Category: Tools
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Bone Tools Talk
If not for COVID-19, I’d be sitting in Jim Rigg’s wikiup at Ark Park and educating the masses about bone tools (among other related rants) by day and expanding my mind with the help of some very friendly fungi by night–at the Oregon Country Fair. Sadly, instead I made this video of my bone talk…
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From Mullet to Monet
My mullet started to get out of hand, and I felt that the time had come to cut it off. As my hair dresser (yes, I enjoy the experience of other people cutting my hair) cut it she jokingly asked me if I wanted to save a bit of it for magic or something. I…
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Making Hide Glue
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English Ivy Basket #2
I’ve taken a few basket classes now, and of all the twining basketry books I think the two pictured above have the best information for newbies; great pictures and illustrations. So many books on basketry read like mathematic equations; lots and lots of strange vocabulary with no accompanying photographs or drawings. Even so, I think…
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Willow Soaking Pool
This year I’ve really felt inspired to work on baskets. The key to building fluency with any skill starts with a good “setup”. Aside from having the materials to make a basket, you need a soaking pool to make them soft and moveable again after drying. Since I don’t live near a natural body of…
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Preparing My 220 Conibear Traps
 Raccoon season starts next week. I finally made time to prep my traps in the way my trappers education booklet told me. I boiled the conibears to get the factory grease off and then mixed in a handful of black walnut to see what would happen.
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English Ivy Bike Basket
Everyone talks shit on English Ivy; its invasive behavior has given it a bad rap. A while ago I started to feel empathy for the plant and wonder what kind of relationship I could begin to have with the plant, other than pulling it off of native trees and letting it rot in an ugly…
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Black Walnuts For Food and Dye
 Today I finally gathered some Black Walnuts. I’ve been watching them for weeks now, ever since I got my traps. I never really thought I would get into dyeing things but then when I got my traps, I read online that I should dye them first, with Black Walnut husk.
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Fireweed and Nettle Harvest
I went out the other day with Willem and harvested a whole bunch more fireweed as well as nettles for this next year. I’m going to process even more for my own projects but I want to save a bunch and do another cordage skill share at Echoes in Time next summer. I’m going to…
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My Roadkill Coonskin Cap
A couple months ago, while traveling to a friends property in the early morning, I came across two roadkill raccoons within a few hundred yards of each other. One female with a light tan color, the other a male with a darker grayish tint. Each one small and juvenile, and not even a shred of…
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Agriculture Vs. Rewilding
In order to understand the destructive nature of agriculture you must understand the phases of ecological succession.
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Skinnin’ a Coon!
[youtube C5IrqAlwlM]