Ice carving

I have to admit, I wasn't too enthusiastic about this class and was doubting to go or not to go. I am very happy that I went anyway because it was great!

We were lucky it was really nice weather, with lots of sun and somewhat high temperature. Of course it wasn't ideal for ice carving, but it was nice nevertheless.
The teacher was very skilled and he stared with carving a swan. It was like magic. He did it so fast it was unbelievable. Luckily we didn't had to follow by example. 

We started with a practicing piece of ice. It wasn't big, but big enough to get a bit of feeling of how to handle it. I wanted to keep it simple and dug a hole in the middle. Then I turned it around and dug another hole, making sure that there was still enough ice left in the middle. Then I made some simple decorations on the side. The teacher was very enthusiastic about it and wanted to have it for display. Because of the simplicity there were so many options to use it. For example: if you put some fruit or flowers in the bottom cavity and freeze it, it would make great decoration. In the top cavity there was enough room for fruit or flowers.  

Then after lunch he showed us how to make a flower basket step by step. 

 

And this is the result of playing around with ice. It wasn't a swan, but for a first time it wasn't bad at all. 

It was so great to see that non of the flower baskets were alike.