NEWR Report

[chuckt]

Well my daughter Celine and I got back last night about 11pm from the NorthEast Woodcarver's Roundup. Had a FANTASTIC time as always. This year we got slammed with thunderstorms on the last day (yesterday) with 6" of rain predicted for the day. Boy were we glad we were in a room in the Lodge and not a tent like last year when we got flooded out. :-)

So - we got there Sunday afternoon and checked in, saw several familiar faces and started checking out the lineup of workshops. The way the roundup works is that the instructors all teach for free, however, they do request that you buy your materials for their class from them. This helps defray their costs for attending (gas, lodging, etc). This is one of the BEST deals ever for getting carving instruction. For my daughter and I to attend this year we budgeted and stayed pretty much on target at @ $330. It cost us $150 for the room for 3 nights, about $30 in gas, about $60 in materials for classes, and we spent about $90 on food. Though we could have saved on food by preparing our own. They have a very reasonably priced kitchen menu though - so we went for convenience. (You can check they out at Cherry Ridge Camp)

So we settled on taking the following classes and workshops:
Sun Night - Native American Flute Tuning (Mike Bloomquist)
Mon Day - Bark Whimsical Homes (Harold Kaltenbach sp?)
Mon Evening - Knife making (George Hallenbeck)
Tues Day - Bark Wood Spirits (Mike Bloomquist - my 3rd time, Celine's 2nd)
Tues Evening - relax and jam
Wed Day - Chip carved canes and hiking sticks (Terry Mansfield)

You can see some photos below of my daughter and I and some of the projects we worked on. Some we'll have to complete here at home and a full day often just isn't enough time. I have to plug our buddies Mike and Harold - they both are EXCELLENT instructors (ALL of them are really).

Celine and I had a blast and it was some great father/daughter bonding time. Now we have some more projects to complete and hopefully THIS year we'll actually get them DONE! ;-)

Photos are:
1. Celine working on her bark home w/Harold's display in background
2. Celine w/ Harold at end of day
3. Chuck w/Harold at end of day
4. Celine w/cane in progress
5. Mike Bloomquist with carved greenman watermelon for last night's potluck dinner.

We had a BLAST and I'd highly recommend it for any new carvers especially in the PA, NY, NJ, CT, MD area.

I'll add pics of our woodspirits when I unpack the car later today.

ChuckT

[BobD]

Great pictures, Chuck! And I LOVE Celine's T-shirt in the 4th pic!

Bob

[chuckt]

Heh heh - yeah, she's a HUGE Harry Potter fan. Thankfully, she has no Marauder's Map to get into any real mischief with. ;-)

ChuckT

[Sharon of the Dell]

Looks like a great time!