The bad news is that I've damaged my arm quite a bit so I won't be forging for a while. Basically I have a cyst in my hand as well as soft tissue damage from a dislocated finger a few weeks back and because I was working hard without the use of a power hammer, I started getting severe pain through my elbow and arm. I was told it was tennis elbow, but have since had a second opinion and it's not tennis elbow, just muscle and nerve damage. I've had a few physio sessions which helped and have had ultrasound on my arm and had electric pulses sent through my elbow...it feels a bit strange, but takes some of the pain away.
Anyhoo, while all this was happening I applied for a blacksmithing job at Warwickshire College and got an interview, which was very exciting. The interview itself was good although I think I could have done a lot better in the practical forging exercise...I'm going to blame my arm for that...
The staff were friendly, the workshops were great as was the rest of the campus and it's in a beautiful area of the country so I'm glad I got to visit. I also got to meet Michelle Parker (who was one of the members of staff interviewing me) who is a world famous smith, so I was a little more nervous than I thought I would be.
Here's her web link - http://www.mjpblacksmith.com/index.html
Overall it was a good day for me, and I made it back to the airport in time for my flight back to Scotland.
Since then I have had no news...so maybe I didn't get the job, but at least I got through to the interview stage. I've been keeping busy at the college cleaning and tempering tools, setting up a new fly press and finishing the gardening work at the back of the workshop. It looked a bit overgrown so myself and my work colleague decided to do some tidying and planted some flowers to make the place look a bit more colourful.
Now I'm packing for my journey to the Isle of Lewis to start my job at Loch Croistean Cafe and move into my awesome caravan!
I'll leave you with a picture of the log basket and will update soon with pictures of the work in progress if I can get an Internet connection in the middle of nowhere...
Take care!
