A busy weekend of Bonsai!

On Friday, I started the morning with an hour's drive to another teaching session with Harry Harrington. We went over pruning and maintenance of deciduous trees, which once again i found extremely useful and informative. Thanks again Harry! 

After returning home a few hours later, I picked up the rental van, loaded it up with some trees & headed up to Bury, Manchester, for BURRS 2014! This superb weekend, arranged and run by renowned bonsai artist, Tony Tickle, featured 6 of Europe's top artists; Will Baddeley, Pavel Slovak, Terry Foster, Rob Atkinson, John Armitage, and Tony (order as per the pic below). 

Everyone was very friendly and helpful, which was reassuring, as i felt a few fathoms out of my depth when I arrived! The other participants, many of whom are great artists in their own right, were also more than happy to share their knowledge and experience with me, for which I am most grateful! 

I have to thank Andrew Barber  of 'The Bonsai Shed' for sorting me out with this great yamadori (collected from wild) Scots Pine, which had been collected in Wales 2 or 3 years prior (I really should pay attention!).
Andy also was kind enough to lean me a plethora of carving bits and the round rotating table pictured below. It was so useful! Thanks again! 

Terry was fantastic with this and a couple of my other trees. He drew sketches of the final image of the tree, and after I pruned branches (under Terry's guidance) & plucked needles (to just the tips), Terry and I wired the tree, then I stood back in awe as Terry  transformed it into this beautiful literati style tree, whilst comprehensively explaining every step of the process, as well as giving some future development tips.

I learned more this weekend than I could write about; and hope to be fortunate enough to meet everyone again in the future. A big thank you to Tony for an inspiring weekend, and to his wife for the delicious hearty food! Also to the artists, especially Terry, and all the other participants, especially Ian, who was very helpful & spotted that my pine had 'needle cast'! Fortunately for me, he had come across this and written a blog about it a few years earlier, so was able to give me an effective solution to be rid of it! Cheers Ian!