We have a couple of whittling events coming up soon, including a full day of woodcrafting fun on August bank holiday, which lets you really get your teeth stuck in! All our events are pay-what-you-can, so we expect them to be very popular indeed, just like the two spoon carving events we’ve already successfully run this year. Both of these events are run by the talented Rick from Woodies Woodland Craft Training & Education.
Yesterday, we were at Tabletop Republic Lancaster, running an event as part of a city-centre wide Lancaster Fun Palace. We try to get involved in local STEAM outreach as often as possible!
Visitor were able to design their own playing cards, using blank cards that we’d cut out with laser beams. They ended up making some very innovative and vibrant designs!
We also had the first playtest of a eco-themed card game that Bil is designing. This will become part of a secret project later in the year! The mechanics were a little off, because we got completely bogged down in pollution really early in the game. Thankfully, real life isn’t quite that punishing. The volunteers gave very useful constructive criticism – thanks!
Another splendid selection of cooking utensils created, as if by magic (but probably mostly with knives and gouges). Thanks to all the friendly folk who came down this evening and who hopefully won’t be strangers in the future!
After our first whittling class was such a success, in spite of it being on April fools’ day, we’ve added another two events to our summer schedule. One of those is a bumper session on August bank holiday!
Our first wood whittling session went off well today. Lots of spoons and a cute little mushroom were hand crafted with the help of the lovely lads from Woodies.
Some of the crafters also personalised their spoons by engraving them with a photography stylus.
We have another whittling session on Tuesday, 7th May at 6pm – (https://lamm.space/spoon-7-5-24). We are organising more sessions for July and August, which we’ll announce shortly.
All materials, tools and safety equipment will be provided for you and your get to take your spoon, spatula or mushroom home! Under 18s must be accompanied, min 10 years old.
We have set up a crowdfunder at spacehive.com, to buy a variety wood carving equipment, which will be matched pound for pound by the Lancashire Sport and Culture fund. Our goal is to generate a total of £395, but if we can raise £200 ourselves, then it will be matched by the fund and we’ll get the new equipment paid for. The equipment will be accessible to all members of LAMM, but also the public when they are attending classes at our space.
Once we have the equipment, we will put on some courses in wood carving and whittling – any donation of at least £15 will get a place in one of these classes (they will be £5-20, pay-as-you-feel, should you want to pay later).
Set of 6 wood carving gouges (for use with a mallet for relief carving)
A brass headed carving chisel for use with the above
set of 10 wood carving knives (for whittling and spoon making)
2 “safety” wood carving knives, for use by kids or novices.
wood threading kit – essentially a large tap-and-die for making parts for vices and presses
Every donation, from a minimum of £2, is worthwhile and we are already up to £75 out of the £200 we need to raise ourselves! We do need at least 20 discrete donations, so small contributions are still very important!
Graham and Lin Dean, from the Friends of Heysham Heritage Centre, receiving a “new” PC from us. This machine will replace a knackered old laptop that they, and the other volunteers, were using, that was no longer fit for purpose.
We refurbish computers, mainly laptops, and pass them onto schools, refugees and other local community groups.
We had a surge in membership, partly due to a grant from Lancaster University, allowing us to give out free or cheap memberships at different times!
Window Sign
Number of members: 35 in December (best was 59 in June)
Total subscriptions: £447.12 in December (best was £468.67 in June)
85 unique human people were actually members at some time in the year!
We got a new, electronic kiosk to allow you to buy food, drink, laser time and materials… Finally without us having to handle cash and keeping manual records
Shop takings: £237 in December
Shop sales made: 33 in December (best was 42 in May)
Shop transaction fees we paid: £4.30 in December
We got a new, easy to use, quiet diode laser, just in time for making xmas presents (thanks John!)
pew, pew, pew
Diode laser time in November: 192 minutes (3 hours 12 minutes)
Diode laser time in December: 766 minutes (12 hours, 46 minutes)
This raised a total of £192 for us!
We collaborated with a great local charity, Escape2Make, to design and create a myriad of fun items for sale at the heritage market in December
We ran over a dozen free activity stalls, all over the area
festive maps
West End Gardens, Morecambe (Creative West End): 2
