New carving & Beltain Festival

A new carving based on the tower of Barad-dur, the dark tower from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's still to be neatened up and oiled and it will probably left as a tooled finish. I still have to get the hang of carving though as I had a fair few problems on this attempt. Some of the fundamentals aren't quite there yet I don't think. All good experience.

I'll be attending Beltain, the grandest festival of the year at Butser Ancient Farm. I figured since I've helped quite a bit in the preparation for the festival and the actual building of the Wicker Man, I'd go as a paying customer and just enjoy it. I'll post pictures of the day afterward.

Edit:

And here's the finished version. I hope you all like it.
(19th May 2014)

Thanks for reading.

Stein Wood Solo Spring Camping (England Trip 2 - 19th April)

Hello everyone. I've made another little video for my recent (19th April) camping trip. I'm not sure if I'll make videos like this for every trip as they take a bit of work. I'm getting very comfortable with camping and find no problem solo camping, but I have a few concerns regarding the fire. I find that, whilst this fire had no problem with the amount of flame and heat it produced, it chewed up the fuel too quickly. I find I always run out of fuel very fast despite the fact I collect a lot of it. Maybe I just need to have a little bit more faith in the fire and be a bit more conservative with my refueling. Aside from the fire, there were no problems with this little trip and it all went rather smoothly. If anyone is wondering about the drawings, to pass the time I imagined fictional flora and gave them strange fantastical properties. I also made a simple pot hanger which worked nicely. I'll try and make a height adjustable system next time. I need to think of other projects to do in the woods to pass the time though, and I have a few things in mind, carving being the main one. If you have any ideas, I'd be happy to hear them.

Thank you for watching.

Havant Thicket Spring Camping (England Trip 1 - 12th April)

Hello everyone. I'd like to share with you a video I made of my first camping trip in this strange, increasingly warm but lovely rural part of the country called England. We went to a nice secluded spot at Havant Thicket. Joining me for company was my brother. This was his first camping trip and he enjoyed it very much. As for observing nature on this trip, when we were walking to locate our camping spot we saw two young deer leaping through the trees. That was very a great albeit brief moment. But what was really quite special, even though it only happened for a few minutes as well, we were visited by (and I'm going to get this wrong) two pheasants that came waddling down the slope. I've included the best video I could capture of what appears to be their performance of a courtship display. If anyone can identify what these might be that'd be great. It was nice to see buds opening and the young leaves making the woods green again too. In regard to Bushcraft the lighting of fires is no longer a problem at all, but I'm still working on fire maintenance. Cooking in the embers with the mess tins and making more elaborate meals was a nice change and it worked quite well. And, of course, as you can see at the end of the video I took extra care to scatter the ashes and hide it all away. A few hiccups here and there on this one day trip, but it was really good overall.

Thanks for watching.

Finding First Tracks

I was taking the dog on a nice two hour walk in the woods spotting squirrels, birds and the gradual oncoming of Spring when near the end I looked down at the muddy path and found these:

I instantly recognised them as deer prints. I'd never seen tracks before, but I'd seen similar shapes on the internet. I was astonished at how clear and well preserved they are. Being not well versed in tracking at all I could've just walked by them, but I'm glad I didn't.

Through analysis some trackers have confirmed these shapes belong to a Roe deer, most probably, but I'm still waiting on some more interpretations of these tracks to be sure. I need to remind myself next time I spot tracks to make a size comparison and take more than one photo for easier identification.

I didn't expect to see my first animal tracks today and they've certainly inspired me to read more about the subject.

Vlog 3/4/14- Crafts, Camping & Butser Ancient Farm