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Reproduced with kind permission from David Western's Portland Lovespoon Blog

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I'm very excited to announce that a date and place has been decided for this years West Coast Eisteddfod!! It will be held at the Multnomah Arts Center in Portland, Oregon on Saturday October 13th and once again Laura Jenkins Gorun and I are teaming up to produce the Eisteddfod Lovespoon.

As in previous years, the lovespoon will be raffled off to a lucky winner who will be announced at the Eisteddfod event in October. The money raised from your generous donations to the Left Coast Eisteddfod will go directly to supporting the event. Each dollar you donate will equal one chance to win the spoon. Naturally, I would like to encourage you to donate many dollars so that your chances of winning improve, but even if you can only afford one or two, please join in as every single dollar is important! After all, it only takes one ticket to win...there's no reason why that ticket shouldn't be yours!!

We are also thrilled to announce that brilliant Celtic artist Jen Delyth has contributed to this year's lovespoon design!! Jen has kindly donated one of her lovely 'Tree of Life' designs and I am chomping at the bit to get to work carving it!! Building on the tree of life theme, we have decided that 'Celebrate Your Roots' will be the motto for this years lovespoon; a motto which is also perfectly apt for the entire Left Coast Eisteddfod!
Celebrating our Welshness AND one of our endearing and enduring Welsh traditions (three cheers for lovespoons!) is what the Eisteddfod Spoon is all about and we very much hope you will support us in our endeavour!

Please join Laura, Jen and myself in supporting the Left Coast Eisteddfod 2012 and earn yourself a chance to win our spoon while you are at it!!

2009	2010	2011

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We have confirmed the venue for the 2012 West Coast Eisteddfod. It will be held at the Multnomah Arts Center in Portland on Saturday October 13th. We will be posting full details of the program as soon as it is finalized but meanwhile anyone interested in the Story-telling, Poetry or Comedy competitions should contact americymru@gmail.com for more details asap. At the moment the WCE is planned as a one day event with satellite events at other locations but thus may change as our plans evolve. Keep checking back for further details and enjoy the pictures below.

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The Courtyard/Vendors area at The Multnomah Arts Center

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The main auditorium from the stage at the Multnomah Arts Center.

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A view of the stage at the Multnomah Arts Center.

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The Lucky Labrador Pub opposite the Arts Center may prove to be a useful watering hole for WCE attendees although beer and wine will be available at the event.

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Reproduced with kind permission from David Western's Portland Lovespoon Blog

In a fit of spring madness, I decided to dust some of the lovespoons that hang in every nook and cranny of my house. This one was a particular pleasure to clean up because it has been a companion ever since my wife and I took our first backpacking and youth hostelling excursion to Europe many, many, many years ago.

We had been fortunate enough to spend a little bit of our time travelling with a friend of ours who worked for a European travel company and who had access to some accommodation just outside Firenze. As it turned out, the place was a little gatekeeper's cottage near to some very swanky villas, so we were feeling pretty highbrow...despite our tinned ravioli and jam sandwich budget.

One morning, I awoke to the sound of chainsaws and the smell of the most fragrant smoke I have ever inhaled. It was like Christmas pudding you could breathe....amazing!! I toddled outside to discover the groundskeepers busy pruning the Olive groves which surrounded the neighbouring hillsides. They had very kindly piled some of the larger logs just up the path from our digs, so I moseyed over and had my first look at olive wood. WOW!!! The figure of the grain was magic and the rich aroma of the freshly cut wood was wonderfully overwhelming...I had to have some!!!



But it wasn't that easy. First I had to 'acquire' a log without running afoul of whoever was planning to take the wood away, then I had to figure out a way to cut out a piece which could be transported all over Europe in a backpack without killing me. Thankfully, a rummage through the kitchen knife drawer provided me with an old cleaver which despite having seen much better days was perfect for a logging operation. A loose brick in the path provided the necessary 'bashing' implement for thumping said knife through the log .... I was in business.
Despite the olive wood's tendency to display a rowey, interlocked grain, I managed to batter that poor old knife through my little log a couple of times and successfully milled out a nice little board to accompany me on my further travels. Once packed away, it even made my clothes smell wonderfully 'fruitcakeish' (which I suppose made a nice metaphor for me and my lovespoon obsession!).
That lovely little chunk of olive spent months travelling with us all over the European continent and throughout Great Britain. No doubt I could have just bought a bit at a lumberyard when I got home, but there was something very romantic about the circumstances of its acquisition and of lugging it around from pillar to post.



Once home, I confess that it sat quietly unnoticed amongst a pile of my old clothing and Euro souvenirs for quite some time before I finally decided that it would make a great memento of our engagement (which had occurred during our European sojourn).
It was wonderful to work that olivewood and I still have a couple of the offcuts which I have used to make little inlay hearts for spoons carved for some of my Italian clients. Some of the unsuable offcuts I save just to touch against the belt sander when I get nostalgic and want to smell that lovely olivewood aroma filling my shop once again.
Maybe one day I'll get back to Italy during pruning season, but until then, I have this lovely, simple little spoon to set my memories off and to remember a happy little adventure!

Today Ceri and I toured the Multnomah Art Center and tentatively booked it for this year's West Coast Eisteddfod. We've reserved the space for October the 14th but still have to go back and do paperwork to close the booking. The space is an auditorium, which seats 260, with stage, lighting, sound, kitchen, extra rooms, excellent parking and a courtyard with outdoor performance or exhibit space available in a building which is a center for the southwest Portland arts communities. More to come on participants, activities and further specifics!

Reproduced with kind permission from David Western's Portland Lovespoon Blog

My new book has just gone through the final editing stage and is now scheduled to go to the printers!

It will be far-and-away the most thorough book detailing the origins, traditions and craft of the lovespoon and I am more than a little bit excited to see it reaching this stage of production! I spent a lot of time researching lovespoons in public and private collections and quickly realized that the lovespoon tradition is a much broader one than I had originally thought. From Sweden to Romania, most European countries engaged in some form of romantic wooden spoon carving and my quest to discover historical spoons hidden in out-of-the-way places was a great adventure!!. For me, visiting the museum collections first-hand or gazing through astonshing photo collections was like being a kid turned loose in a candy store; I stuffed myself on new discoveries until I thought I was going to burst!

I can only hope that with this book, I will have done some justice to this remarkable tradition. At the very least, I hope it encourages others to undertake some research which may one day demystify more and more of the lovespoon's hidden past.

From a historical viewpoint, it is a sad thing that the lovespoon was primarily a tradition of the 'poorer' classes and so attracted precious little interest from social observers of the time. Much of the lovespoon' lore has thus been cobbled together from supposition and fanciful marketing with much of it being distinctly suspect. Hopefully, some of the discoveries and theories I mention in the book will ignite some debate among lovespoon enthusiasts and collectors and will lead to newer and more accurate observations on the lovespoon's traditions and meanings.

I know my own thoughts and beliefs about the lovespoon have changed fairly dramatically since I started researching this little book and it will be interesting to see what kind of response it generates!

But the book isn't all history. The lovespoon is an evolving tradition (like all good traditions) and it is through the work of current carvers that the art of carving them will continue and broaden. I have been extremely fortunate to enjoy the great support of many of my contemporaries who have shared photographs of their beautiful work, have debated lovespoon history and have provided me with the encouragement I often needed to press on as a lovespoon carver! Without a doubt, the 'modern' section of this new book is going to be an eye-opener for both those new to lovespoons and to those who think they have seen it all!! To see the work of carvers as diverse as Alun Davies, Mike Davies, Sion Llewellyn, Laura Jenkins Gorun, David Stanley, Adam King and Ralph Hentall all together in one place is my personal highlight of the book! I know that it will be for plenty of others too.

History of Lovespoons is published by Fox Chapel Publishing and is available for pre-order from all the very finest and most reputable book dealers!!

David Western

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Katherine Jenkins looked fantastic last night, she danced like a total pro, she was graceful and fabulous as always - I don't like tv and I usually pay no attention to it but this show isn't as bad and she was awesome!

And I love her partner coining "the Welsh Wiggle," how cute could she possibly be?!

Katherine Jenkins looked fantastic last night, she danced like a total pro, she was graceful and fabulous as always - I hate reality tv and I usually pay no attention to this show but she is awesome!

Ceri's decided to do some serious fundraising this year and has signed up to run the 4 July Sauvie Island Flat half marathon, a 13-mile run sponsored by Foot Traffic, a running shoe and gear store.

Ceri will be running to raise money for the 2012 West Coast Eisteddfod (venue to be announced shortly) and for Bryn Seion Welsh Church in Beavercreek, Oregon. Founded in 1884 by Welsh immigrants who settled as farmers in the area, Bryn Seion has delivered services for 125 years and, since 1935, hosted an annual Gymanfa Ganu which brought participants from all over the US and Canada to sing in Welsh and featured guest musicians and choir directors that have included John Good , Rhiannon Acree and harpist and vocalist Bronn and Katherine Journey ,

Pledges are donations to our US 501(c)(3) non-profit, the Meriwether Lewis Memorial Eisteddfod Foundation and are tax deductible. You can pledge to sponsor Ceri either by a flat donation amount or by the mile by posting your pledge as a comment, below, or make a donation now by clicking the button below (please indicate that this is a pledge for the marathon):

From the Foot Traffic site, here's the island half race route:

Sauvie Island is in the Willamette River, a little north of Portland. About half of it is a wildlife preserve and the rest agricultural, with many farms: berries, pumpkins, organic and consumer supported agriculture and an area of houseboats along the Willamette Channel on its west side. Its very scenic, winding, two-lane roads are popular with runners and bicyclists and its beaches in the summer with daytrippers, swimmers and boaters.

The preserve is gorgeous in any season and some licensed hunting is permitted in season. July is always gorgeous there and an easy walk from parts of the race course to a public beach for a cool down. If you're in the area and you want to come and cheer Ceri on, check the Foot Traffic site for pointers on getting there the day of the run, as a portion of the road will be closed for the run and parking on the island itself will be tight. The run organizers are also looking for volunteers along the route.