Some stump sitting and spoon carving

Today there was some fine weather, and I got a day off, so I decided to look after the birch I tapped, and maybe do some´crafting;-) and general stump sitting. So I made a flask of tea, packed something to whittle and to eat, saddled my steed and made for the woods. The weather was fine as I started, and I rode through the forest in dazzling, pale sunlight for about one and a half hour. Climbed a fire road to the mountain peakie (it´s called "Wahl", and there´s an airbase for Cessnas on top of it). Then it was some fireroad downhill to one of my favourite places, a light birch forest. Along the trail I found a pieceof beech, a little rotten and decided it would make a fine noggin. Set up"camp";-) and had a cuppa and then it was out with the Moras. The weather, however, soon deteriorated, but no harm done.

I quickly had to learn my would-be noggin was rotted through. I carved away all the rotten parts, and I think I will simply fit a separate bottom out of dry wood for it to shrink against it, and left it at that. had some birch wood with me to carve a BIG spoon, and started that, too.

It´s sort of funny, how quickly you get in a meditative mindset when sitting on a stump and just whittling away. It was just me, and the trees, and the lake, and the bloody rain;-).From time to time I just took a sip of tea, and had a sandwich and some apples, but most of the time it was this subconscious state of mind you achieve by just being and breathing through. It was calming, and soothing, to just sit there.   

That´s the spoon. The top knife is "Skogsrunarminni" (I remember the runes of the forest), a laminate bladeI forged at my old home, with a dirt forge. The ferrule is aged and peened copper, the handle carved reindeer antler. My old home is just some 400 m away from that place.I found that quite a funny experience, even if it´s not hurting as badly any more as it used to. Below is a Mora spoon knife. There are people believing that Moras are crap, for they come in so cheap. I can´t relate to that at all. It´s one hell of a knife, and the only reason I want to forge one myselfis that I...ummm... want to forge one myself;-)? 

Anyway, I whittled the hours away, and thought, and let my mind wander, and had some tea and some food, and punched another hole in my tapping system, and sat on a stump, and got wet through, and remained sitting on my stump, had another tea and thought some more.

Then I decided it was getting bloody cold, and did some funny jumping to warm up for the bastard of a trail that passes there, and did some stretching and flexing my hands and lowered the saddle as far as it would go, and had some severe smiling as I rode down that trail, too.