How to build a Coracle (traditional Irish hide boat)

I love seeing skills like this demonstrated. Those that are, to quote the narrator, in the "ancient and sufficient way."

Text from Neatorama's post:

This video incorporates footage from 1935, in which Irish craftsmen build a coracle from willow and an ox hide, then use the craft to set their nets in the River Boyne. One has to admire the skill and experience required to propel a keel-less craft in a reasonably straight line. As the narrator notes, these river craft are related to the larger currachs that were capable of substantial ocean voyages.

Enjoy peeks into the past through traditional skills,

Bp

[via Neatorama, dedicated to my faithful Canukistani operative, "Yuri"]

Margaret Wertheim: The beautiful math that links coral, crochet and hyperbolic geometry

The Ted Talks rock.

This talk starts off almost quaint -- a group of women crochet a coral reef as an art project. It is cool, it looks amazing. But then the presenter goes into the math of crochet, and the math of coral and Nudibranchs (maybe my favorite group of animals on the planet), and suddenly things get very interesting, very geeky and very deep.

By the end she's talking about The Institute for Figuring, and how mathematical thinking has gotten a bit too separated from reality and "things" and how thinking through playing with objects (like crochet and its connection, directly, to non-euclidian geometry) has enormous potential for widening human thought.

This is a long way of saying, watch the whole thing, it's only 18 minutes and it just gets deeper and more interesting as it goes along.



Enjoy the constant march,

Bp

Billy Badass (a.k.a. Fredde Norgren) making and shooting primitive bows

Although it hasn't showed up on the blog lately, I'm very interested in making wooden bows, especially without power tools. The Luddite patiently walked me through my first one a few years ago, and it shoots like a charm.

Fredde Norgren is from Sweden, therefore his blood is made from digested rotted fish and can stand temperatures that would break my face. In the first video he makes a bowdrill fire and a greenwood longbow, and in the second he (very handily) shoots another wood bow to show what it can do.

The videos are worth watching just for his brisk, stoic demeanor as much as the skills being displayed.





Enjoy watching different kinds of geeks in their native environments,

Bp

[original link via Patrick Gracewood, of the world-famous Gracewood Studios]

"Crafternoon" photos

Crafts are an important part of the culture around here. The Wife and her little clan of crafters get together on alternating weeks and have a "knitting circle" called Crafternoon. Most of the crafts folks are doing involve leather and beads, and there is a group gift project that lots of folks are working on. I've tried to make the photos so that details of this gift aren't given away.


So, the first photo is just the state of the living room during crafternoons -- notice the cheese popcorn, and the oolong tea set. Classic.


The second picture is our friend working on a snazzy stick-constructed bead loom.















Third is a picture of another friend of ours, and oft-commenter on the blog, working on a new-fangled bead loom.





This last picture shows the incredible work our friend does -- he's been working on this deerskin bag for over a year, a little at a time. I'll have to get some photos of it when he's finished, it's just amazing.

Enjoy the excuses to hang out with your friends,

Bp

Luddite wedding photos: Motley crew, showing off a ribbon shirt

Couple of pictures from The Luddite's wedding that don't involve a latrine. So the first picture is, from the left: The Luddite, Shady Kate (of the Canukistani Crew), The Wife, T., Tony, Bp, Jmichaell.

Second picture: The Wife and I posing as prompted by the photographer to "be romantic." Just can't take a statement like that seriously. I chose this picture specifically because it shows off the beautiful work The Wife did on the ribbon shirt I'm wearing. The shirt is sewn from scratch, and I believe is the first one she ever did. Not a simple design. If you didn't follow the link, the short explanation of a ribbon shirt is Native American Formalwear -- normally a clean pair of jeans, cowboy boots and a ribbon shirt.

Enjoy your formal occasions,

Bp

Crafty day -- tying flies and dying quills

Our dear friend Letle (pronounced Let - Lee) came over today for some fly tying lessons. I picked a pattern we may find some use for in small mountain streams (fingers crossed for a few high-altitude hike-in fishing trips this summer) as well as one difficult technique it can teach. I decided on the H & L Variant. Great attractor fly for naieve little mountain stream fish, easy to see and fish, floats like a cork, and you learn how to deal with hair -- both the wing and the tail. We wrestled through a few and by the 4th or 5th Letle was on her way to producing these with aplomb. While she and I worked our way through tying lessons, The Wife was working with porcupine quills.

Quillwork preceded beadwork in North America for obvious reasons -- glass means technology. See some beautiful work and a brief description Here. It seems The Wife and I are stricken by a similar aesthetic problem, we like archaic forms of arts and crafts. Beadwork on leather isn't cool enough, she's got to go Quillwork. Like for me, archery isn't enough I have to make my own wooden bow with hand tools. Don't know what the deal is, but it sure keeps things interesting. None of these techniques and skills are particularly easy, so we sweat through learning new skills all the time.

In a move the total opposite of archaic, The Wife used Kool Aid to dye her quills today. It is well known for great bright colors by fly tiers who dye their own feathers, and it turned out to be great for the quills too. The red and orange colors she achieved really popped, and the purple turned out to be a deep, rich mahogany color that looks great though wasn't what she originally planned. She has to find an alternative dye for green though, because there isn't any green Kool Aid. Go figure.

So fantastic day in The Crazy House as Criddle calls it. Lounging around making messes in the living room and chatting. Perfect summer vacation.

And tomorrow, I fish. I may faint from excitement.

Bp