A few days ago, I came home from what has likely been the most exciting bit of my holiday this year. My wonderful girlfriend Maren usually works on a ship in the summers, and that ship would be hosting the so-called "
wood-turning cruise". On this cruise, that is organized by a norwegian tool company to promote and sell their wares along the norwegian coast, some of the worlds top wood turners are gathered on the ship to do demonstrations and instructions for the passengers and the visitors in all the ports that the ship docks at along the way from Stavanger to Cape North and back. Maren got me a "volunteer"-job on this cruise, so that in exchange for a few hours of work each day I could come along on board and see Norway and all the woodworking. Now we are back from these great 14 days and it has been really good.
The ship, ms Gann, is a schoolship where during the year students live who are in training to become sailors. During the summer the ship organizes and hosts different cruises and events, among which this turning cruise to cape north, that feels like it was cut out for me specifically. When I was not at work in the kiosk at the panorama-bar of the ship (Awesome view. Best. Office. Ever.), I was down in the workshop looking at demonstrations and talking to people. I admired the work of Richard Raffan, who makes lovely bowls and absolutely stunning lidded boxes.
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| Richard Raffan at work. |
A gentleman who made this trip really special is
Terry Martin, who saw me lingering around his lathe, studying how he turned his bowls, and then asked me if I`d like a go. He taught me the beginnings of how to hold a turning gouge, and let me work on the bowl that he was doing. He is a very passionate teacher who has done some great work searching for and preserving the craft of woodturning in China.
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| Terry Martin working on a bowl. |
After he finished the bowl that we had worked on, he kindly gave it to me. I was chuffed with it, of course, and wanted to return the gesture, so I awkwardly gave him the eating spoon from my previous blogpost it return. Hardly a match for a bowl from a master, but I wanted to give something I made in return.
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| The bowl from Terry. |
At some point during the end of the trip, when most of the paying passengers had had their turns, and I found some hours that were convenient workwise, I managed to sign up for a timeslot at the lathes myself. There were these hours you could sign up for, and if you brought wood then tuition and use of tools and lathes was free. Here, with what I learned from terry, and some really good instructions and help from the instructors there I finally did what was on my to-do-list for a long time. Turn a bowl. In fact, I turned two!
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| Here I (in blue) receive instructions from instuctor Colwin (in red) |
Here are the bowls I turned, and Terry`s bowl on the right. The small bowl on the left is intended to be an ale-bowl. It is made out of cherry wood, and the design is a bit inspired by work of
Julian Heath, and
Jarrod Stonedahl. The one in the middle is in fact my first bowl, and it turned out ok considering that a lot of "redesigning" had to be done after I sent it flying off the lathe and through the room with an idiotic cut. It gave me a right fright, that! Despite this I really enjoyed turning wood, and am very excited to see what I can do with greenwood in the future, when I acquire a lathe (notice the use of when, not if!).
All of this, combined with sailing past the most beautiful views one can dream of and visiting all these lovely towns along the norwegian coast was pretty exciting for me. Yet, they aren`t the most exciting thing that has happened on this trip. The most exciting thing happened on Cape North, where, being the northernmost people on mainland europe at that time, Maren and me got engaged. We have been together for four and a half year, and she has been absolutely wonderful. Getting engaged to her on cape north was something that I had been thinking about, and although I messed it all up a bit and things didn`t go according to how I should have planned them, she said yes. Even though I always have woodchips on my socks, or can be forgetful about what is in the oven when I am reading blogs. She is truly fantastic and I am a very lucky that she thinks I am too.
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| Maren and me being the northernmost people on Mainland Europe. |
