cool fresh start

["StoneSpider" <ukstonespider@zzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear all
John Haigh asked me to forward his intro to the list.

Deb

----- Original Message -----
 From: John Haigh
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 7:26 PM
Subject: Wiltshire stone carver

My turn. I have read all these CVs with interest.

Have periodically carved in wood and always had unfinished pieces around.

Wrote for technical magazines and ran a PR business (still do) for a living.

Summer 2002 - a week in Tout quarry on Portland, tutored by Paul Crabtree
and Hannah Sofaer. Same as Deb from Lincolnshire.

Bought the tools, took home a complex unfinished piece of three lizards and looked at it for a couple of years.

Joined the stone list straight after.

Summer 2004 - went to a workshop at the National Stone Centre in The Peak District (Derbyshire) run by Carole Kirksopp.

Made a lizard from Ancaster stone of which I am inordinately proud!

All you dry stone wallers would love the Centre, there is a long wall made in eight or so different walling styles from different parts of Britain, showing how the methods adapt to the stone. Granite rounded boulders in Scotland, others from the Lake District, Cornwall, Wales (turf topped walls) and elsewhere.

Have now joined an ongoing stone workshop called bushhammer (see www.bushhammer.co.uk) near Chippenham, Wiltshire -starting tomorrow, and hope to spend a day a week there ongoing, adjusted round the rest of my work.

Have run several free workshops chipping away at Thermalite for kids (well anyone who want to do it, but have yet to have an adult have the courage, they shyly decline, watch their children, and then end up "showing them how to do it") during local festivals.

Good to see such a lively list! Thanks for all your contributions.

John Haigh

Fiema Public Relations
Tel/Fax: 01488 686 222