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Limited Space In Each Workshop - First Come, First Served
Pre-registration required
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We are very family friendly and all ages are encouraged to come. Kid workshops are geared to 6-12 year olds (or anyone who is a child at heart). The rest of the workshops are for adults and interested teens.
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After registering please e-mail your workshop choices to 68pennyg@gmail.com.
Check the schedule to make sure your choices do not overlap.
Also check the workshop page to make sure your classes are not full.
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Most of the materials for these workshops are gathered from the land by the instructors. This takes time, skill, and thought to do responsibly. Since each project takes a different amount of effort to find and prepare materials, each one has a different materials fee, payable directly to the instructor at the start of each workshop. It is listed below the workshop description.
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2023 Workshops
Friday Afternoon
Friday schedule
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1:00 Registration starts
3-5 Meet at the pizza oven for
Living Materials
Craft Party
Kid Games
Block print T-shirts
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6:00 Dinner - pot luck
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6:30-8 More block print T-shirts
Living Materials
with Lucian
Friday afternoon
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One of the reasons we celebrate everyday handcrafts is the connections these traditions create with the world around us. These practices remind us that like a black bear carves her den and a vireo weaves her nest, we too can interact with the world in a way that deepens relationships with each species, each mineral, each element that we interact with as we craft lives for ourselves, our families, and our communities.
On Friday afternoon, we will shift our attention to this aspect of sloyd. Due to time constraints, most of the materials for workshops are harvested and prepared by instructors ahead of time. However, for most of us, this gathering and processing is one of the richest aspects of our craft practice: going out among the neighbors who make up our ecosystems and remembering what it means to create, maintain and deepen those relationships.
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Craft Party
with multiple instructors - and you!
Friday afternoon
Have a project you’re working on? Bring it! Share ideas and techniques, inspire and find inspiration. Don’t have a project? That’s fine too! During this social time we will also have casual demonstrations by instructors showing how they process materials or make their crafts.
Kid Games
with Quincy
Friday afternoon
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Fun and games while parents attend Living Materials, the Craft Party or set up camp. Kids are also welcome at the craft party.
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No material fee
Saturday Morning
(Some classes continue Sunday)
The Wooden Spoon: Carving with Axe & Knife
with Sean
Two part class - Saturday and Sunday mornings are both required.
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This workshop will provide you with the skills to craft your own cooking & eating utensils, from start to finish. We will begin with wood selection and axe work, learning how to work with the grain to efficiently split out stock material before proceeding to rough shape our spoons with axe and saw. Along the way we will discuss design layout and drawing to help plan out our shaping. We will learn proper axe safety measures and chopping technique to take the logs from their “raw” form to the stage where knifework becomes more viable.
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In the second half of the course we will swap out our toolset for carving knives to further refine our roughly shaped spoons into objects of beauty and utility. Once again, proper safety through knife control and technique will be the focus of this segment, learning to use straight knives to shape the outside curves of the spoon and hook knives to hollow out the bowl. We’ll touch on different decoration techniques and how to finish your spoons as we approach the finish line- participants will complete the class with a functional spoon and all the skills necessary to carve more!
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No materials fee
Tree Identification for the Crafter
with Jonathan
Saturday morning
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The ability to harvest your own materials is paramount for the carver, bowl turner, and basket maker—but you have to be able to ID trees first!
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This workshop will start with observation skills, which are the foundation for learning anything about your surroundings. Next we'll cover basic botany of local woody plants. The bulk of our time will be spent out in the woods, practicing our new skills, identifying trees and shrubs on the landscape that can be used for crafting. Come prepared to look carefully and think hard.
No materials fee
Milking Stool FULL
with Rob
Two part class - Saturday and Sunday mornings are both required.
Come discover the joy of shaping wood with a variety of sharp edged tools, to create a simple, beautiful, and useful object that will be right at home in the barn with the cows or in the living room next to the hearth. In this class we will be making a small “Milking Stool”. We will start with raw material in log form, splitting and riving our legs with froe and hatchet. The legs will then be shaped using drawknife and spokeshave before attaching them to the seat. For the seat we will be hand planing rough sawn live edge boards with smoothing planes to create a hand finished surface. We will then use a tenon cutting jig to form the wedged through tenons that hold the whole thing together.
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Materials Fee: $25
From Stones, to Pigments, to Paints. FULL
with Nick
Saturday morning
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Learn to make paint from stones! We will hunt and gather rocks from the landscape and grind them into powder. From there we process and refine the rock powder into a fine pigment and transform it into paint. We will also approach the art of making paintbrushes from a variety of angles, using available natural materials found on the living landscape.
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Materials fee: sliding scale $5-10
Pole Shelter FULL
with Luke
Saturday morning
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In this workshop we will be learning how to make a simple and very effective shelter, the tarp and pole A-frame. We will harvest and peel poles, learn the necessary knots and how to set one up safely and sturdily. The basics of tarp-entry are very useful skills to have for spending time outdoors and to make simple gathering and work spaces.
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No materials fee.
Brain Tanning Rabbit Hides FULL
with Coleen
Two part class - Saturday and Sunday mornings are both required.
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In this class we will process a raw rabbit skin and make it into a soft, buttery, pliable fur. We will learn the methods of dry membraning a hide, dressing a hide, as well as stretching a hide. We will learn the importance of salt, abrasive rocks, eggs, brains, and fire in the making of a brain tanned hide. Tanning hides is a transformative process and it will take patience, diligence, and resilience. Note this class is long, and requires lots of physical stamina, particularly of the shoulders, arms and fingers.
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Materials fee $10
Leaf Printing, Et Cetera! - for kids
with Maggie
Saturday morning
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We will begin by collecting leaves from the trees around us and pounding them onto a piece of cotton fabric. As we dip our cloths into the good ole rust bucket, we'll find some magic, (or not, and we'll try again)! The 'Et Cetera' portion covers all the art, ideas, and silly possibilities that will inevitably fill our time. Maggie aims to co-create this class with the kids and the world around us.
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No materials fees
Carving for 10-12 year olds
with Barry
Saturday morning
Come build upon your carving skills, or start carving for the first time in this entry to advanced level carving workshop for young woodworkers. Skills will include knife safety and mechanics, draw knife work, gouges, and hook knives. Participants will walk away with one of a selection of projects including spoons, spatulas, cheese knives and more.
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No materials fee.
Saturday Afternoon
Hat Felting FULL
with Sarah
Saturday afternoon
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Students will make their own felted hat. The felting process allows us to take wool and build a beautiful and functional hat. Felted hats are amazingly warm both wet or dry, naturally water repellent, and durable.
Style choices will be straightforward such as a skullcap, cloche or simple alpine. We will accomplish this through a positive resist as we work it around a ball and shape it by our hands with water and soap. I will have grey wool as a base and some limited colors to design with. If you have colored wool you love, feel free to bring some to add to your hat! From what you learn in this course you will have a baseline understanding of felting and will be able to confidently grow this skill if you choose.
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No materials fee.
Introduction to Natural Dyeing FULL
with Prin
Saturday afternoon
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In this workshop we’ll explore a range of natural dyes: some wild ones, like goldenrod, some that you can grow in your gardens, like madder, and one or two that are a little more exotic (insect dyes anyone?).
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We’ll practice immersion dyeing with an alum mordant, which works well for all protein fibers. You’ll leave with a bundle of colorful sample skeins, a new skill, and inspiration for a winters worth of crafting and a summers worth of gardening.
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Materials Fee: $35
Shrink Pots FULL
with Lucian
Saturday afternoon
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This is a very old method of making containers. The center is carved out of a green piece of wood, making a tube. Then a groove is made around the inside, near the bottom and a dry bottom board is carved to fit loosely in the groove. When the green wood dries and shrinks you have a container that can be used for storing dry goods. We will carve pots out of some local wood. All materials and tools will be provided but if you have a carving knife or spoon knife you like, bring them.
Material fee $10
Tree to Basket. FULL
with Penny
Saturday Afternoon
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Ubiquitous in the Northeast, the eastern white cedar offers many opportunities to create! Canoes, fence posts, rope, medicines, and baskets, to name a few. In this workshop we will harvest some bark, process it into weavable strips and make a small basket right under the trees that gifted us the material.
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Materials fee $10
Buckskin Pouches FULL
with Coleen
Saturday afternoon
In this workshop we will take hand tanned, brain tanned deer skins and turn them into pouches. We will learn different techniques of sewing with buckskin and leather. We will learn how to use awls, glovers needles, make and sew with buckskin thong, learn the purpose of welts and how to use them, and talk about the different aspects of a hide and how they can affect a garment.
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Materials fee: $40-50
Axe Handles
with Kerry
Saturday afternoon
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An axe must have a handle, and one that is fitted properly to its head and shaped to function well. In this course we will begin with axe heads forged by Lucian Avery, shape handles for them from hardwood, and then join them together to create axes that are well balanced and ready for use.
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Handle materials fee $35 plus
$120 for a 17 oz carving axe head
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​Stories and Games
with Ross
Saturday afternoon
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We'll listen to folk tales and survival stories, spin yarns that tangle your brains and tickle your toes. We'll collaborate and vegetate in a narrative world where anything goes. We'll also learn to play the Norse board game Hnefatafl (A.K.A. Viking Chess). Then we can run and hide and sneak until our legs give out.​
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No materials fees
Sunday Morning
Note that the second part of Spoons, Stools and Tanning is on Sunday morning.
Butter Knives and Wooden Hooks:
Beginning Green Wood Carving
with André
Sunday morning
Enjoy a very basic, hands-on introduction to green wood carving. We will be going over safely using a hatchet, straight knife, hand drill, and a few other simple tools, and you will endeavor to make a butter knife and a wooden hook to hang your things on. We will also explore some simple carving decoration/embellishment tips to decorate your butter knife and wooden hook.
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Materials Fee: $10
Axe Skills
with Kerry
Sunday morning
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A sharp axe is one of the most essential tools for wilderness living, camping, and bushcraft. In this course we'll cover the basics of axe techniques, such as chopping, splitting, limbing, hewing, and carving. We'll also discuss possibly the most important axe skill of all: how to avoid cutting yourself. Bring your axe if you have one, or you can practice with a loaner.
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No materials fee
Card Weaving. FULL
with Nelly
Sunday morning
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Card weaving is a fast and easy way to weave narrow bands. It uses the technique of twining, which creates especially tough and resilient cloth. This technology has been in ubiquitous use for thousands of years, all around the world. Learn to draft a pattern, set up your loom, and weave bands that are perfect for belts, guitar or quiver straps, clothing decoration, and so many other uses.
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Materials Fee: $20
Stone Paints for kids
with Nick
Sunday morning
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Learn to make paint from stones! We will hunt and gather rocks from the landscape and grind them into powder. From there we process and refine the rock powder into a fine pigment and transform it into paint. We will also approach the art of making paintbrushes from a variety of angles, using available natural materials found on the living landscape.
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Materials fee: sliding scale $5-10
Morning Walks
Morning Walks
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Saturday and Sunday mornings
7AM - meet at the pizza oven
Join us for an hour of wandering through the farm and forest. We will talk about the trees, plants, habitat, and animal sign we encounter, and listen to what the birds have to say. All participants welcome -- kids under 10 with a parent/guardian, please.
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No need to sign up ahead for these.