Fox
Still blanketed in fog here, as earlier in the week – but today feels so different. I’ve shut out the damp, cloudy feeling and I’m getting close and personal with a fox. I’m thinking of Jim Crumley and his book Encounters in the Wild – Fox as he writes so exceptionally about meeting […]
Dints from decades of hammering
As long as I can remember I’ve had this little mallet for stone carving, though the exact date it came into my tool family escapes me. It is at least ten years old, probably twenty! It has absorbed an impressive collection of taps, beats and strikes. The ash handle supports a head made from […]
Fog and Fish
A foggy start this morning, making everything seem heavy and cold. I know it will clear soon enough, as there’s a warmer, brighter beaming of the background sun, which will shine and clarify. Sometimes carving feels like this, a shrugging off required of all superfluous stone, which weighs the shape down, a dense enclosure. […]
In the Workshop today – a Stare of Owls
The collective name most often used for owls is a Parliament – but I discovered there are many others, less well known, like Stare, what about Hooting, or Looming. They seem to make more sense to me. A Stooping, or Diss are suitably descriptive as well, or there’s a Wisdom of Owls. Anyway I’m […]
The Season of the Growing Sun
Of all the many theories surrounding the origins of Easter I like the Norse eostur, eastur, or ostara which meant ‘the season of the growing sun’, or ‘the season of new birth’. Our word East comes from the same source. Easter is the changing of the season. On that basis it is feeling very […]