Here are some pictures from the “Utilitarian Furniture Making” workshop I am giving through the Chilean women’s foundation PRODEMU. I got hired to do the workshop thanks to the fine craftsmanship I displayed with the furniture I built for our house (I’ll post some pictures and%20add a link here in the coming days), all of it made out of the finest, least expensive laminated particle board available at the local Homecenter. There are eight women involved in the% workshop, all of them residents of a recently constructed, subsidized housing complex. Their houses came with only bare bones installations, so they were interested in learning how to build some of their own furniture. We do the workshop at 0their local”community center”.

The workshop is divided into 10 two hour sessions which will likely be extended. None of the women had any previous experience with power tools, design, etc, but they’ve learned quickly. We finished the kitchen sink cabinet yesterday after five sessions. Only three of those were actually dedicated to construction and use of power tools, as the first two were spent designing and purchasing materials. All given, I think we worked pretty quickly given the constraints of this type of project (number of people, need to practice with tools, etc). Next up, they want to build similar cabinets for their homes. They’ll have to design them on their own, which will be a sort of test, but they’ll work together to build them. If all goes well, they hope to continue building similar things to sell to other residents of the housing complex. It would be a good way for them to make some income, not to mention make a name for themselves. I’d say that there are four or so who would probably put the effort into continuing beyond the scope of the project, or at least to apply for a second phase of the workshop.

Click on the image to open the photo gallery of the kitchen sink construction.

Some people say it’s been a long winter but I was expecting it to be much harsher. We got some good snow yesterday but it spent most of today melting. I did get Mom the picture of the Austral Parakeets in the snow, however. It didn’t come out too badly, considering the camera. The next person who comes down will be bringing me a new camera by the way, probably a Lumix FZ50 unless someone can recommend something better in the same range.

Claudia is in Santiago this week scouting out hairdressers. They need another person at the salon and it’s slim pickings around here, so the hunt is on in Santiago. It’s her first time back since we moved and her family is excited to have her around for a few days. Plus, she’ll get to do a bit of shopping for things we can’t get down here, such as ingredients at the chinese store.

If the roads clear up I plan to do some more exploring around the vicinity of Coyhaique. I also start teaching a “utilitarian furniture-making” course on Wednesday. I’m sure I’ll get some good anecdotes out of that. There should be about eight middle aged women and an old one-eyed man if the same people show up who I met with last week.

Click on the photo to open a gallery with some larger shots of the parakeets.

It snowed all night and has continued through today. Took this picture this morning.