A Guide to the Best of Southern California : HANDMADE : Whittle Pleasures

If you can’t run from city life, try hiding for a few hours inside Piecemakers, an urban preserve for endangered country crafts.

Whittling students at this huge--11,500 square feet--but homey Costa Mesa store and school can learn to make something of wood using only their imaginations and a few simple tools. The next classes ($20 plus materials) for adults will be held May 30 and June 6. And to help sharpen those newly acquired skills, informal whittling bees ($5 per session) recur on the first and third Tuesday of each month.

Besides whittlers, the school turns out graduates--kids, too--of courses in quilting, tatting, country cooking and other fading but thankfully not forgotten pastimes.

Piecemakers Country Store, 1720 Adams Ave., Costa Mesa; (714) 641-3112.